Caja de herramientas

The deepening of democracy as a collective order and as a shared global imaginary calls for greater equality of opportunities and rights. This means extending public participation and decision-making to broad sectors of society that have been marginalized for centuries while also enhancing the effective ownership of economic, social and cultural rights. Equality of rights goes beyond the structuring of opportunities on the basis of merit. It means that citizenship, as an irreducible value, fully endows people with the right, by the mere fact of their being part of society and regardless of individual achievements and monetary resources, to access certain minimum levels of social welfare and recognition. Deepening democracy also means moving towards greater equality in access, especially in fields such as education, health, employment, housing, basic services, environmental quality and social security. When translated into minimum (and incremental) thresholds for welfare and benefits, equal rights indirectly impose limits on inequality in access, especially when this inequality, at some point, means that part of society is deprived of the access legally provided for under an entitlement-based approach to rights. The concept of equal rights provides the framework and basis for regulating social covenants that generate greater opportunities for those who have less. A fiscal covenant that envisages tax structures and tax burdens with a greater redistributive effect, while strengthening the role of Government and public policy so as to ensure the welfare threshold is respected, is part of the equality agenda, as is the creation of labour institutions that protect worker safety.