UNDP: Regional development hindered by governance challenges, external shocks

 

Challenges in governance, instability and emerging crises and external shocks as well as national insecurity have disrupted the pace of regional development across Latin America and the Caribbean. 

 

This was revealed on Wednesday during the presentation of key findings of the regional Human Development Report 2025 conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

 

Despite gains in economic growth across Latin America and the Caribbean since the 1980s, poverty levels remained high and social mechanisms to support the most vulnerable remain insufficient. 

 

UNDP Director General Michelle Muschett says gaps in the region's development and resilience models have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Meanwhile, UNDP Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, Almudena Fernández, says while gains have been made in poverty reduction - a key development indicator - there is a growing concern about other vulnerabilities that have the potential to further derail conditions across the Latin American region. 

 

"Now we are seeing some disruptions in these events. They are becoming more intense and also more frequent. So what we used to use to predict what would happen, now those data are less accurate. And then we see new threats - new threats as a result of new dynamics that are changing the region, new technologies that are evolving at a very fast pace. And all these combine with structural problems in the region," she cautioned.

 

A facility will be launched aimed at financing resilient human development across the region. 

 

"That is the core of the report, to support countries to have access to funding south-south cooperation and investments for development. And it will operate as a collaboration platform among development banks, private sector, state and public banking to support the construction of resilience. And there will be other tools as well. Some of them are existing like the Multidimensional Poverty Index," said the chief economist.