Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 3 2010 (IPS) – Guatemala knows that when it comes time to demonstrate compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global anti-poverty and development target to be met by 2015, it will make a poor showing.
Along with the rest of the world s governments, authorities in this impoverished Central American nation committed themselves at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, from 1990 levels.
In 1989, 20 percent of the Guatemalan population was living in extreme poverty. At the start of this century, the MDG poverty goal appeared to be within reach, because by 2000 absolute poverty had been reduced to 16 percent of the population, which currently stands at 13 million people.
But by 2004, the extreme poverty rate had risen again, to an even higher level than in 1989: 21.5 percent, according to the Secretariat of Planning and Programming s latest report on progress towards the MDGs, drawn up in 2006.
And things have only gotten worse since then, with the knock-on effects of the global economic crisis that originated in the United States in 2008.
A 2009 report by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) reported the drop in remittances sent home by migrant workers abroad and the rise in unemployment and of Guatemalans deported from the United States, among the impacts of the crisis in this country.
Related IPS Articles
As a result, the U.N. agency said 850,000 people joined the ranks of the poor that year while 733,000 sank into extreme poverty, in one of the poorest countries of Latin America, where more than half the population lives in poverty and nearly 17 percent in extreme poverty, according to U.N. figures.
Indigenous people are the poorest of the poor. While officially, 40 percent of the population is indigenous, international organisations and researchers put the proportion at around 60 percent.
UNDP consultant Gustavo Arriola told IPS that Guatemala is unlikely to meet the extreme poverty MDG, taking into account the economic shock from the crisis as well as the country s structural problems, like the enormous gap between rich and poor.
Extreme poverty has oscillated between 15 and 20 percent. We are presumably very close to our 1990 starting point, said the expert. The year 1990 is taken as the baseline for the MDGs, but Guatemala actually uses the 1989 figure.
By contrast, neighbouring El Salvador already met the MDG poverty target in 2007, by slashing the extreme poverty rate from 28 percent in 1991 to 11 percent. In Panama, another Central American country, extreme poverty has fallen to 12.6 percent, bringing it close to the nine percent target it must reach by 2015, according to the UNDP report.
Besides the reduction in extreme poverty, the eight MDGs include a 50 percent cut in the proportion of hungry people; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.
Achieving universal completion of primary school by 2015 will also be an uphill task for Guatemala, where 43.7 percent of children finished school in 1990, and only 61 percent did so in the 2000-2004 period, according to the 2006 report on progress towards the MDGs.
Samuel Fadul, an expert on education and strategic planning, told IPS that it would be hard for Guatemala to reach the education target because of budget, logistical and structural problems standing in the way of expanding coverage and improving the quality of education nationwide and among all social strata.
Although making education free of charge filled up the classrooms, other pending measures are needed to guarantee learning, such as building infrastructure and improving the quality of teachers, supervision and oversight systems, and educational support programmes, said Fadul.
The centre-left government of Álvaro Colom, who took office in January 2008, made public education free for all children as of 2009. Before that, families were charged registration fees and had to meet other costs as well.
Athough Latin America in general is doing better than other developing regions with respect to meeting the MDGs, at present it looks like only Chile will fulfill all eight goals, according to the U.N.
Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), said last year that Chile would be the first to reach the goals, while the situation in Honduras is particularly disturbing.
An ECLAC study released Feb. 17 in Mexico on the headway made by the region in terms of environmental sustainability reported mixed results.
For example, while progress has been seen with respect to access to clean water and sanitation, countries have failed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation
Guatemala, meanwhile, continues to push forward on the MDGs, especially the most basic ones, such as cutting infant and maternal mortality. But these targets also appear far-off.
The maternal mortality rate of 121 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2005, a projection from the 2002 National Survey on Maternal and Child Health, remained a far cry from the 2015 target of 62 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Myrna Montenegro, head of the Observatory on Sexual and Reproductive Health, told IPS that to move towards that target, it is essential that more women give birth in health centres, since a mere 29 percent of rural women are attended by health professionals during childbirth.
It s incredible that while 85 percent of women receive a prenatal checkup, 70 percent do not go to a health centre to give birth, said the expert.
Although the Health Ministry budget was 273 million dollars in 2007 and a similar amount in 2006, Montenegro complained that it is still low, at 467 million dollars this year, because more supplies, personnel and hospital care are needed to avoid maternal and neonatal deaths.
She said that while the country may reach one of the MDGs, it will not be any of the health targets.
Meanwhile, patchy progress has been made in the area of promotion of gender equity and empowerment of women (MDG 3).
While the ratio of literate women to men, in the 15-24 year old category, improved from 0.82 in 1989 to 0.91 in 2002, the goal for 2015 is 1.0.
And profound gender differences remain. The literacy rate among Chorti Indian women, in the rural areas of the southeastern department (province) of Chiquimula, on the border with El Salvador, is 36.8 percent, compared to 96.5 percent among non-indigenous men in the southern department of Guatemala, where the capital is located, according to the 2002 census.
Rosario Escobedo of the Sector de Mujeres, a local women s group, told IPS that there is still a great deal to be done to achieve gender equity in Guatemala, despite the efforts made to foment it through specific institutions, public policies and laws.
The activist said the authorities and public employees must see gender equity as something important for the life of Guatemalans, and not simply a political objective that must be met in order to ensure access to international aid.
Nor has significant progress been made in reaching the MDGs on environmental sustainability and the fight against AIDS, say observers.