Olivier De Schutter is the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
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When COVID-19 first swept through Latin America and the Caribbean, the prospect of vaccinating 650 million people in the region seemed like a herculean task.
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Despite this, significant supply problems and complicated logistics, today more than two-thirds of the population have the complete vaccination schedule, an admirable feat that makes the region a world leader in vaccination against COVID -19.
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But there is another pandemic that is still wreaking havoc. One that has caused more suffering, but generated less urgency than that of COVID-19: the poverty pandemic.
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Recent estimates by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean put the number of people living in poverty in the region at 201 million. They are people who do not have access to the most basic human rights: food, drinking water, adequate housing, education, health.
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We know of a vaccine that can put an end to this pandemic: social protection. These systems of benefits and services that not only represent an escape route for people trapped in generational chains of poverty, or a safety net for all of us in these times of crisis, but are, ultimately, generators of societies more resilient and prosperous.
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Although considerable progress has been made in recent decades, in increasing social protection coverage in Latin America surprisingly little attention has been paid to those who cannot benefit from it.
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In other words, we have the vaccine; the challenge is to get it to reach all the people who need it.
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Across the region, social protection benefits go unused on what we suspect is a massive scale, a phenomenon known as “non-entitlement”. This urgent and often overlooked issue is the subject of my latest report to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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With the available data, we calculate that between 30% and 40% of the population that is entitled to benefits such as child or housing benefits do not request this help.
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To understand why, we conducted a worldwide study of non-perception. In all regions, including the countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region covered by the study (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela), the most cited reason for people didn’t apply for benefits was simply that they didn’t know they existed.
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This is the bottleneck we face in the poverty pandemic: you can’t claim a benefit that you don’t know exists.
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Marginalized groups are the hardest hit. Literacy rates tend to be lower among the poor, rural populations and women, so they tend to be less aware of the existence of social protection programs. For example, in Haiti, approximately 90% of women over 65 years of age are illiterate.
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Language is also a barrier. In Colombia, information about registration systems for social benefits is only available in Spanish, which is a significant obstacle for indigenous peoples whose first language may be another.
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There are many other reasons for non-perception. Complex, costly and often humiliating application processes are also a barrier that needs to be recognized and addressed, while strict fraud prevention conditions deter millions of people from accessing the help that is rightfully theirs.
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Finally, the lack of public financing of certain social protection programs means that they do not cover all eligible people. In Brazil, the much publicized “Bolsa Familia” program set a limit on the amount of funds available to each municipality, and as a result some families were left without access once all the funds had already been allocated.
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This is not an insignificant list of problems, but governments could perhaps take inspiration from the COVID-19 vaccination program in the region.
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Imagine that the same level of urgency, energy, and resources were deployed in a campaign seeking to reach those who are missing out on the benefits they so desperately need to lift themselves out of poverty.
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There are places where this is already happening. Brazil, for example, has transformed buses and boats into mobile agencies to deal with potential beneficiaries of its rural pension program. In Uruguay, information about the country’s social security system is already woven into school curricula.
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But the level of response in the region remains uneven and, in general terms, insufficient. Much more needs to be done to proactively reach out to potential beneficiaries so they know what benefits they are entitled to.
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The deployment of COVID-19 vaccines throughout Latin America demonstrated that, with imagination and initiative, no challenge is too big. The deployment of social protection is no less crucial for humanity, and should come next.
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