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The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights a Monitoring Report

Cochabamba - Bolivia, April 2001

I. Right to work

Article 6 of the ESCR pact

II. Right to a Salary

Article 7 of the ESCR pact

III. Right to Social Security

Article 9 of the ESCR pact

IV. Right to the Protection of boys - girls and young people

Article 10 of the ESCR pact

V. Right to decent living conditions

Article 11 of the ESCR pact

VI. Right to Housing

Article 11 of the ESCR pact

VII. Right to Health

Article 12 of the ESCR pact

VIII. Right to Education

Article 13 of the ESCR pact

ANNEXES

Bolivia approves the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights International Pact through Supreme Decree Nº 18950, made Law Nº 2119 on August 31^st, 2000.

The diffusion of the Pact, as well as of the other international conventions is not assumed by the government as State responsibility, the Official Gazettes where the approved laws are published limit themselves to registering the approval Law and the Title of the International Convention, but not the contents of same. Therefore, the authorities in charge of enforcing them ignore their content. (As an example, a copy of the Law 1100 dated September 15, 1989 is attached.) Neither are there any publications in other native languages such as Quechua, Aymara or Guarani.

Right to work freely chosen or accepted. Article 6 of the ESCR Pact

In Bolivia these rights are protected by national as well as international dispositions.

At the national level, Article 7, section d) of the State Political Constitution. The Labor General Law

Supreme Decree Nº 24864 dated October 1997 on "Equality of Opportunities for Men and Women" proposes to eliminate women's discrimination in the access to jobs.

At the international level the following instruments have been executed:

Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, approved by means of Law 1100 dated September 15, 1989, the covenants 111 and 122 of the WIO, which norms are included in the Bolivian labor legislation; the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination ratified by Bolivia through Law 1978 dated May 14, 1999.

In spite of the normativity in force, actually the job situation in Bolivia is in crisis as a result of the capitalization of the principal national companies, the international crisis and corruption. The open unemployment rate is 4.33%, with an upward trend.

The trend is towards a major increase in unemployment if we take into consideration the employment data by age group. A characteristic of the population employed is the low qualification level, even though in the last three years there is an upsurge in the educational formation.

The lack of jobs for adults and the subsequent impoverishment of homes determine that each time more and more boys and girls enter the labor world. It is calculated that more than 800,000 boys and girls work to survive and help out their families. There are no disaggregating figures on the number of working boys and girls.

Rights included in the Labor legislation and their corresponding ruling decrees.

The minimum legal salary in Bolivia is defined by means of a Supreme Decree for its enforcement.

The minimum national salary (US$ 57) is the lowest in Latin America with a very large difference with the second lowest which is Brazil's with US$ 75.

Nevertheless, the scope of this Minimum Legal Salary does not reach all the workers, as in the case of the house workers, who for the last 8 years have been demanding the effective acknowledgement of their basic rights on equal conditions as other sectors, without having received any reply from the Republic's Senate, which retains in its power the law project approved by the House.

The minimum national salary presently fixed at Bs. 355 (US$ 55) does not cover the minimum needs of a person, let alone of a whole family.

Article 6 recognizes the right to Social Security for all people.

Social Security in Bolivia, until 1996, included: the Short Term Insurance which includes sickness, maternity, and professional risks; and the Long Term Insurance regarding severance, payments for handicapped, death and long term professional risks. Independently, there is the family allowances system acknowledged by article 26 of the Reforms to the Social Security Rules dated June 25, 1987 which includes the following subsidies: pre-birth, birth, breastfeeding and burial.

It is important to point out that the social security benefits reach only the insured workers and their family group, except the short term insurance to which anybody can have access, without a relationship of dependence, just by joining one of the Health institutions.

The Social Security system has been modified by Law Nº 1732 or "Pensions Law", dated November 23, 1996. The new system is of individual capitalization and transferred to the Pension Funds Administrators (PFAs). The workers with a labor dependence are obliged to contribute, whereas the independent workers contribute only if they so wish.

The severance allowance will be paid to the affiliate independently from age, when the worker has in his individual account an amount that permits him to finance a pension equal to or higher than 70% of his base salary.

Upon his 65^th birthday, the worker may request his pension in "minimum" amounts until finishing off the accumulated amount (contributions plus interest) in his personal account. Presently there are 569,793 workers affiliated to the PFA's, of which 98.59% are dependents.

Of the amounts received, 68.51% is used to pay severances, 13.70% goes to professional risks, 13.70% to common risks, 3.43% to commissions, 0.52% to social benefit's deposits and 0.14% to additional contributions.

Regarding the Short Term Insurance we have the Basic Health Insurance and the Old Age Insurance.

Bolivia has executed the following international instruments:

§ International Pact of Civil and Political Rights

§ Convention on Children's Rights of 1989 is ratified in May 1990 and is Law Nº 1152/1990

§ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, through Law 1100 dated September 15, 1989.

§ InterAmerican Convention for the Prevention, Sanction and Eradication of Violence against Women or Belem do Para Convention, approved through Law 1599 dated October 18, 1994. (22A)

§ Children's Work Convention (Nº 138/1973), is included in the Bolivian legislation in Chapter VI of the Labor General Law.

The State's Political Constitution in its Article 193 declares that "Marriage, family and maternity are under the State's protection."

§ Adolescent boy / girl code, Law 2026 dated October 27, 1999, in force.

In Bolivia you come of age when you are 18 years old. The age to be imputed is 16.

The Family Code indicates the minimum age for marriage is 14 for girls and 16 for boys. Work age is 14.

Neither the Family Code nor any other legal norm justifies the reasons that there is a difference between the age of marriage for boys and for girls. It would seem that the criteria of the legislator was that women only require to be able to bear children, without any concern for her bio-psychological integral development, much less her expectations beyond marriage.

In this respect, since 1998, several reform proposals have been presented in which the discriminatory character of the Art. 44 of the Family Code is made evident.

In the same way the derogatory of Art. 52 of the Family Code, referring to the term of three hundred days for a new marriage of a divorced woman, widow or woman whose marriage has been annulled, has been demanded. Presently, when you can establish the possibility of pregnancy in the first weeks or determine fatherhood via scientific means, the presence of said article is nothing more than discriminatory.

The forms of protection and family, childhood and adolescent assistance are foreseen in Law 1674, Against Violence in the Family or Domestic Law and in Chapter VI of the Labor General Law, which collects the norms of the Children's Work Convention.

The principle of rights' equality between men and women is inserted in Art. 6 of the State's Political Constitution and other laws of the Republic. As a complement to this principle, Supreme Decree 24864 has been issued on October 1997 on "Equality of Opportunities among Men and Women."

The protection to maternity is given by means of the constitutional norm mentioned in the previous paragraph and the Social Security Code for its attention before and after birth through the Basic Health Insurance, the norms of the Labor General Law and the Social Security Code, as related to the worker's maternity.

The working children are protected by Law 2026 dated October 27, 1999 in the Boy, Girl, Adolescent Code and the Labor General Law referred to the Children's work.

The most important change in the last years is the Boy, Girl and Adolescent Code in force, which is an advancement for the defense, prevention, attention and protection of childhood and adolescence as well as the Law Against Violence in the Family or Domestic Law.

The protection norms for boys and girls are inefficient to guarantee their safety before police's actions and the irrational reactions of the dwellers of the peripheral zones of the cities, that, as a form of stopping the proliferation of delinquency, try to reprimand through acts of violence against boys and girls of the street, many of whom have lost their lives at the hands of enraged crowds, crimes that go unpunished due to the indifference of the authorities.

The information about the present Economic Situation in Bolivia shows 1999 as a year in the lower end of the economic cycle, since 1985, when the Structural Adjustments were applied to the Bolivian economy.

The Bolivian economy since the present government started has difficulties due to the external events such as the Asian crisis in 1997 and in 1998 it is Brazil who does adjustments to its economy, causing effects in the Bolivian market. Both events generate a critical economic contraction, with a growth rate of 0.61% in 1999.

The capitalization, which promised to achieve more jobs, capitalize the country, reactivate the economy and enter into a globalized economy under optimal conditions, actually did not manage to increase the number of jobs, not even to maintain them; capitalization of the companies did not bring with it an injection of fresh money and, on the contrary, it meant the draining of monies leaving the country and/or committed in a bad distribution. And, last, corruption in the country has an ill-fated effect vis a vis the possibility of an economic recovery.

The government's performance vis a vis this situation was not able to prevent the crisis, and the steps adopted did not make possible a rectifying reaction of the economy, therefore, 1999 has meant a deterioration of the economic system and also of the living conditions of the Bolivian population.

In the year 2000, the situation does not improve, the crisis gets deeper in Bolivia and in perspective some effects of the international crisis are foreseen, this time in the US and the economic measures adopted by the Bush administration.

The deterioration of the living conditions can be observed in the food consumption and the expenditures in food. According to studies undertaken, the prevalence of malnutrition between 1996 and 1998 has increased by 0.31%.

Food consumption declines due to the price increase of the family basket. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) has increased from October 1999 to October 2000 in 6.58%.

The Gross Domestic Product per capita has an important variation that shows a sustained growth from 1988 to 1996 and then a fall of 1.63% between 1998 and 1999, which also allows one to see a decline in the country's income-generating capacity, product of the capitalization.

Regarding the monthly average income, there is a modification as per occupational category of 1989 with Bs. 402.2 (Exchange rate 2.91) with the 1999 first quarter with Bs 1.782 (E.R. 5.73). This rate shows us a gradual increase of the monthly income in Bolivians.

Due to the characteristics described regarding the income and according to the Human Development Index and the economic growth, it can be observed that in Bolivia between 1997 and 1999 there has been a decline of 12.6 in the Poverty Index.

The poverty gap that between 1990 and 1997 had had a decreasing trend, between 1997 and 1999 has increased, which shows us the deterioration of the living conditions.

In Bolivia, only 68% of the households have its own house, 14.1% pays rent and 13.2% is ceded for services.

The majority of the Bolivian population occupies houses that are not in acceptable living conditions, the bad quality of the construction, the overcrowding and the lack of basic services, for which reason housing in Bolivia is qualified as bad.

At the national level, 7 out of 10 homes have some electricity. If indeed in the urban area the deficit is only 4%, in the rural area it is 70%.

75% of homes have access in some way to drinking water (considering the connections inside and outside the house, the neighbors' and even the public fountains). In the urban area 87% of the homes have direct connection to the service in their homes and in the rural area only 6%, even though the supply by piping reaches 44% of the rural population.

In the entire country 29% of the homes have access to bathroom services, by flushing (connected to sewers or septic camera) 36% have no discharge (latrines and black wells). At the urban level 45% of the homes have discharge services and in the rural area it is most common to relieve oneself in the fields since the service is not available (65%).

In the urban area houses, 90% of the homes have wooden, mosaic, cement, ceramic or brick flooring. In the rural area 71% of the homes has earthen flooring.

The national average of persons per room is 2.7, in the urban area, 2.9% and in the rural area 3.4%.

The possibility of access to cheap housing for persons of scarce resources grows farther away as time goes by due to the country's economic situation and the dismantling of the institution in charge of the execution of the housing policies (FONVIS), without the prevision of alternative instances.

The statistical data that we have in the country on housing is not segregated by sex, for which reason it is not possible to establish the right to women's housing.

The legislation that guarantees the right to the property is contained in the State's Political Constitution, the Civil Code and the INRA law.

In Bolivia, only US$ 25 per annum is spent on the health of each of their inhabitants. This level is lower than the one spent in Latin America and the Caribbean on average, for the sanitary services of their population, which is of US$ 150 per capita.

Infant mortality before the 5^th year of age was 92 out of every 1,000 children born alive in the period 1993 to 1998. Mortality in childhood is almost double in the rural zone than in the urban one (125 vs. 66) . The rural infant mortality rate reaches 90 and in the urban area 50 per 1,000 born alive.

The country's health sector occupies 6,046 physicians, 1,894 nurses, 4,792 nurse assistants, and as administrative and service staff 10,541 persons, distributed between the Health public sub-sector and the Social Security sub-sector.

Bearing in mind that the Bolivian population is 8'137,113 inhabitants, the average attention per doctor is 1,346 persons; per nurse, 4,296 and per each nurse assistant 1,698 persons, situation which is worsened by the concentration of health servers in the cities of the axis of larger economic development, as are Cochabamba, La Paz and Santa Cruz.

Of the 311 municipalities existing in the country, 20% has no qualified health staff in the area of its jurisdiction and attention is the responsibility of the communitarian staff.

The factors mentioned above, added to others, are the cause for only 73.7% of the women in the urban area and 25.6% in the rural area to go to the health facilities at the time of birth, vis a vis 25.4% in the urban area and 72.6% in the rural area that prefer to stay home and be attended by traditional midwives (9.6%) or by family members or friends (57.1%).

The official government report maintains: the ENSA indicated that the average maternal mortality was constant: 416 deaths per 100,000. In the highlands it is estimated at 602 per 100,000 born alive,, more than double than in the valleys (293) and almost six times larger than in the plains (110). The urban mortality rate was 274 per 100,000 born alive ant the rural one 524; in the rural highlands zone, it reached 887 per 100,000 born alive. The causes of maternal mortality are, in order of importance: hemorrhage, toxemia, infection and stillbirth. Among them, abortion has an estimated weight of 27% to 35%.

Other latest studies indicate that the total of maternal deaths in Bolivia is 390 per 100,000 born alive and that 10% correspond to abortions.

HIV-AIDS in Bolivia is a social and public health problem not yet understood in its true dimension; the figures of carriers and sick people is growing steadily (up until December 2000, 517 cases were reported). Taking into consideration the World Health Organization's (WHO) projected figures, this number should be multiplied by 10, which would mean that 5,000 persons are infected with the HIV virus.

The discrimination against the carriers, whether openly or covertly, is a daily fact in Bolivia. The existing laws and resolutions that go against the commitments undertaken by the Bolivian State with the international community thus demonstrate it.

In Bolivia, the main juridical instruments that guarantee this right are: the State's Political Constitution and the Law of the Educational Reform, in which furthermore the multi-ethic and multi-cultural nature of Bolivia are acknowledged and therefore it is established that the intercultural and the bilingual aspect are the basis of education.

The Educational Reform establishes among its objectives the gratuity of education in the state schools and the fact that it is mandatory in the elementary level.

The objectives established by the Educational Reform are: guaranteeing the solid and permanent formation of our human resources …as well as improving the quality and efficiency of the education….broadening its coverage and the stay of the pupils in the education system and guaranteeing equality of rights for men and women.

During 1998 in Bolivia the student population in school age amounted to 2'733,718 pupils, whose ages ranged between 4 and 17 years. However, the enlisted population only reached 1'857,039 during 1998, both in elementary as well as in high school.

Women of the rural areas that do not go to classes are 48.75%, which means that half the women between the ages of 10 and 24 do not receive either informal or formal education. The situation among men is also negative, registering 41% non-attendance.

The volume of illiteracy is concentrated in the population within the ages of 25 and 65 (44.7% of the total of the illiterate population). The illiterate adolescent and young (10 to 24 years old) amounted to 57,848, which represents 5.3%. Albeit the percentage is not significant vis a vis the national total, it is a qualitative problem which shows that the formal educational system does not incorporate these persons into its coverage or expels them too soon from the formal school system.

The great majority of the young and adolescent that do not know how to read and write belong to the rural area. Of these, 62.2% are women and 37.7% are men. In the urban area, the women's illiteracy percentage is 66.1% and men's 33.8%.

This situation reveals that illiteracy is basically a rural and feminine problem.