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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Officials: Inequality Persists
 Wire services
| | Social Development Secretary Josefina Vázquez Mota |
In spite of the fact that Mexico has reduced the number of people living in poverty during the past four years, 20 percent of the population still lives on less than US2 (23 pesos) per day, said Social Development Secretary Josefina Vázquez Mota on Monday.
The statement came at a forum in the capital assessing Mexico's progress towards the United Nation's "Millennium Goals."
The Millennium Goals call for reducing by half the number of people living in extreme poverty around the world; ensuring that all children have an elementary school education; providing people everywhere with access to safe drinking water; and halting the HIV/AIDS epidemic all by 2015.
Vázquez Mota said that she would "bet" that Mexico could still meet the goals, and highlighted women's issues as an area requiring special attention. She called on the nation to improve access to education as a method of fighting poverty and other related social problems.
Also speaking at Monday's event, the U.N. representative to Mexico said that Latin America as a whole remains the world "champion" of economic inequality and without efforts to reverse the phenomenon, the region could fall behind in meeting the U.N's development goals.
"Inequality is the central theme of the Latin American region, unfortunately," Thierry Lemaresquier said. "The inequality affects the rate at which poverty is reduced. It also affects growth, so then we have a vicious circle." Lemaresquier also pointed out that Mexico had made important progress in several different areas included on the list of U.N. goals.
The U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America plans to present a more detailed report next month on the issue, he said.
"In Mexico, as in the rest of the Latin American region, without reducing inequality it is impossible to completely fulfill the Millennium Goals," Lemaresquier said.
Statistics produced during a recent forum on inequality in the region indicated that 16 percent of the region's people lived on a dollar or less a day, while in the Middle East and Northern Africa, the percentage was only 7 percent, and in eastern Europe and Central Asia, only 5 percent.
On the other hand, the report on Mexico's progress in reaching the Millennium Goals indicates that the county has satisfactorily met the majority of them, although it continues to face difficult challenges such as reducing infant mortality rates. Mexico and the United Nations jointly put together the report. |
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