Challenges

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), the Covid-19 pandemic seriously affected women, as women represent more than 60 percent of informal workers in the region. It was also noted that most countries in the region do not data disaggregation by ethnicity and race, creating significant difficulties in assessing the impacts of the pandemic on the Afro-descendant population. The South American region has complex social categories that can affect inequalities and privilege, such as gender, race, religion, age, etc.

It is extremely important and relevant for countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region to enhance methodologies for the synthesis and production of disaggregated indicators in order to formulate policies that can combat inequality. Exchange of experiences between cities in this region can help improve statistical collection and analaysis.

Toward a Solution

To tackle the challenges above, the municipal governments of São Paulo and Niterói (Brazil), La Paz (Bolivia) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) collaborated on a South-South project titled Reduction of Inequalities with a Focus on Mainstreaming the Perspectives of Territory, Gender and Race/Ethnicity. Through the project, gaps were discussed and solutions proposed on the creation of disaggregated indicators with a focus on territory, gender and race/ethnicity in order to promote public policies that tackle inequality by raising awareness and training of civil servants. The main Sustainable Development Goals addressed were SDG 10 (reduced inequalities), SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities).

The project integrated gender, race/ethnicity and territory perspectives in a cross-cutting way to the municipal instruments of planning, budgeting and management of public policies, seeking to measure the existing levels of inequality and create bases to implement policies to promote equality in local governments. 

Three participatory technical workshops were organized by civil servants involved in the process of data disaggregation from the participating cities, allowing an in-depth exchange of experiences about the mechanisms that each city used to produce disaggregated data related to race/ethnicity, territory and gender, creating a space for debate about difficulties, strengths and good practices. The activity resulted in substantial documentation of the state of the art on data disaggregation in all four cities, creating a better clarity on their status quo and what knowledge they wanted to obtain. A sensitivity noted throughout the dialogue between the cities was that the issue of race/ethnicity was actually discussed very little during the workshops. To fill this gap, lessons were offered to better capacitate civil servants on the theme of race/ethnicity equality, with a special focus on more assertive policymaking, enabling deepening the monitoring and evaluation of data based on this bias.

The experiences presented showed the potential of using statistical information to guide the design and implementation of public policies and the difficulties from the perspective of the 2030 Agenda, with the concern of equity in access of most vulnerable populations according to their place of residence, race/ethnicity or gender. The discussions also demonstrated the difficulties in producing social indicators with the granularity, territorial and sociodemographic periodicity necessary for monitoring and evaluation of public policies and programmes. An interest and cooperation between academic institutions, social movements and public administration in the creation of technical solutions and public policies was highlighted. As the diagnosis process used by the technical workshops proved fruitful, a demand arose to continue to learn about the experiences of policies to reduce inequalities. This was made possible through virtual missions, conducted on the platform Zoom and live streamed on Youtube, through which officers of the four cities shared their implementation processes for policies and mechanisms, while also presenting the major difficulties faced. This inspired the city representatives, finding complementarity in their challenges and strengths, and boosted the possibility of jointly enhancing their capacities to reduce inequalities.

The final activity was the elaboration of the document Mercociudades: Cooperación Sur-Sur that systematized the methodologies, activities and results obtained to guide and inspire others. The project and its materials can be replicated by different cities and in various instances and processes. The publication, in particular, offers cities crucial information regarding disaggregated indicators and its different process, allowing them to incorporate the diagnoses resulting from this data in monitoring and evaluation reports on implementation of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs, and further strengthening South-South cooperation.