SUNS4372 Thursday 11 February 1999

Peru: Poverty and unemployment violate Human Rights

Lima, Feb 9 (IPS/Abraham Lama) -- Poverty and the lack of work in Peru are a violation of human rights because they create social marginalization, a precarious quality of life and instability, according to a report on the topic.

The document, released by the Center of Labor Consultancy of Peru (Cedal) and the Human Rights Association (Aprodeh) and based on official statistics, says that extreme poverty in Peru has been reduced
to 14 percent.

Nearly 50% of the population, however, still suffers from poverty.

"The theme of human rights does not refer only to torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions...it also includes the right to have a human level of existence," asserts sociologist Manuel Benza in the report.

"Although complaints about civil rights violations have been reduced, it is now appropriate to evaluate the other aspects of human rights, especially since President Alberto Fujimori holds that the reduction of poverty is the main objective of his regime," Benza says. The question to be answered, he says, is whether the economic model propelled by Fujimori is creating jobs or causing unemployment.

According to the social research institute Cuanto, the reduction of state aid, fundamental to Fujimori's economic plan, has substantially boosted unemployment. It calculates that between 1990 and 1994, about
200,000 central government workers were laid off, and the number dismissed from public industries was even higher.

In the majority of privatised state enterprises, the new management sacked nearly all of the personnel but rehired the same ones or others in new businesses in which the workers lacked stability and other rights.

The reduction of the bureaucratic apparatus contributed to the elimination of the fiscal deficit, but in a country where the state was the principal employer, the massive unemployment created a critical social situation, the report says.

According to the Ministry of Employment, only 51% of the Peruvian population has found adequate employment, while 41% are 'subemployed' and 8% lack any kind of job.

The condition of 'under-employment' is defined by Peruvian authorities as corresponding to jobs whose remuneration is not enough to cover the cost of the basic needs of a family of four.

The study by Cedal and Aprodeh also incorporates reports by the International Organization of Employment (OIT), about the labor situation in Peru.

The subdirector general of OIT, Victor Tokman, notes that 70% of Peruvian workers lack the support of a labor contract, or perform menial work under a temporary contract, a circumstance that puts them at a disadvantage in view of the high unemployment rate.

OIT says that the weakened negotiating strength of the unions and the extent of the deterioration of collective bargaining increases the vulnerability of Peruvian labor, which he notes is the Andean country with the highest number of complaints about violations of the freedom to unionize.

Between 1985 and June 1998, 46 complaints against Peru were presented before the Committee on Union Freedom, 32 against Colombia, 24 against Venezuela, 19 against Ecuador and four against Bolivia.The economist Eduardo Lastra, editor of the magazine Avance Economico, supports the methods ofmacroeconomic stabilisation adopted by Fujimori, but asserts that his regime "does not show the necessary
social sensibility of giving support and assistance to those who need it."

Although the figures indicating growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) may be true, "it is also true that growth is not generating jobs at the necessary pace. The unemployed or subemployed cannot wait 20 years for benefits to trickle down, which those higher up are receiving now," he says.

Another economist, Guido Pennano, asserts that "the problem in Peru is not the free market economic system, but rather the model based on imports that has been created by Fujimori with his progressive politics."

"That model strangles production and private enterprise in Peru, starting a perverse circle that spawns unemployment and greater and greater crises. Foreign investment is oriented toward the extraction of natural resources and basic services, not toward the generation of jobs," he adds.

The expert says that "the stabilisation scheme recommended by the International Monetary Fund, designed to repay the foreign debt and not to generate revenues," has already been exhausted, "and should be urgently corrected."