“Social cohesion for inclusive social development in Latin America: monitoring, challenges and opportunities in an era of uncertainties"

Background

What keeps societies together? What identifies and motivates people to voluntarily coexist without the need for permanent external coercion or immediate material interest? In times of great uncertainty, cascading crises, and challenges to the sustainability of our societies, social cohesion takes a central position in the path of Latin American and Caribbean countries towards a sustainable development that leaves no one behind.

Since 2018, ECLAC, together with the Training Center of the Spanish Cooperation in Santa Cruz, Plurinational State of Bolivia (CFCSZ), has been working on advancing the analysis and discussion of social cohesion in the region. This has been carried out hand in hand with two Projects of Knowledge for Development, "Analysis of inclusion and social cohesion in Latin America and the Caribbean in light of the social pillar of the 2030 Agenda" (2018-2022) and "Social cohesion policies for inclusive social development in Latin America: monitoring, challenges, and opportunities in an era of uncertainties" (2023-2025).

The objective of this ongoing project is to position and promote social cohesion within the social and public policy agenda of the region, and to monitor the analytical, measurement, and policy framework of social cohesion in Latin America. This objective is to be achieved through: i) the analysis and exchange of concrete experiences regarding policies for social cohesion and their institutional framework; ii) the update and improvement of indicators related to the measurement of social cohesion, and iii) the establishment of dialogue processes and the exchange of experiences in the region as well as from Spain and the European Union, seeking to enrich debates and the policy agenda for social cohesions in Latin America.

Meeting objective

The central focus of the Fourth Regional Seminar on Social Development "Social Protection and Inequality: Latin America and the Caribbean towards the Second World Summit for Social Development in 2025" is inequality. In this context, the objective of this parallel event is to open the discussion on the state of social cohesion in the region within the framework of the project "Social cohesion policies for inclusive social development in Latin America: monitoring, challenges, and opportunities in an era of uncertainties". To this end, it brings together a panel discussion to comment on preliminary results of the update of some indicators of the social cohesion monitoring framework of the project, as well as to identify priority challenges in the current situation to guide its research agenda.