iTunes Store ahora en Latinoamérica

Apple ha apostado a finales de 2011 por lanzar en Latinoamérica su "caballo de batalla": la popular tienda de música en línea iTunes.

Desde mediados de diciembre iTunes está disponible en 16 países de América Latina, aunque la idea inicial era presentarlo exclusivamente en Brasil.

Todas las compras se realizan en dólares, por lo que las críticas no se han hecho esperar. Conozca más de las características de iTunes Store Latino.

"Reducing Inequality Should Be a Political Priority"

José Domingo Guariglia interviews HERALDO MUÑOZ, UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

Photo Credit: José Domingo Guariglia/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5, 2011 (IPS) - According to the Human Development Report 2011 released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week, Latin America remains the region with the highest income inequality, even as the situation has improved in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Mexico and Peru.

Nevertheless, in a global context of persistent financial and economic crises, Latin America has made important advances in equality of access to education and health services, and many countries are nearing full enrolment at the primary and secondary education levels.

"People are unsatisfied that Latin America is growing economically but the distribution is unequal. People feel that the country is growing but that prosperity is not entering in their homes," UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Heraldo Muñoz told IPS.

UNDP's annual report this year focuses on sustainability and equity in global development, and the next challenges for the 187 countries it covers, including 33 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Chile and Argentina are the only Latin American nations in the list of countries with a "very high" Human Development Index in 2011, ranking 44th and 45th, respectively, while the countries with a "high" Human Development Index include Uruguay, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Belize.

IPS Correspondent José Domingo Guariglia spoke with Muñoz regarding the main challenges and opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean in a context of global recession, poverty and increasing violence.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Do you think it is possible to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Latin America by 2015, especially the eradication of poverty, and gender equality?

A: I think that many Latin American countries will achieve the MDGs, while others are far from the goal. What is very clear is that Latin American countries have made many efforts in reducing poverty. We have programmes of conditioned cash transfers like Bolsa Família in Brazil or Oportunidades in Mexico or Chile Solidario in Chile, and poverty has been reduced.

In addition, there has been growth in the region. Latin America is passing through one of its best moments in recent history.

As UNDP, we are making efforts to collaborate with governments to do an MDG acceleration framework, which is a strategy to try to bring the efforts of attending the MDGs from a national level to a local level.

In general, Latin America will fall rather behind in the attainment of some goals like maternal mortality, gender empowerment and equality.

Q: Latin America has experienced a long democratic period, characterised by a sense of frustration due to inequalities, corruption, crime and violence. Do you think a new institutional framework is needed?

A: For sure. One of the keys to strengthen democracy is working on strengthening institutions. Latin America is passing through a good moment in electoral democracy. This year there will be six presidential elections: Haiti, Peru, Argentina, the first round in Guatemala, and the pending elections in Nicaragua and Guyana by the end of the year.

However, there is a question on the quality of our democracies. There is frustration, there is apathy, institutions are weak and that is the key: working on strengthening the separation of the branches, strengthening the judiciary, collaborating with parliaments, organising the work of the executives.

People are unsatisfied that Latin America is growing economically but the distribution is unequal. People feel that the country is growing but that prosperity is not entering into their homes.

Latin America continues to be the most unequal region in the world. Out of the 15 most unequal countries in the world, 10 are from Latin America and that's absolutely unacceptable. The first step would be to recognise that reducing inequality should be a political priority.

We have reduced inequality in the last decade thanks to the expansion of programmes in education and health, but we still have a long way to go.

Q: Can Latin American countries grow with high rates of criminality like the ones that exist in Honduras, Mexico or Venezuela right now?

A: Crime can be a threat. We live in the most violent region in the world. Latin America and the Caribbean represent nine percent of the world population but we concentrate 27 percent of world homicides.

There is a very important impact of crime in development. Central American countries spent last year four billion dollars in security- related investments, money that could have gone to education, health and social purposes.

This is a situation of epidemic proportions in Latin America. It should be placed as a priority and the key is how to address it. The strategy includes control and repression but also prevention, how to tackle the situation of youth, reform of the penal code, in the penitentiary system, justice, police, international cooperation.

Q: Do you think multilateral organisations in Latin America like Mercosur, Unasur or ALBA can contribute to South-South cooperation?

A: Latin American cooperation has been changing. Unasur is an expression of the combination of Mercosur and the Andean Community. It wants to be like the European Union to tackle military affairs, political coordination and cultural integration. It is quite an ambitious project and it can be the basis for South-South cooperation and to provide assistance for least developed countries.

As UNDP, we are trying to cooperate with countries of the region to give assistance to others. We are working to take the experience of democratic transitions to countries that have experienced the Arab Spring, particularly Egypt and Tunisia.

Q: How is the current financial crisis impacting developing nations?

A: The region has resisted the crisis better than Europe and the United States. Latin American countries have strong banking regulations because of the experience of the crisis of the 1980s. In addition to that, several countries have implemented policies that allow them to spend more during crisis and save in the moments of boom.

These are times for caution in the region. If the situation in Europe becomes more and more delicate and the United States does not get out of the moment of stagnation, it will be very difficult for Latin American countries to not feel the pinch of the crisis.

Q: Next year will be the International Year of Cooperatives. How do you evaluate the presence of cooperatives in Latin America?

A: Cooperatives have the people at the centre of development. In addition to that, cooperatives and small-medium enterprises have created jobs. They are always a significant part of the solution.

 
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Citizens Chart Crime Using Online Maps

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

NEW YORK, Aug 19, 2011 (IPS) - "I was walking down the street, talking on my cell phone, when a guy on a motorbike came by and grabbed the phone out of my hand. I ran after him but I couldn't catch him. He had probably been following me."

This message, from a person who had his cell phone stolen in the southern Brazilian city of São Paulo, was posted on WikiCrimes, a web site where citizens who have lost confidence in the effectiveness of police action can report crimes directly.

WikiCrimes in Brazil, and similar initiatives in Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, provide interactive maps that people can use to anonymously report crimes, describe what happened and pinpoint the location. In this way, crime mapping identifies danger zones - crime hotspots - within a region with generally high crime rates, to enhance people's awareness, preparedness and safety.

According to a report on Citizen Security and Human Rights, by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in early 2010 Latin America was the region with the highest average murder rate in the world, 25.6 per 100,000 population. Young people aged 15-29 were the most frequent victims, with a murder rate of 68.9 per 100,000 people in this age group.

The crime maps seek to supplement the paucity of official crime reports at police stations, and to guide implementation of policies to fight crime, Vasco Furtado, a systems engineer who created WikiCrimes, told IPS.

"It's very common nowadays to hear about someone who has been mugged, but who is not going to report it to the police because they are convinced nothing would be done. Surveys of victims of crime in Brazilian cities show that under-reporting in the most densely populated areas may be as high as 60 percent for some offences," he said.

WikiCrimes receives crime reports from around the world, although most originate in Brazil.

In Venezuela, crime data maps can be accessed at the VicTEAMS and QuieroPaz sites.

VicTEAMS was created in 2009 in reaction to the thousands of hold-ups, kidnappings and murders committed in Venezuela, and especially in the capital, Caracas, considered the second most dangerous city in Latin America after Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, according to a study by the Mexican Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSP-JP).

An online Crime Map of Mexico City was created by the newspaper El Universal, and a Buenos Aires province "map of insecurity" was funded by Argentine businessman and centre-right lawmaker Francisco de Narváez.

Crime map sites have also been set up in Chile and Panama. The Chilean crime map distinguishes between official crime reports and online reports from citizens, and Mi Panamá Transparente (My Transparent Panama), created by a group of journalists and non-governmental organisations, widens the focus to include swindles and corruption.

The crime problem in Venezuela is exacerbated by the lack of official statistics, said Ángel Méndez, a consultant at Tendencias Digitales, a firm that carries out market research in the field of information technology.

"Venezuela is one of the most violent countries in Latin America, and unfortunately there are no official statistics to monitor the violence. Body counts from the morgues are published in the media every Monday, but there is no crime database available," Méndez told IPS.

Citizens as agents of change

According to VicTEAMS, online maps are a useful tool towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of targets adopted in 2000 by the international community to drastically reduce poverty, hunger, inequality, illness, mortality and environmental degradation across the globe by 2015.

The team responsible for crafting the web site attended an international workshop on "Engaging Citizens in Development Management and Public Governance for the Achievement of the MDGs", organised by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the government of the Spanish region of Catalonia in the regional capital, Barcelona, in June 2010.

The meeting produced the Barcelona Declaration on "The Critical Role of Public Service in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals", stating that "citizens' engagement has to be considered to accelerate the progress towards reaching the MDGs," and governments should work alongside citizens to address social problems proactively.

Wider access to the internet in Latin American countries has been crucial to the rise of online tools like crime maps. Governments and NGOs in the region are promoting free or low-cost access to information and communication technologies for low-income sectors of the population.

A Brazilian government programme called Computers for Inclusion, and the Infocentres that provide access and computer literacy courses in Venezuela, are typical of such initiatives.

Crime maps and the problem of data accuracy

The interactive capability of crime maps and other online tools can hinder their effectiveness, due to incomplete or inaccurate crime reporting.

"At WikiCrimes we are concerned about false reporting. It is up to users to provide the system with information that boosts its credibility. Links can be added to videos, newspapers, photos or any other document that supports the informant's credibility," Furtado said.

On interactive crime maps, the incidents reported depend on the goodwill of citizens, but cooperation with government agencies can be decisive.

"The authorities do not view WikiCrimes as their ally, because it challenges the status quo. They are afraid of being pressured by society," said Furtado.

Academics like Iria Puyosa, an expert on social networking and social capital, say "the problem of violent crime in Latin America will not be solved by online maps," which are useful to a limited extent, for fighting invisibility and the absence of information, she told IPS.

The impact of social networks

The connections between the worldwide web and other innovative technology, like cell phones, favour online crime reporting. According to information from Tendencias Digitales, 27 percent of internet access is dialled up by mobile phone in countries like Venezuela, and a large proportion of citizens use smart phones to report crimes or traffic conditions, via Twitter.

In fact, Latin America is the world's second region for users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a proportion of the population, after North America, according to SocialTimes, an information source on social media.

The July 2011 Web 2.0 Ranking produced by Tendencias Digitales named Chile, Brazil and Venezuela as the top three Latin American countries for social media use.

"We are more inclined to sharing and paying attention to what people are saying. For instance, Facebook penetration, measured as a percentage of the population, is 26 percent in Latin America compared to 20 percent worldwide. Performing the same calculation for Twitter, we find its penetration in Venezuela is eight percent, compared to three percent for Latin America and the rest of the world," said Méndez, quoting figures from the study.

Twitter accounts like @SINviolenciaMX (violence-free Mexico) foster the development of a user network where people can both post and receive information about crime zones or traffic jams.

However, Puyosa stressed that messages from smart phones or social networks cannot be regarded as "real" crime reports.

"Effective denunciation of a crime, with the aim of evoking a law enforcement response, must be made formally to the police. Victims may vent their feelings of frustration via Twitter or Facebook, but these are not effective channels for reporting crime," she said.

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