By Giovanna Ferullo M. |
Panama City (BLAZETRENDS).- In Latin America and the Caribbean, a region of 658 million inhabitants marked by inequality, there are countries that are already facing the aging of their population and others that still have the demographic bonus window. This coexistence is a challenge and, at the same time, an opportunity to achieve public policies that address these differences in a flexible manner, putting the person at the center.
“It is still important in this region that we continue to be very clear that we have a situation of demographic diversity” which “challenges us but also invites us to make prepared, anticipated and evidence-based decisions,” he said in an interview with BLAZETRENDS in Panama City the director for the Latin American and Caribbean region of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Susana Sottoli.
The “demographic anxiety”
Last Wednesday, UNFPA launched its annual report on the State of the World Population, warning that “demographic anxiety has become a widespread phenomenon”, and calling for a 180-degree turn in national positions regarding changes in the population that include, increasingly frequently, policies aimed at increasing, reducing or maintaining fertility rates.
In the document “8,000 million lives, infinite possibilities: arguments in favor of rights and freedoms”, UNFPA states that “instead of asking how quickly citizens have children, leaders must consider whether all people – and especially women – they are in a position to exercise their reproductive freedom”, a question in which “on too many occasions the answer is ‘no’”.
“Go beyond the numbers, that is the main message, turn around our analysis of the changes and dynamics of the population and understand that at the center of these analyzes are people, their rights and above all their right to make decisions about their reproductive, work and family life,” said Sottoli.
To talk about numbers, he specified, “we are approximately 658 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is a number that does not particularly mean anything positive or negative, it is a fact. That would be 658 million opportunities”, affirmed the regional director of UNFPA.
Demographic changes and public policies in Latin America
The demographic changes that Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing reveal, once again, that it is a region that is “very unequal, very inequitable in any aspect of development,” said the international official.
“We have a majority of countries that are already beginning to see the aging of their population, countries like Chile, Uruguay, Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico. And others that still have a young population, which can be called the demographic bonus, countries like Haiti, Nicaragua, in general the countries of Central America”, explained Sottoli.
Even in the same country in the region there is “an aging population but also a high rate of adolescent pregnancy, a youth that still needs attention”, which leads both decision makers and the different cooperation agencies to see this situation “from a perspective of Lifecycle”.
And although “many countries” in Latin America and the Caribbean “have population policies or strategies,” it is, in any case, “incipient work,” before which the Population Fund is optimistic in “the conversation about these demographic changes already What are they going to really affect?
“Without the need to replicate any model, in this region we have time to learn lessons from other regions and prepare ourselves better. A necessary word for public policy on this agenda is anticipation. Use data to make evidence-based decisions and put people at the center of public policy,” Sottoli said.
The Population Fund works in almost all Latin American countries to strengthen information systems, including demographic information.
And it accompanies “this conversation about what is a population policy design that includes solid data from censuses, surveys and that, based on that evidence, it can begin to design or plan social protection, pension, and health services that they are going to be affected, positively or negatively depending on the situation, by these population changes”, he indicated.
