NGOs in Latin America

The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean face massive challenges over the next five-to-10 years. To put it bluntly, they do not look particularly well equipped and ready to respond to them. Sluggish economic growth, a lack of competitiveness, inadequate infrastructure, continuing poverty and inequality, accelerating climate change, corruption, and drug cartel-led violence all make up a ‘perfect storm’ of problems that require urgent and sustained attention. But at the same time public confidence in the ability of governments, political parties, legislatures, and other traditional institutions to provide solutions appears to have gone into a downward spiral. Populist leaders of left and right have won elections by blaming the establishment, and by promising quick and apparently pain-free solutions to complex problems. But behind the triumphalist rhetoric, the political noise, and the barrage of ‘fake news’, the problems have not gone away; by some measures, they have worsened.