Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
mains a persistent problem. In Latin America, for example, around 75 per cent of young people in urban areas are from households in which the parents received less than 10 years of education, and on average, more than 45 per cent of them fail to complete the 12 years of schooling considered necessary to secure a decent and stable job and income. Just over 30 per cent of young people whose parents did not complete their primary education manage to finish the secondary cycle, compared with 75 per cent of those whose parents had at least 10 years of schooling. There appears to be a strong link between rising inequalities in the distribution of opportunities for a quality education and the recent tendency to commercialize education and treat it as a commodity subject to the rules of an open and competitive market economy. For years, international financial institutions overseeing the implementation of structural adjustment programmes encouraged the Governments of developing countries to charge fees for the delivery of primary education. This reform component was discarded following widespread protests, but there are many other indications that, within the general context of the weakened commitment to public service and reduced support for universal social programmes, education is increasingly being treated as merchandise and pupils as customers. If nothing is done to address this issue, schools and universities of quality will be accessible only to the privileged classes, while the masses will have to be satisfied with lower-priced and often mediocre institutions.
3.2.5
Growing inequalities in health care and social security and the apparent emergence of environmental inequalities In health, as in education, traditional indicators suggest overall progress. In Latin America, life expectancy at birth has increased from 67 to 70 years, which reflects overall health gains for the majority of the population and not only for the 5 or 10 per cent at the top of the income ladder. Similarly, the decline in infant mortality in Africa, from 96 to 85 deaths per 1,000 live births, has not benefited the small, affluent urban elite exclusively. The optimism generated by such data must be tempered, however, as a number of critical health challenges and inequalities remain. Perhaps most serious is the HIVIAIDS pandemic, a tragedy of immense magnitude that is in many ways comparable to the great plagues of the past in that it has caused enormous suffering and has seriously undermined social, economic, cultural and political stability and development in a number of settings. Poor people living in developing countries have been especially hard hit, as they tend to be more vulnerable to HIV infection, generally receive less assistance and support from society and the medical establishment, and often lack access to lifesaving medications. It should be recalled that one of the Mil-