Editorial of the November 2020 edition of the “EUROsociAL+ News” bulletin
Street of Buenos Aires. Author: Santiago Sito.
The Covid-19 health crisis has generated increasing inequalities in both the European Union and Latin America. In Latin America, there is already talk of a new lost decade. Therefore, the post-Covid reconstruction process must be inclusive and bet on the strengthening of resilience and social cohesion. The great transformative agendas (green and digital) must ensure a just transition that leaves no one behind. Social cohesion, the cornerstone of the European construction process and par excellence one of the European values that has shaped our social and democratic state, and our rule of law, is called upon to take up a central space in the recovery phase and in EU-LAC cooperation over the next few years.
The EU, through its flagship regional cooperation programme for improving social cohesion, EUROsociAL, continues to accompany Latin America starting from a facilitating and innovative approach based on multidimensional and multi-actor dialogue (the only way to address the challenges of inequality), responding to the growing demand for support of public policy reforms in the areas of gender equality, social policies and democratic governance. Demonstrating the complementarity and feasibility of an effective articulation of cooperation at the regional / multi-country level and taking shape at national level.
Testing once again the pertinence of cooperation which is based on knowledge and the exchange of experiences between officials from Latin America and Europe. In this edition of our “EUROsociAL+ News” bulletin, we present some pertinent examples: support provided to Argentina for the design and implementation of budgeting for results with a gender perspective, which means it is also inclusive; support provided to El Salvador for the adoption and application of a school retention protocol for girls and young women who are pregnant, or who are already mothers, which is a truly critical point for advancing social inclusion and cohesion in the country; support for Chile to adopt skills certification programmes aimed at the migrant population, once again an inclusive, and a measure which multiplies the potential of human capital and takes advantage of opportunities that are also generated by human mobility.
In this issue of November 2020 Newsletter, we pay special attention to the support provided in two instances: i) the Recovery, Social Reconstruction and Resilience Plan of Central America and the Dominican Republic, which we really believe is a significant milestone, in good practice on how to approach a reconstruction phase along the lines of social cohesion, putting people first, promoting regional integration, the comprehensive nature of public policy measures and the virtuous dialectic between the regional and national level. And ii) in this month, where the focus is placed on the fight against gender violence, EUROsociAL+ organises an event to present some of the contributions it has made in the field of violence against women in Latin America through dialogue. The event is part of an internal exercise to capitalise on experiences and lessons learnt that seeks to associate actors from Latin America and Europe around spaces for dialogue and common challenges, which can enhance the efforts made, from a bi-regional perspective.
