Address by the Acting Secretary General of the CAN, Adalid Contreras Baspineiro, at the presentation of the Andean Year of Social Integration

Lima, March 2, 2011 

I would like to express my pleasure that all of you have been able to join us on a day of such importance to the CAN.  I would also like to thank you for having come to share this special occasion for Comprehensive Andean Integration.  

Why has 2011 been declared the Andean Year of Social Integration?  Because it is the point at which national policies, each of which is important in its own context, come together; because of the existence of regional initiatives that are beginning to produce results; and because of the need to strengthen relations among national initiatives that are interlinked into common objectives.  In this sense, 2011, for the CAN, is a kind of Apacheta, or altar on which travelers place their offerings to the Pachamama, thanking her for the road travelled and toting up what the experience has meant and also asking for her guidance, energy and hopes in order to follow the proper course. 

This year of 2011 is a kind of place of arrival or encounter of stories, of roads travelled, a space for rest and reflection, for recovering our strength, for getting a glimpse of the future and for continuing on our way.  When the traveler reaches the Apacheta, he performs a ceremony expressing his appreciation at being alive and his expectation of a better future.   In this way, we arrive at this 2011, at this Apacheta, after a journey that has not necessarily been easy. We are going to hold a ceremony to express our appreciation for our safe arrival, as we outline, together with authorities from our countries, joint actions that could strongly influence our efforts at drug control and to overcome inequalities.  There are institutional reasons, national and international reasons for celebrating 2011 as the Andean Year of Social Integration.  At the institutional level, we in the CAN have moved ahead progressively in our conceptual definition of social development.   Before 2001 and the creation of the Integral Plan for Social Development (IPSD), the social sphere of the CAN was referred to as the social dimension of the economic integration process or the social complement to the development organization.  That was not by chance.  When it was created, the CAN was at heart an economic-trading bloc for which it was natural to consider social elements as being random or additions to economic growth.  That idea went hand-in-hand with the design and application by our countries of Structural Adjustment Programs whose primary concerns were macroeconomic, leaving it up to the occasional “trickle-down” of resources to meet the needs of the people.

In our states’ design, it should be recalled that our social policies, together with structural adjustment,  were meant to meet certain conditionalities imposed by international financial institutions and that were covered basically by cooperation programs that were in reality concealed financial loans.  In this context, there was very little public investment in social policy and, as we have said, its definition depended upon the speed and fullness with which economic growth was to have a “trickle- down” effect.

But it was their very evaluations of these processes that led states to make changes in their policy designs and to concern themselves more fully with the human element of development.  Currents like Human Scale Development proposed by Manfred Max-Neef or Mabub Ul Hak’s view of Human Development that was later to be institutionalized by the UNDP, changed the way of thinking of Andean Community Member Countries and the region or community’s very proposal of the CAN.  The Millennium Development Goals, adopted by each of the Member Countries as practical policy commitments, are going to give a content to our commitments and to serve as grounds for the actions envisaged in the Integral Plan for Social Development.  The IPSD is a multidimensional proposal that embodies the social dimension of the integration process.  Its integral conception is of itself a unit that links up different areas like labor, education, health, food security, cross-border development, the environment, migratory movements, and citizen rights.  It also takes account of forms of horizontal cooperation and the creation of a fund that will make it possible to carry out subregional programs and projects in this sphere.   

The IPSD is one of the forward-looking forerunners of the model of Comprehensive Integration that was given a stamp of legitimacy at the Presidential Summit of 2007.  This model rests on the recognition of diversity as a potential; it proposes to confront asymmetries; it promotes citizen participation; it formulates a thematic architecture with interlinkages that places the economic-trade agenda, the social agenda, the environmental agenda and the political agenda at the same hierarchical level.

Along the way, starting with the initial thrust provided by the IPSD and the very dynamics at the heart of Comprehensive Integration, the Work Plan of the CAN General Secretariat gave rise to two projects that changed the way the social terrain is seen.  The economic and social cohesion project, and especially its element of social inclusion, moves us ahead in the designing of a strategy that links up the antipoverty effort and overcoming inequalities into a Community commitment.  And our citizen participation projects end up shining a light on various social sectors, which gain a physical, symbolic and institutional presence in the CAN.  The Consultative Council of Indigenous Peoples was created; the Working Committee of Defenders of Consumer Rights was set up; and the participation of various networks of citizen organizations was consolidated.   

Grounded in all of these elements, the Andean Social Agenda today recognizes that the social arena is vital to social integration and is not dependent upon any other arena.  Rather, it is interdependent with others and as the element most closely linked to mankind is the most suited and likely to build equalities and to carry out anti-poverty strategies. This is the legacy that has allowed us to reach this Apacheta, summarizing the road we have travelled and the challenges ahead for us in the declaration of the Andean Year of Social Integration.  We have come to this meeting point not as a result of action taken by the CAN General Secretariat alone.  In actual fact, Community policies stem from the coordination of three sources: national social development policies; the good practices of civil society; and joint subregional efforts.   

Insofar as the course we must continue to follow is concerned, we must build up integration relations between the state and civil society, enriching them further with the experiences of the bodies and institutions belonging to the Andean Integration System --in other words, the CAF, the Hipólito Unanue Convention, the Latin American Reserve Fund, the Simón Bolívar University, the Andean Parliament and the Consultative Councils of Labor, Business and Indigenous People.  Each of these, in its own way, is contributing to this commitment to move jointly ahead in forging social policies that will have a stronger impact on our nations.  

The highly important evolution of the fomulation and implementation of social policies that, I must stress, is sovereign in the Andean countries deserves to be given special consideration.  A first indicator of this importance concerns public investment in social policies.   According to data cited by ECLAC in “Social Panorama of Latin America 2010,” while social spending as a percentage of GDP in the region was 12.2% in 2007, by 2009, it had risen to 18%, 3 percentage points above average Latin American social spending of 15%.  Social policies in the Andean Community Member Countries are not confined to emergency assistance, but are moving ahead in the areas of social protection and, more structurally, of job creation.   

In different ways in each of the countries, the care of children, expectant mothers, and senior citizens have permitted action to be taken that humanizes the state by redistributing part of the wealth among them.  

These and other actions resting on the economic growth of the Andean countries, also help increase life expectancy.  Average Andean economic growth has been estimated to average close to 5% and to be rising.  On this basis, social protection policies are reflected in results as diverse as the reduction of illiteracy to almost zero, making its eradication a distinct possibility.  Other figures indicate that child mortality dropped in Bolivia from 151.3 to 46.0 per thousand live births between 1975 and 2010 and in Peru from 110.3 to 29.0 over the same period.  On another level, life expectancy at birth rose in Ecuador from 53.9 to 65.5 between 1985 and 2010 and in Colombia from 66.8 to 73.2 over the same period.

Civil society organizations also have highly important projects designed to meet specific situations, on the basis of which they are striving for recognition as generators of public policy.   The dialogue between the state and civil society is allowing for increasingly fruitful meetings to take place, centering on the joint anti-poverty effort.  But there is another actor present that we would like to stress, because it is also a part of this attempt to give social policies a region-wide projection.  This is International Cooperation.  How important it is to find that we are no longer confronted by International Financial Institutions or foreign Embassies that decide what is good and what is bad for us.  We are in the presence of an international cooperation that discusses the issues with us, that interacts with us, that generously offers to share its own experiences with us, that points the way toward continuing to progress  in the area of social policies.  For those reasons, we cannot fail to thank the European Union for its social support; AECID for accompanying us with projects to incorporate the citizens; French Cooperation for accompanying us on matters of science and technology; the Government of Finland for allowing us to move ahead with our environmental strategy; FAO for its backing on food security and sovereignty issues; and other allies for permitting us to feel that we are a part of a broader, a world, a planetary effort at shared responsibility and struggle for equality.   

We have arrived at this Apacheta in the Andean Year of Social Integration with all of this accumulated experience and history and for that reason would like to offer our appreciation for the constructive involvement of so many actors.  But we need to continue on our way and therefore must ask ourselves two basic questions here, at this Apacheta:  Where are we going? and What course should we take starting in 2011?  Thinking always of our responsibility to the hundred million Andean, Amazon, Caribbean and Pacific Ocean citizens we represent, the time horizon we have given ourselves to answer those questions is the year 2019, when the CAN celebrates its 50^th anniversary.  We would like to arrive in 2019 as another Apacheta, as a moment of arrival and reprojection, with results no longer based on the isolated efforts of the different actors we now contribute to the fight against poverty and inequality, but that reflect the results of a shared effort, of actions that are linked up into networks, of Community proposals showing evidence of wide-ranging harmonization.   

For that reason, we wish to propose three major objectives.  One, to spur processes of interculturality, in such a way that we continue to build, value and strengthen individual identities within our insurmountable Andean diversity.  But the time has come to weave networks, to find ourselves culturally, to interlink with each other socially and to make ourselves socially and culturally into a community that knows how to jointly confront the challenges of the twenty-first century.   And it is towards that that we should move, together, and from our own spaces, without losing our own identities or the important dynamics our countries have already taken on, but to reinforce them at the same time as we build another broader and more plural capacity for proposal.  It is precisely one of the programs we are carrying out jointly with the European Union, the Program of Economic and Social Cohesion, that is enabling us to take highly important steps toward systematically organizing our experiences, so that we can extract an all-embracing proposal from them.    

A second objective, and challenge at the same time, is the Community undertaking to achieve equal opportunity.  Indicators in the fight against poverty are improving in the Andean countries, but much still remains to be done.  So long as one single child can be found begging on the streets of our cities, the task of achieving equality will continue to be a huge one in our Andean countries. And as the CAN, we must continue to move ahead with the process to achieve equality in all of its expressions. 

The third objective we would like to boost this Andean Year of Social Integration has to do with social participation, with citizen participation.  Our societies are no longer societies that were built without considering the exercise of citizenry; our states are no longer states that are built up without the participation of organized civil society.  The task before us is to incorporate that society in a positive and constructive way into this regional Community process of implementing social policies in the CAN.    

To put into practice these objectives that encompass all that has been accomplished by the states and with the conviction that the four Andean countries are going to reach the targets established in the Millennium Development Goals, we would like to propose --with optimism--  that we build, that we commit ourselves to and fulfill our Andean Social Development Objectives by the year 2019, when we will celebrate the CAN’s 50^th Anniversary.

These Andean Social Development Objectives, which should be based on the Millennium Development Goals, should be constructed participatively by committing the involvement of our states, civil society, the academic world and international cooperation.  In the certainty that we are going to move ahead beyond the commitments assumed internationally, our targets have to challenge us to find radical, deeply-rooted and efficient solutions in the fight against poverty and inequality.  Working jointly to achieve our Andean Social Development Objectives will give meaning to our integration efforts.    

On another note and as I move toward the end of my address, I would like to add that in 2011 we would like to become participants in the United Nations Resolution on the International Year for Peoples of African Descent, so we can do them justice in the CAN, remedy their discrimination of long standing and so that they can become important actors in the lives of our countries, as they already are in their daily lives.  We would also like to stress Women’s participation.  This March 8, the International Women’s Year will be celebrating 100 years of search and struggle by our female companions for a more equal society without discrimination.  Andean social policy must, of course, play a part in achieving that right.  And the rights of Indigenous Peoples must also be addressed in our policies.

As this is a day of celebration because we are at this Apacheta that symbolizes the journey we have made and defines our future course, we have allowed ourselves to receive the contributions of two programs in which I would like to ask you to participate immediately after this Ceremony.  The Andares walking program is so called because it does not stop, but always advances, and is made up of children and young people with different skills who will share them with us during the reception.  I would like to express my deep appreciation to those who are a part of the Andares Program because they show us the way with dignity and for having approached the CAN to ask to join in our festivities. 

I would like to add here that we will enjoy music at our party, good music.  It will be provided by Peru’s Youth Symphony Orchestra, made up of young people with limited economic means who live in low-cost areas.  This is an initiative created by the great Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Flórez, that enjoys the backing of maestro José Antonio Abreu, who gave life to a similar initiative in Caracas with the support of the CAF, the CAN’s financial organization. 

Just as we are sharing this moment with two groups of children and young people today, over the year, we would like to see other social organizations come to the CAN.  Our doors are wide open to all initiatives that will allow us to continue moving ahead with our efforts to fight poverty and to achieve a society with fewer inequalities.   

Thank-you very much.