Permanent Observer status was created by the General Assembly in 1971. The Permanent Observers participate in the Organization's activities and contribute to its programs. As of December 31, 1994, the Permanent Observers were: Algeria, Angola, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, the Holy See, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, and the European Union.

The Permanent Council approved the requests received from the governments of Lebanon and Ukraine to be accorded permanent observer status in the OAS. That meant that by the end of 1994 there were a total of 32 permanent observers. The governments of Croatia and of the Czech Republic have requested permanent observer status in the OAS. The Permanent Council had those requests under consideration.

The presence of the permanent observers expands the horizon of the Organization's activities and reflects the member States' growing participation in the global community.

As will be obvious from this report, the permanent observers participate in and contribute to a number of the Organization's programs. In the period covered by this Report, the observers' contributions went toward the fellowships program (France, Israel, Spain and Romania); election observation missions (Germany); the civilian mission to Suriname (the Netherlands); projects in telecommunications and border integration (Italy and Finland); participation in CICAD projects (France, Japan and Spain) and projects of the Inter-American Children's Institute (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, even though the last of these is not a permanent observer).

The contributions and pledges received from the permanent observers in 1994 totalled approximately US$3,350,000.

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