Where are population and development policies in Latin America and the Caribbean going? Considerations from the Montevideo Consensus and the Agenda 2030

VERÓNICA MONTES DE OCA; ENRIQUE PELÁEZ; SAGRARIO GARAY

Ciudad del Cabo

Congreso; International Population Conference; 2017

IUSSP

Demographic change in Latin America and the Caribbean has brought upon a unique historical moment for the regionrelative to other developing regions. Demographic, epidemiological, and urban transitions processes in some of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean started earlier than those in Africa, Asia, and other developing countries, and these transitions advanced rapidly even during economic and sociopolitical crises. The speed of these transitions has moderated, but the levels of fertility, mortality and urbanization in the region still stand out within thedeveloping world (lower fertility, mortality and morbidity, and higher in urbanization).We have to consider that the transition processes mentioned above have not been homogeneous across the regions of the world and diverse situations coexist, in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean some countries are in an advanced stage in the transition, ?like Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile?, while others are in a moderate transition ?like Guatemala, Haiti and Bolivia. Demographic processes that have been marked by social, cultural, gender and ethnic inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean resulted in peculiar transitions compared to the processes of other regions in the developing world.Latin America and the Caribbean stands out politically as the region that approved a consensus document on progressive population and development:The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development, approved by the countries in the region in the First Regional Conference on Population and Development in Montevideo, Uruguay in 2013.Two years later in the Second session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Mexico City in October 2015, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean approved a resolution on the Operational Guide for the Implementation and Follow-up of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development, as a technical instrument to aid countries in the fulfillment of the priority measures of the Consensus, as well as the follow-up of the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development after 2016 and the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. Likewise, the general principles of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development were reaffirmed, within the framework of the sovereign right of each country to apply its recommendations according to its national law and its development priorities and in a way compatible with human rights, and emphasizes the need for countries to promote the knowledge and the implementation of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development at the national level, along with the importance of creating methods that enable national implementation and regional follow-up. Within this context, we propose to discuss the Latin American experience linking demographic research, civil society organizations?like the Latin American Population Association¬?, and governments in a population policy document with a human rights focus and with reference to the Montevideo Consensus and the Agenda 2030. Moreover, we aim to share the Latin-American experiencewith other regions, like Africa.