Economic Reform in Countries of the Global South: The Peruvian Experience

In the year 1990, Peru seemed a country in the brink of collapse. The Andean nation had gone through decades of successive ideologically-opposed governments that enacted incoherent social and economic policies. The country was battling with one of the world’s highest hyperinflations (7,650%). It also faced a crisis of representation: political parties had lost the trust of the majority of the population. Democracy was also threated by an internal armed conflict, in which the state was battling two sanguinary terrorist groups. The Peruvian Truth Commission estimates the death toll of this conflict at approximately 70,000 people.

Therapeutic? Exploring the Foster Home as a Therapeutic Landscape

The term therapeutic has gained a lot of momentum within the state’s child protection and family welfare services over the past decade, particularly within the provision and practice of foster care placements for teenagers in the UK. The proliferation of this term is due perhaps to a deepening in our understandings of the prevalence of developmental trauma/complex PTSD (Frogley, 2018) throughout the population of young people who are removed from their birth families due to abuse or neglect. Many of these young people may have been exposed to multiple traumas in childhood, as well as the experience of loss and displacement that being taken into state care can create. There is also a growing awareness of impact that these negative past experiences can have on an individual’s level of disadvantage in the personal, social, and economic spheres across one’s lifespan if left unaddressed.

Social Protection for the Unprotected: the Guatemalan Case

In Guatemala, social protection coverage is marred by significant challenges, particularly in the realm of pensions and healthcare. The inequalities within the pension system are glaring, with only a privileged few, consisting of formal workers from the private and public sectors, enjoying its benefits. Guatemala’s social protection system corresponds to a Global South model where poverty is high (54% below the poverty line, according to the WB) and the high informality (71%) causes a weak collection of taxes. The allocation of resources for social protection is influenced more by political considerations than by a fair distribution of resources. This piece aims to shed light on the main challenges faced by Guatemala’s social protection system and explore potential political changes and reforms that could enhance coverage.