Latin America merits sustained engagement from the international development community for several reasons; Deep-rooted poverty is a persistent challenge; the quality of democratic governance; accountability and response to the poor is uneven and problematic in some areas.

The experience of the past few decades makes Latin America fertile ground for development policy models. Other parts of the developing world have much to learn from the region, drawing lessons that are relevant to their own development challenges.

Latin America faces a wide range of key global issues such as social policy development, insecurity, climate change, food price rises and the possible impact of biofuels, remittances and migration, AIDS, and the challenges posed by the drug trade. The region is also a major contributor to the solutions, through expertise and investment. ODI has a strong track record in Latin America and our current PPA has seen heavy investment in the region (see related links section).

Our priorities in the region for the next three years include an effort to identify and share policy-relevant lessons from Latin America by:

- Analysing key topics related to development policy, using the Action Research Approaches on:

• poverty and inequality
• power and politics (including the interaction between formal and informal institutions)
• gender and social protection
• regional integration
• security and violence
• agricultural policy
• bio-fuels
• tourism

- Promoting South–South learning and linkages by identifying and sharing emerging lessons from Latin America within the region and beyond.