Newsletter -February 2011

Editorial

The OAS Department of International Law (DIL) welcomes you to the fourth issue of its newsletter. This issue covers the Department’s activities over the last five months of 2010, and January 2011. A period that witnessed significant opportunities for the Department to continue its work disseminating and promoting concepts of international law in general, and particularly those legal issues on the inter-American agenda. Also during this period we have continued to promote training activities for the most vulnerable sectors of our societies, such as the indigenous population and people of African descent. Accordingly, the DIL continued to implement its programs in these two areas. It bears special mention that 2011 has been proclaimed by the United Nations as “the International Year for People of African Descent,” and the Department is actively planning a series of activities designed to strengthen this topic within the inter-American agenda. Moreover, we have continued our efforts to disseminate information to the member states on implementation of the Model Inter-American Law on Access to Public Information. This matter was taken up at a special session of the Committee on Juridical and Political Affairs (CAJP) of the Permanent Council in December 2010, in collaboration with DIL. Likewise, the Department helped organize the First Technical Meeting of the Network for Legal Cooperation in the Area of Family and Child Law, which was well attended by representatives of the Member States and resulted in important recommendations for the future operation of the Network. In keeping with tradition, the Department organized the thirty-seventh annual Course on International Law, held in Rio de Janeiro, which included robust participation on the part of scholarship recipients and invited professors from throughout the Americas and Europe. The theme of the 2010 course was “International Law and Contemporary Global Transformations.” In addition, and owing to the Department’s close cooperative relationship with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), we participated in the Eighth Latin American Regional Course on International Refugee Law. Within the framework of cooperation between the DIL and the Federal Institute of Access to Public Information (IFAI) of Mexico, the Department participated in its seventh annual National Transparency Week celebrations, held in Mexico City. The Department of International Law maintains close ties to a number of different universities. In this vein, we have held classes for a second straight year within the master’s degree program in International Human Rights Protection at the Universidad Alcalá of Henares, and have also played a role in a series of conferences on Latin America relations and conflict resolution at Georgetown University. In the area of private international law, the DIL participated in the thirty-third Seminar of the Mexican Academy of International Private and Comparative Law (AMEDIP), held in Colima, Mexico, and in two events sponsored by the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) to promote access to credit and encourage capital investment in developing countries. The Department also helped prepare a joint study in collaboration with the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROT), with a view to unifying criteria for financial leasing and its relationship to security interests, including the related international instruments adopted by the OAS on that topic. Finally, the DIL participated in the annual meeting of the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law (ACPIL).

The final months of 2010 were an especially busy time in terms of activities, results, and impacts, during which the Department faithfully discharged its mission of promoting international law in accordance with mandates of the OAS General Assembly and Secretary General. There can be little doubt that 2011 will bring many challenges and opportunities, and will continue to report on our progress as we move forward.
 

Dante M. Negro
Director
Department of International Law - OAS

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