Speech of Mrs. Graciela Fernández Meijide,

Minister of Social Development and Environment, Argentina

Geneva, 28th June 2000

The Nineties are engraved on the collective memory of the Argentine people as a two-fold decade. While a structural reform opened the doors of our economy to the world and improved its productivity, the method for effecting such reform only widened the social gap to an unprecedented extent. Narrowing said gap is the main goal of the new government.

The national government's work towards said goal is focused on reinforcing the institutional skills of both public and private bodies involved in social development. It was on this line of action that the Ministry of Social Development and Environment was established on the same day that the newly elected President was inaugurated. This decision is the first step of a strategy that aims at considering social policy as an integrated form of action towards full enjoyment of the benefits of citizenship by the population at large.

The need to integrate social policies stems from an assessment of the dispersion that characterized them in the Nineties: the country once had sixty-six social programs provided by different national Ministries. Dispersion is absolutely dysfunctional when the government's aims are effectiveness and clearness in terms of social policy. The keys to our strategy are the integration of social programs, the creation of a unified record of beneficiaries and the development of a general political consensus covering every provincial government, regardless of the party it may belong to. This is the approach that we have developed to face the serious social situation that characterizes our country. We are sure that it will also provide new conditions for the effective channeling of resources coming from international organizations, the contribution of whom is essential for Argentina nowadays.

Next to a hard core of social exclusion and so-called structural poverty, new poverty has grown as a social phenomenon. Said phenomenon affects middle-class households that used to live on a steady, well-paid job when abrupt economic changes left them verging on the poverty line. This issue, which had not occupied an important position in the social policy agenda of the Nineties, was approached through the integration of local development programs. Our goal is complete reinclusion of those households, supported by self-empowerment.

In Argentina, there are 2 million people living in indigence,that is to say. they belong to households whose income is not higher than US$ 67 per month per member. The persistence and reproduction of this situation in time is not on]% unacceptable from an ethical point of view but it also represents a serious threat against social harmony as a whole. In order to tackle this serious problem the new government is about to put into practice its most important social development program yet: the integrated plan to attack exclusion.

The program will target 455.000 households that live under the abovementioned conditions. Its main goal is tocontribute to the disruption of the vicious circle whereby poverty reproduces itself,which will be accomplished by preventing the undernourished, uneducated and poorly-nursed children of these households from reproducing the poverty conditions under which they were brought up when they start their own families. This plan will be implemented by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Development and Environment, which together will provide the scholarships. primary care services and food necessary for the children's development. In the conceptual basis of the plan lies the need to make sure thatthe family assumes its own responsibility in their struggle to overcome poverty: each household will continue to benefit from the program as long as it complies with its obligations in terms of health and nourishment of every member and proves the children's regular attendance to school.

The first stage of the plan will be put into operation in July and it will allow to assess the implementation methodology in such a way that we can guarantee the achievement of the program's goals in the population involved. The fact that three Ministries have committed themselves to social development and are cooperating in the field represents a major institutional innovation, which had been proposed many times in the past but had never been effected before.

While we carry out these innovations in strategy, we will not cease to assist disadvantaged families or neglect our duties if either a social or a weather emergency should arise. We will perform the tasks that any such emergency may call for and, at the same time, we will continue working towards building a nation of free and responsible citizens who do not need public assistance.