Editorial

The global economy has experienced the worst recession in 90 years, with the most vulnerable segments disproportionately affected, with an estimate of 114 million lost jobs and around 120 million people who have fallen back into extreme poverty, according to the 2021 United Nations Report on Financing for Sustainable Development (Informe sobre Financiamiento para el Desarrollo Sostenible 2021 de las Naciones Unidas).  Additionally, a new technical note of the ILO states that 26 million jobs were lost in Latin America and the Caribbean alone as a result of the pandemic. This year began with a complex scenario worsened by new waves of contagion of COVID-19 and slow vaccination processes generate greater uncertainty in the prospects for recovery of labor markets.

A panorama like this may be approached from various points of view, some more technical and pragmatic, and others with more ideological approaches, more or less assistance-oriented, but what should not be left aside is the value of the person and the common good. Something that the pandemic left for us, at least for a while, was the evidence of collective helplessness and interdependence: we depend on each other. And now we see with sadness how in some countries the vaccination process has not been initiated, and at the global level, the risk of thinking excluding solutions that are going to generate greater inequalities.

How can we talk about human development and dignity without committing to the good of all, starting with the commitment for each person to have the opportunity to have a dignified life through work?

Everybody has the responsibility and should assume it regardless of how large or small it is, from multilateral organisms, public and private sectors, to you and me. There is no insignificant impact these days, from the solitude of the researcher working in a lab to find the vaccine, to the one who sows a new seed to produce food. No effort is too small or goes unnoticed.

Precisely this month we celebrated the feast of a historical character who lived hiddenly, without many speeches, a fair, brave man, of great faith and who never left his work as a carpenter: Saint Joseph. He reminds us that all those who are apparently hidden or in second-line; have an unparalleled prominence in the history of salvation, says Pope Francis in his letter  Patris Corde. 

“The crisis of our time, – the letter continues – which is an economic, social, cultural and spiritual crisis, can represent for all a call to rediscover the meaning, importance, and need of work to give rise to new normality In which no one is excluded. The work of Saint Joseph reminds us that God made man did not disdain work. The loss of work that affects so many brothers and sisters, and that has increased in recent times due to the Covid-19 pandemic, should be a call to review our priorities.”