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Facilitating Open Dialogue — IDRC Plays a Key Role in Latin America and the Caribbean

Federico Burone, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

2007-09

The challenges that Latin America and the Caribbean face today have arisen, in large part, because of flaws in the way the region’s economies were reformed in the 1990s, says Federico Burone, IDRC’s Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

“The reforms addressed the economic structure of these countries but paid little attention to whether the populations had the proper skills to accompany these changes” he says.

So while most LAC countries are better positioned to compete in the global marketplace, many of their citizens lack the skills or the proximity to viable industries that would allow them to play a role. Together with the effects of country-specific financial shocks, this has led to increasing poverty and a growing chasm between rich and poor in many LAC countries.

The uncertain economic picture has had repercussions across the region. Large waves of rural-to-urban migration have led to environmental damage and strained social and healthcare networks. The growing inequality has also created a new sense of social polarization. Against this backdrop, IDRC’s work within LAC continues to focus both on finding new technical answers to the region’s challenges and on creating platforms on which multiple players can contribute to innovative problem solving.

One example can be found in Moreno, Argentina, a suburb of Buenos Aires, where more than 50% of the population lives in poverty. Moreno’s population grew dramatically the year following Argentina’s 2001 financial crisis as citizens abandoned rural communities to find jobs in the metropolis. The torrent of migrants strained existing infrastructure and basic services, in turn sparking social tensions.

“The situation,” Burone recalls, “posed an extraordinary risk not only for Moreno but for the whole of Buenos Aires.” Different levels of government tried to implement aid plans, but soon it became clear that the parties faced difficulties in coordinating their efforts.

The need for “honest brokers”

That’s when IDRC-supported researchers became involved, making Moreno an IDRC Focus City and attempting to deal systemically with overlapping demands for land planning and housing, functional health systems, and environmental cleanup.

Explains Burone: “There was an opportunity for the researchers to take on the role of ‘honest brokers.’ They were able to facilitate dialogue between citizens and government officials, and to create an environment in which evidence became the basis for decisions, rather than politics.”

The participatory nature of the process was key: “Often people who live in poverty are ignored and governments feel very little accountability to them. Here the researchers helped to establish a more transparent relationship between institutions and people, and to organize citizens into small groups in which they could better realize what the possibilities were.” A similar approach is now being used by researchers implementing IDRC’s Focus Cities initiative in other LAC countries.

Participation and open dialogue are at the centre of a similar process in rural Bolivia, where IDRC-supported researchers have been exploring ways to uphold Indigenous peoples’ access to land and other resources. Most recently, they have been addressing the divisive issue of land tenure. Collaborating in debates between landlords and the majority Indigenous population that is seeking control of land for communal cultivation, the researchers are analyzing and proposing a middle path whereby some land would stay in private hands while increasing Indigenous people’s access to and use of the land.

Many challenges, varied approaches

The diversity of the LAC region needs a variety of approaches. In nations facing the Pacific, for example, IDRC-supported researchers are dealing with complicated questions of trade relations with the new Asian powerhouses. Social and health problems also loom large, calling for innovative approaches. In Peru, for example, young people have been recruited in the fight against HIV/AIDS. A Web portal allows them to communicate with their peers on disease prevention, as well as to collaborate with health professionals in detection and monitoring efforts. The initiative is being adapted for use in the Caribbean.

IDRC is also bringing together specialists from four Latin American countries with development cooperation or peacekeeping experience in Haiti to probe what is needed to foster a durable peace and re-establish functional institutions in the country. Examining a broad range of areas including economics, governance, and environmental improvement, the project could become a template for examining how fragile and failed states can rebuild and identifying ways in which Latin American countries can further collaborate.

“Sadly,” says Burone, “there is no shortage of nations where this knowledge can be applied.”

(See what IDRC is doing in the LAC region)

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