[Gcap-mujeres] Launching of the Basic Capabilities Index 2009

[Social Watch]

Press release

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To consult or download supplementary material (graphs, statistics, photos,
etc.) visit: <www.socialwatch.org/node/11404>

SOCIAL WATCH PRESENTED THE 2009 BCI

BAD NEWS: No progress in the global fight agains poverty

THE COUNTRIES IN CRITICAL SITUATION are grouped in a band along the
equator; to the north and south levels are acceptable

The countries and regions of the world are becoming increasingly polarised
in spite of their international commitments to fight poverty. This is what
emerges from the 2009 Basic Capabilities Index (BCI) launched this
wednesday in Montevideo, Uruguay, by Social Watch, an international
network of citizens’ organizations.

According to Roberto Bissio, coordinator of the Social Watch secretariat,
“Most of the countries in the world are very far from reaching the social
objectives they are committed to for 2015�. “Some 42% of countries have
low, very low or critical values�, according to Gabriel Errandonea,
coordinator of the University of the Republic social sciences research
team that processed the indicators and perfected the calculation
methodology used by Social Watch.

The Basic Capabilities Index is an annual monitoring report on the
evolution of basic social development indicators. Three indicators are
used to calculate the BCI, the percentage of children who reach the fifth
year of primary school, the mortality rate among children under five years
old and the percentage of births attended by skilled health personnel.
Unlike other international development indices, the BCI does not
incorporate monetary income as one of its components: human capabilities
are measured directly.

The fight against poverty, as measured by the BCI, was already slowing
down and stagnating before September 2008, when the global economic crisis
struck. The social impacts of the crisis are not reflected in the 2009
index because social indicators are processed much more slowly than
economic ones. As Bissio remarked, “The 2010 BCI will very probably show
deterioration where today we have stagnation.�

The 2009 BCI shows that the countries in the most critical situation are
in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The ten countries with the lowest
BCI ratings are Chad, Afghanistan, East Timor, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Niger,
Bangladesh, Nigeria, Nepal and Equatorial Guinea.

At the other extreme there are some sixty countries (including Uruguay)
that have reached values of more than 98 points on the scale, whose
maximum value is 100. “If a country reaches this BCI value, which we call
‘acceptable’, this means that it is able to provide the minimum essential
social care for the entire population. But this is only a starting point
for social development, not the finish line�.

The countries with values under 100 have, to a greater or lesser extent,
situations of poverty that are an offence against human dignity.
The BCI distinguishes five levels: acceptable, medium, low, very low and
critical. The higher levels tend to be occupied by countries in the North
and also in the South of the planet (such as the Southern Cone of Latin
America and Australia,), while the countries in a band on either side of
the equator have the lowest values. In Africa, whose average BCI is very
low, this global pattern is repeated: the countries of the Maghreb like
Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, and those in the extreme south of the
continent like South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland and Botswana, have the
highest values.

As a region, Latin America and the Caribbean has a medium value, and in
this region the countries in the lowest positions are Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Bolivia, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Those with the
highest values are Chile, Cuba, the Bahamas and Barbados, followed by
Argentina and Uruguay.

In the last five years Argentina has stagnated on the BCI, Venezuela and
Costa Rica have regressed and Uruguay, Brazil and Mexico have progressed.
The regions with the lowest BCI ratings are South Asia and Sub-Saharan
Africa. Next, with a low average BCI level, come East Asia, the Pacific,
Latin America and the Caribbean. The Middle East, North Africa and Central
Asia are in the medium category, and Europe and North America have the
highest ratings.
If current trends continue, a large part of the world will not reach an
acceptable level in terms of satisfying the basic needs of the population
by 2015, the deadline for meeting the Millennium development Goals.

NEEDED: Change of course in the fight against poverty

The more poor people there are in a country the greater the effort that
country must make to overcome poverty. There is a huge gap between the
conditions of life in the regions with high average BCI ratings (North
America and Europe) and those in the regions with critical or very low
levels (Sub-Saharan Africa). According to Gabriel Errandonea, coordinator
of Uruguay’s University of the Republic social sciences research team that
processed the indicators and perfected the calculation methodology used by
Social Watch, from 2004 to 2009 only one sixth of the countries in the
world progressed significantly in term of their social indicators, and
nearly a quarter of the countries considered regressed.

In the last five years North America, the Middle East and North Africa
have made significant progress, but these regions were already at
relatively high levels. On the other hand, most of the countries that were
in the critical BCI category five years ago has stagnated or even
worsened.
According to Errandonea, the chart of the effort needed to reach the
maximum BCI level of 100 points is like a mountain. Halfway up we find
Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East,
North Africa and Central Asia; Europe and the United States are near the
peak and South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are near the bottom.

On each part of the mountain the gradient is different. The regions that
have the lowest BCI ratings are facing the steepest slope in that a
greater effort is needed to achieve any kind of improvement. The going is
easier for the countries in the medium and acceptable categories as they
have a gentler slope to climb. As Roberto Bissio, the coordinator of
Social Watch, says “It is very unfair that the poorest countries not only
have a long way to go but are also facing the steepest gradient... These
countries are sometimes criticised for their lack of progress, but this
ignores the fact that the assistance and trade opportunities that they
were promised have never materialised.�

In a country in which 90% of the children go to school the distance from
the education goal is only ten points, so to reduce the number of number
of children without education by half the government only has to “increase
the number of teachers and schools by 5%. But in a country in which only
20% of the children go to school the shortfall is 80%, and to reduce this
by half the government would have to triple the number of schools that are
currently in existence and recruit three times as many teachers as it
already has.� And even if the government managed to do this, some 40% of
the children in the country would still be without education.

At the other end of the scale, about half the countries in the world
already have medium or acceptable BCI ratings. From 2004 to 2009 there was
a very considerable increase in the countries with acceptable BCI levels.
In the low, very low and critical categories the percentages of countries
remained almost the same, which shows that the trend is for the world to
polarise in this respect.

If these trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals will not be
reached by 2015. In the 2004 to 2009 period, Sub-Saharan Africa managed to
rise from the critical to the very low level, but in 2015 it will still be
the region that ranks lowest in the world on the BCI. By that date South
Asia should have risen to join the Middle East, North Africa and Central
Asia at the medium level, while Latin America will have stagnated at the
low level and the situation in Europe and North America will remain
acceptable.



Social Watch
18 de Julio 1077/902
Montevideo 11100
Uruguay
Phone: 598 (2) 9020490
Fax: 598 (2) 9020490 ext 113
www.socialwatch.org




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