GENEVA (ILO Online) – Salvador Escobedo Zoletto likes to use the word co-responsibility when he discusses “Oportunidades”, the conditional cash transfer programme that is helping 25 million Mexicans – or nearly a fourth of the total population – deal with poverty.
“Co-responsibility is a key factor in this programme, because each family plays an active role in its own development”, says Dr. Escobedo, who has been coordinator for Oportunidades since December 2006.
In general terms, the programme works very simply. In order to receive the cash transfers, low income families have to visit health units regularly and send their children to school.
The idea is also to strengthen the position of women within the family structure. The mothers are the benefit holders of the programme, and the cash goes from the federal government directly to them, without any intermediaries.
But if the programme’s guidelines are clear and simple, they are just as strict. “The selection process is very rigorous to ensure the funds go to those who really need them”, says Dr. Escobedo.
One of the main differences between “Oportunidades” and other similar programmes – both inside and outside Mexico – is that the beneficiaries are not selected at the local level, but rather through a centrally-defined formula, thus minimizing the risks of clientelism.
When it was first set up in 1997, the programme only served highly marginalized rural areas. Nowadays, it is present in 92,000 towns across the country, with very tangible results.
A study carried out in August of last year showed that children whose families had joined “Oportunidades” were on average taller and heavier than other poor children. Other studies also showed a significant drop in anaemia levels and higher school attendance in children who were part of the programme. “Oportunidades” was also extremely effective in reducing child labour, even though it was not an explicit objective of the programme.
But in a country like Mexico, where poverty and poverty-related phenomena of social exclusion are a problem of long date, the challenges remain many and varied.
“We have to be able to totally integrate our programme with the health sector”, says Dr. Escobedo, who was recently at the International Labour Organization talking about “Oportunidades”. “This is one of the many challenges”.
Mexico is not alone in adopting conditional cash transfer programmes. In Brazil, for example, the Bolsa Familia programme was set up to guarantee that poor families have access to food, health and education. An estimated 11 million families are benefiting from it, or a total of more than 46 million people.
Although countries like Mexico and Brazil show the way with such programmes, lack of social protection still widely prevails. Only one in five people in the world has adequate social security coverage. The other four need it too, but somehow must manage without.
This is why governments, employers' and workers' organizations attending the ILO’s International Labour Conference in June 2001 considered that the highest priority should be given to “policies and initiatives that bring social security to those who are not covered by existing systems”.
As a result the ILO launched a Global Campaign on Social Security and Coverage for All to encourage the extension of social security coverage as a means for combating poverty and social exclusion.
“One of the aspects that the ILO looks at in these kinds of programmes are the linkages with other components of the national social protection system”, says Emmanuel Reynaud, from the ILO’s Social Protection Sector.
“The idea is to see how there can be a transition from programmes such as Oportunidades to the more regular types of social protection that exist in a society”, explains Mr Reynaud. “The danger of these programmes is that they can lead to longer than necessary dependency. According to Mr. Reynaud, who joined Dr. Escobedo in the discussion at the ILO, “the social policies that have to accompany these programmes should have mechanisms which help people to integrate into the formal economy and thus into the mainstream social security systems”.
“In the long run”, says Mr. Reynaud, “the objective of a programme like ‘Oportunidades’ is to no longer have any reason to exist and gradually disappear.”
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