Minister of Foreign Affairs Addresses O.A.S. General Assembly on Inequalities In the Americas

Eamon Courtenay

Earlier today, Minister of Foreign Affairs Eamon Courtenay addressed the Fifty-Second Regular Session of the O.A.S. General Assembly in Peru. The annual gathering is being held under the theme, Together Against Inequality and Discrimination. In his remarks, Minister Courtenay highlighted the inequalities observed across the Americas, from high commodity prices to income inequalities. Minister Courtenay said that these inequalities are vestiges of our colonial past and that they threaten the stability of our political system.

Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs

“The theme of this general assembly is together against inequality and discrimination. Hidden in this theme is an unhappy truth, inequality and discrimination abounds in the Americas. This is a sad truth, because the early 2000’s witnessed a substantial decline in equality across the Americas, fueled by commodity booms, wage increases, and anti poverty social programs. Poverty fell on average from forty-two point three percent in 2002, to twenty-three point one percent in 2018, as vast swaths of the population moved into the middle class. However, the COVID 19 pandemic and the end of high commodity prices have increased hemispheric inequality. Mr. President Inequality is a vestige of our colonial past, colonialism that spawned structurally unequal societies, repeat with racism and racial inequality. Today this legacy threatens the stability of our political systems, weakens our social fabric and fosters unjust societal Income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean is a cancer. The richest ten percent earns twenty two times more than those in the bottom ten percent. The richest one percent takes in twenty one percent of the income of our economies, while the top ten percent collect more than half of the pretax national income. This is the inequality that we must come together to fight against.”