In Latin America and the Caribbean, despite the multiple difficulties facing the region, significant progress has been noted in the coverage and depth of policies and programmes for eradicating poverty and for social protection within the framework of economic growth with a certain dynamism.

Nevertheless, the work of providing a level of welfare to the population that allows it universal access to quality social services, of increasing citizens' income and mitigating the risks of events that affect them negatively, as well as of responding to needs and demands for care —related to changes of a demographic nature, in families and in gender roles—is still unfinished.

There is an urgent need for equality policies that make it possible to narrow the gaps that exist between the different population groups, and for political economy processes that contribute to sustainable social compacts and to guaranteeing that the population can exercise its economic, social and cultural rights.

The centrality of equality as a development horizon in the region was constructed based on an analysis of the multiple processes and dimensions that make inequality a powerful barrier to progress towards higher levels of welfare, growth and sustainability, as well as towards more fair, democratic and cohesive societies. In the document "Compacts for equality: towards a sustainable future" prepared by ECLAC, which will be presented on the occasion of the 35th session to be held in Lima, Peru from 5th to 9th May 2014, we propose talking about equality—beyond distributive justice, which tends to limit its scope to the distribution of transferable and quantifiable resources.

Among the additional dimensions that expand this concept, we include the capacities—understood in a broad sense as the abilities, knowledge and skills that individuals manage to acquire—that enable them to undertake life projects they consider worthwhile. It's also important to consider equality in a "relational" context of socialisation, autonomy and recognition, and to incorporate the subjective dimension, that is, how people perceive the order in which they live in terms of the current status of distributive justice, interpersonal trust and social unrest.

The multifaceted portrait of (in)equality in the region, the highlighting of the gaps that persist and of the processes that contribute to reproducing them, constitute—in our understanding—a solid platform for proposing the need for equality policies as an economic, social and environment imperative that must be at the heart of public policy design in the countries and also international discussions about the development agenda in coming years.

Alicia Bárcena