www.oas.org

E-092/01 April 23, 2001 Anti-Drug Experts Meet to Strengthen Evaluation Mechanism   Government experts from around the Americas began a week-long meeting today in Washington to review, update and strengthen the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM), a tool that measures national and hemispheric efforts against illegal drugs. The meeting comes on the heels of the Third Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada, where the region's 34 presidents and prime ministers expressed strong support for the MEM. In their April 22 Declaration of Quebec City, the leaders reiterated their commitment "to make this mechanism, unique in the world, one of the central pillars in effective hemispheric cooperation in the struggle against all the factors that constitute the global drug problem." The MEM was developed and implemented by the OAS Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), following a mandate from the Second Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile. Results of the first round of evaluations were presented to the leaders in Quebec City. During this week's sessions, the group of government experts that created the mechanism will re-examine the indicators used as benchmarks in the evaluation process. Paul Kennedy, the Chair of the Intergovernmental Working Group, said the experts will add new indicators to reflect evolving patterns in drug consumption, production and trafficking and to cover related areas such as firearms and corruption. "The MEM is not a static instrument," Kennedy said. "It must be updated and strengthened periodically in order for it to be an effective tool for cooperation against drugs."   # # #