Uruguay has a long-standing tradition of recognizing citizens' rights with regard to social security and labor relations. The literacy rate is very high and nearly all of the population has access to education, health services, potable water, telephony and electricity.
Recently, Uruguay put into practice an innovative program in IT education, known as the Plan CEIBAL (Basic Computer Technology Educational Connectivity for Online Learning). The program's objective is to promote social justice through equal access to information and communication tools for all of society. With this objective, internet-connected laptop computers are given to all school children in the public school system throughout the country in an effort to make Uruguay the country with the highest connectivity level in the world. Internationally, the project is known as the One Laptop Per Child and was designed and championed by Nicolas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In Uruguay, people can live safely, peacefully, healthily and pleasurably. There are no ethnic or religious conflicts and public safety indices are better than the regional average. The country has the lowest victimization rate in South America (source: Latinobarómetro, 2008).
In environmental matters, Uruguay has quality standards recognized the world over. According to the Environmental Performance Index, created in 2008 by Yale and Columbia Universities, Uruguay was ranked 36th out of 149 countries.
Some indicators that reflect the quality of life of Uruguayan society are as follows:
• Uruguay has the most progressive income distribution in Latin America.
• Life expectancy: 75
• Qualified labor force: 1 in 3 workers have technical or university training.
• Literacy rate: 98%
• Doctors per 100,000 inhabitants: 365
• Infant mortality per 1,000 births: 13
• Uruguay is tobacco smoke free (6th in the world and 1st in South America).
