Regional and Localized Problems: Fragile States and Conflict

The Global Peace Index shows worsening overall peace scores for the world over the last few years, however these are averages of world scores and do not reveal the full picture of the problems specific to this region. For example, the GPI shows global deterioration in external conflicts fought and in internal conflict intensity while showing improvements in the score of global deaths from internal conflicts and weapons imports. However, this was not true for South America, which saw the largest deterioration across all three general GPI categories of militarization, safety & security, and ongoing conflict, with even regional trends being inapplicable to countries like Colombia or Venezuela where even categories of improvement such as weapons imports are increasing, or for Central America and the Caribbean, whose number of deaths from external conflicts deteriorated compared to an improvement in global averages (though North America had overall improvement) (Global Peace Index, 2020).

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While the report so far seems focused on South and Central America as opposed to North America (defined in the GPI as Canada and the US), this is because different overarching problems face these nations, usually developing nations with recent histories of civil conflict, which are different from those facing North America. In particular, the Fragile States index ranks Canada as sustainable (highest rating) and the US as stable, while giving a “warning” rating to most Central and South American countries, which touches on the problems facing these states due to general trends of civil unrest as well as less stable democracies and weaker central governments (FRAGILE STATES INDEX ANNUAL REPORT 2019).

 

This means that policy solutions that are successful in Canada and the US may not be applicable to other countries in the Americas. In particular, North America needs to focus on external conflict, while much of the countries in Latin America need policies oriented towards solving their larger problem of civil conflict.

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Though the negotiation of peace in multiple civil wars and the democratization of the region shows a superficial success of democratization, the region remains one of the most violent regions in the world. The problem identified by Kurtenbach is that while these events create formal changes and solve institutional problems, they fail to solve underlying structural problems contributing to this conflict such as the dominance of illiberal elements in this region and the hierarchical distribution of resources for specific constituencies (Kurtenbach, 2019). The OECD was also able to identify significant economic problems facing the region, such as stagnating labour productivity, a failure to fight poverty with government policy, and dissatisfaction with critical institutions such as healthcare systems, which contribute to increasing civil unrest and weakening central government legitimacy (Gurría, 2019). Finally, there remains the overarching problem of eroding democracy in these countries due to authoritarian leaders and weak governance (Zavatto, 2020).

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Regional and Localized Problems: Women’s Rights and Gender Equality

There are distinct problems facing women in the region. For example, the Global Gender Gap Report stated that while there had been marked improvements in covering the gender gap in their “Latin America and the Caribbean” region, only 75% of the gap had been covered. Furthermore, the progress was concentrated, with the “educational attainment” and “health and survival” categories receiving scores of 0.996 and 0.979 (with 1 meaning full gender equality) but “economic participation and opportunity” only receiving 0.642 and political empowerment receiving 0.269c (World Economic Forum, 2020). This suggests that while structural educational and health inequalities are being eradicated, this has not yet translated into equal access to institutions of power, and likely contributes to regional economical and political problems.

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The OECD identifies one of the most significant contributors to the political and economic inequality in the region being gendered discrimination in institutions. The Social Institutions and Gender Index report shows the average level of discrimination in the Latin America and Caribbean region being higher than that of North America or Europe.

 

Furthermore, while problematic gender norms and discriminatory attitudes persist, legislation to protect women against these has been slow to come and often ineffective, particularly for areas such as child marriage, workplace rights, political voice, and access to financial resources. Legislative protection remains weak in part due to outdated legal definitions of relevant terms and in part due to weak enforce mechanisms for law-violation penalties (OECD 2020). Furthermore, further inequalities have been identified when examining gender inequalities across incomes, geographical location, minority descent, ethnicity, disabilities, and age (Ideas Matter, 2019).

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These overarching problems are the result of structural and institutional factors. For example, teenage pregnancy remains a large health and education problem in Latin America. This not only directly impacts women’s health and education, but also limits their participation in the economy both due to the time cost early in life as well as decreased hours to work due to time to take care of children. This also leads to lower political representation both in that women may be expected to become stay-at-home mothers, with less time for political involvement, and because problematic attitudes towards women with children may diminish their chances of being elected to political office or being selected to serve in critical institutions such as the civil service or the judiciary (Bando et al. 2005). Hite identifies how women entering the workforce changes the class structure of the country as well as women’s position in the hierarchy, and the implication for the GGGR analysis would be that political empowerment requires economic empowerment, which requires health and educational empowerment (Hite and Viterna 2005).

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