PAHO - Millennium Development Goals

Latin American and Caribbean countries have reached a consensus on the need to integrate themselves into the world economy, as a precondition for achieving higher and more sustainable rates of economic growth. Spurred by this conviction, the region’s countries have undertaken rapid and profound trade liberalization processes. After several rounds of GATT and WTO negotiations, however, the developing countries have a growing sense of skepticism and discontent with regard to their real chances of obtaining easier access for their products to developed-country markets. Therefore, Latin American and Caribbean countries’ development prospects are largely dependent on the Doha Round’s success in lowering trade barriers in the developed world, especially for agricultural products, and in giving rise to a trading system where the different countries’ relative levels of development are reflected in market access arrangements and in the acknowledgement of the developing countries’ right to adopt specific policies to magnify the effects of trade on growth.

Goal 8

Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Health targets

Health Indicators

Target 12	Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
Target 13	Address the special needs of the least developed countries
Target 14	Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing states
Target 15	Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
Target 16	In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
Target 17*	In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries	46.	Proportion of population with access to affordable essential drugs on a sustainable basis
Target 18	In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

* target directly related to health

More than any other region, Latin America and the Caribbean exemplifies the asymmetries and income inequalities present in the global order, as well as the fact that external vulnerability (exacerbated in Central America and the Caribbean by vulnerability to natural disasters) makes sustained development exceedingly hard to achieve. Although the assistance directed to Latin America and the Caribbean accounts for a relatively small fraction of the total, it nonetheless represents a much-needed means of mitigating these difficulties in the region because it is less volatile than other capital flows, it is earmarked for development programs and it is available even when unforeseen circumstances arise.

Official Development Assistance (ODA) plays a key role in mitigating these problems and, together with migrants’ remittances, has become one of the most stable and least pro cyclical resource flows received by the poorest countries and areas. Moreover, ODA is available even when political or economic difficulties arise or when natural disasters strike. However, ODA flows to the region have dwindled, and they currently represent a very low percentage of the worldwide total (8%). Thus, even if the region’s entire share were set aside for the population living in poverty, in per capita terms this group would receive less than the total populations of other world regions (between US$ 22 and US$ 23, compared to US$ 27 per capita in Africa, US$ 55 in the European countries with economies in transition and US$ 183 in Oceania, according to 2002 figures for net ODA

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The Millennium Development Goals a Caribbean and Latin American Perspective