ANNAN
LATIN AMERICA and the Caribbean (LAC) are among five regions that are said to be close to universal primary school enrolment, with a 96 per cent net enrolment for the joint region in 2001/2002 as compared to 86 per cent in 1990/1991.
This is according to the most recent statistics compiled by the United Nations on the achievement of the 'Millennium Development Goals', a set
of eight time-bound targets designed by a United Nations summit of world leaders five years ago to reduce extreme poverty and other forms of deprivation by 2015.
The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005, an interim survey launched recently by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, attests that in the area of Goal 2 of the MDGs (achieve universal primary education), ... "the greatest progress in primary school completion has been made in Latin America and the Caribbean and South-East Asia, where over 90 per cent of children reach the final grade."
The report also notes that in terms of Goal No.3 (Promote gender equality and empower women) in the regions of Latin America and the Caribbean and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, girls are more likely than boys to remain in school. In secondary enrolment, the LAC region also went against the norm for the rest of the world, with more girls than boys being enrolled. Women in the LAC region also compare favorably to those in the developed world, with 44 per cent having access to non-agricultural wage employment, as compared to 46 per cent in the developed world.
While there is no region of the world where women have achieved parity in terms of their share of parliamentary seats, Latin America and the Caribbean still outpaces most other regions with a 19 per cent representation as compared to 21 per cent for the developed world and 16 per cent for the world as a whole.
REDUCING CHILD MORTALITY
In the area of Goal No.1 (eradicate extreme poverty and hunger), statistics for 2001 suggest that 9.5 per cent of the population of the region is living on less than US$1 per day, as compared to 11.3 per cent in 1990, while 10 per cent suffer from chronic hunger and seven per cent of children under age five are underweight (suffering from malnutrition, infectious diseases or lack of care).
With poverty and child mortality being closely linked, the statistics show that for Goal 4 (reduce child mortality), in LAC in 2003 there were 32 deaths per 1,000 live births in children under five. The region was identified as one of only three that maintained a rapid pace in terms of reducing child mortality.
