[afro-nets] Democracy, anti-poverty and corruption

[Kris Dev <krisdev@gmail.com>]

Democracy, anti-poverty and corruption
--------------------------------------

What is true for democracies in Central/South America is equally
true of democracies in Asia, Africa, etc...

Kris Dev
mailto:krisdev@gmail.com


CENTRAL AMERICA:

Anti-Poverty Programmes Abound, but Poverty Deepens
By Diego Cevallos

* MEXICO CITY, Sep 17 (IPS) - Government anti-poverty initia-
tives in Central America tend to pick up speed around election
campaign time, then quickly lose steam.

They are almost always tainted by the blot of corruption - and
with a very few exceptions, they have been completely ineffec-
tive, say researchers and local activists.

The last decade has seen a succession of new programmes replac-
ing old ones every four or five years, usually coinciding with
general elections.

The next changes are therefore most likely to be seen in Nicara-
gua, where voters will cast their ballots in October, Honduras,
where presidential elections will take place in November, and
Costa Rica, whose next elections are scheduled for February.

A total of 43.2 million people live in Central America, and over
half of them are poor. The lowest levels of social development
are seen in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, where the pro-
portion of the population living in poverty - as measured by the
possibility of satisfying basic needs - is over 60 percent.

The situation is especially grim in Honduras and Nicaragua,
where 45 percent of children live in extreme poverty, deprived
of the resources required to meet even minimum nutritional
needs.

Apart from a few exceptions in Costa Rica and Panama, the Cen-
tral American nations with the highest degrees of economic and
social development, there are no long-term strategies to combat
poverty in this subregion, observed both Pablo Sauma, a develop-
ment expert at the University of Costa Rica, and Alfredo Ruiz,
research coordinator at the Central American University in Nica-
ragua.

The vast majority of anti-poverty policies are short-term, ad
hoc initiatives, and many are tainted by corruption, they con-
curred.

"If we truly want to eradicate injustice at its very roots, we
would have to do away with these disposable programmes that ba-
sically provide charity and serve the purposes of political cor-
ruption, since they are implemented to buy votes or hand out fa-
vours to business owners," said Rafael González, a Guatemalan
indigenous activist and chair of the Committee for Campesino
Unity (CUC).

According to a recent report from the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), titled "The Millennium
Development Goals: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective",
it appears highly unlikely that El Salvador, Honduras and Nica-
ragua will meet the poverty reduction targets set by the United
Nations General Assembly in September 2000.

The first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), to combat extreme
poverty and hunger, establishes the specific targets of reducing
by half the proportion of people living on less than one dollar
a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, be-
tween 1990 and 2015.

Although Central America has experienced consistent growth in
gross domestic product since the late 1990s, ranging from 4.5
percent in 1999 to 3.8percent in 2004, this economic progress
has not translated into a significant decline in poverty or im-
provements in the areas of employment and education, according
to ECLAC.

Central America, the poorest region in the hemisphere, is still
plagued by the after-effects of the civil wars, political up-
heavals and natural disasters it has suffered over the last
three decades.

"Anti-poverty programmes change from government to government,
they are constantly being replaced, and many are just window-
dressing used to capture votes," maintained González.

Guatemala lived through a bloody civil war stretching from 1960
until 1996, which left 200,000 dead (including 45,000 "disap-
peared), the vast majority of them at the hands of government
security forces.

During the course of the war, half a million people were dis-
placed within Guatemala, 500,000 sought refuge in Mexico alone,
and 250,000 children were orphaned.

El Salvador was also engulfed in a civil war throughout the
1980s and early 1990s, when clashes between leftist guerrilla
forces on one side and government security forces and paramili-
tary groups on the other left 75,000 dead and 7,000 disappeared.

Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, the overthrow of the Somoza dictator-
ship and subsequent armed conflict between the ruling left-wing
Sandinistas and the U.S.-backed Contra rebels claimed 50,000
lives in the 1970s and 1980s.

The 1990s brought an end to civil strife throughout the subre-
gion, and peace accords established wide-reaching commitments to
bring an end to the injustices that were the root cause of the
armed conflicts.

But whatever progress was achieved towards promoting greater de-
velopment and social equality was soon wiped out by a series of
catastrophic natural disasters.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch caused more than 9,000 deaths and mas-
sive damages in Honduras and Nicaragua.

In 2001, El Salvador was hit by two earthquakes, which left
1,142 people dead, over 8,000 injured, and more than 1.6 billion
dollars in economic losses, the equivalent of 13 percent of the
country's GDP, according to ECLAC figures.

The international community began to focus attention on Central
America in the 1980s. Dozens of multilateral agencies and non-
governmental organisations established aid, cooperation and ad-
visory programmes aimed at combating poverty in the subregion.

"Unfortunately, the end result has not been an improvement in
the situation, but on the contrary, a deepening of poverty. And
that is because there are no structural anti-poverty programmes,
only isolated and short-lived initiatives," stressed Ruiz, who
is currently participating in a project undertaken by Catholic
universities to combat poverty in Central America and the Carib-
bean.

Of the various social programmes currently implemented by Cen-
tral American governments with funding and loans from multilat-
eral agencies, one of the most laudable is the Family Allowance
Programme in Honduras, said the University of Costa Rica's
Sauma, a consultant on poverty-related issues.

Aimed at breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty, the
programme provides income assistance to 350,000 people on the
condition that the children from the families receiving this aid
attend school and receive basic health care.

But there are elections coming up soon in Honduras, which means
there is a good possibility that this policy will undergo
changes, noted Sauma. Moreover, there is no clear means of fi-
nancially sustaining this programme over the long term, he
added.

"What we have observed is that there are varying and insuffi-
cient resources for the majority of government anti-poverty pro-
grammes in Central America, and they do not attack the root
causes of the problem," said Sauma.

"But I believe that the main problem is corruption," he
stressed, noting that governments do not adequately account for
the funds placed at their disposal, and many of the resources
that are meant to be used to combat poverty are actually used to
win votes. (END/2005)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30318