The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) says it is supporting Haiti in implementing its National Policy for Social Protection and Promotion.
“We at ECLAC continue to be available to support Haiti in forging a social protection system with a State vision and with a rights-based perspective placing equality at the center,” said Alberto Arenas de Mesa, ECLAC’s director of the Social Development Division, during an international seminar entitled “Haiti: The challenges of implementing the National Policy for Social Protection and Promotion (PNPPS)”, held in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, using a hybrid format.
ECLAC said it organized the event in conjunction with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST) of Haiti, the Haiti office of the World Food Program (WFP) and the Embassy of Switzerland in Haiti, in the framework of the technical assistance and cooperation activities that the Commission has carried out with the ministry, since 2015, and with the WFP’s country office, since 2019, which culminated in the promulgation of the National Policy for Social Protection and Promotion in July 2020.
According to ECLAC, the promulgation of the PNPPS is considered to be a major political and institutional advancement, since “this instrument defines the strategic framework for the interventions needed to sustainably address priority tasks such as the eradication of poverty, the reduction of inequalities, and the promotion of all Haitians’ autonomy and rights.
As well as the other institutions, ECLAC says that it is now focused on supporting this policy’s effective implementation, in particular the drafting of action plans at a national and departmental level.
The international seminar featured opening remarks by Pierre Ricot Odney, Minister of Social Affairs and Labor of Haiti; Marc-André Prost, Deputy Director of the World Food Program’s Haiti office; Fabrizio Poretti of the Swiss Embassy; and Alberto Arenas de Mesa from ECLAC.
The international seminar held in Haiti is directly connected to the work of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, a subsidiary body of ECLAC.
In the context of this conference, ECLAC said, in 2019, senior authorities from the region approved the Regional Agenda for Inclusive Social Development, a technical-political instrument that seeks to support the implementation of the social dimension of the 2030 Agenda and that includes as one of its four axes, “regional cooperation and integration, to progress towards inclusive social development and achieve sustainable development.”
ECLAC said the event in Port-au-Prince “precisely sought to bolster partnerships between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor of Haiti and the Social Development Ministries of other countries in the region in order to move forward on building universal, comprehensive, sustainable, and resilient social protection systems that would leave no one behind.”
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