CONFINTEA VII Regional Preparatory Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a region comprising 46 countries, dependent territories and overseas departments. It is characterized by a unique combination of cultures, languages and ethnicities. The states of the region officially recognize 826 indigenous peoples with 44.8 million members and 125 million individuals of African descent. This diversity, however, is accompanied by a further regional characteristic: structural inequality.

In 2019, one year prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a report on the economic outlook for LAC published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that income inequality remained high, and that labour informality had become a persistent problem (OECD, 2019). The development traps identified included low productivity associated with an economic structure centred on the primary and extractive sectors. A year after the onset of COVID-19, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published a regional human development report, ‘Trapped: High Inequality and Low Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean’, confirming this trend and identifying LAC as one of the most unequal and slowest growing regions in the world (UNDP, 2021).

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