BOOK LAUNCH: SOUTHERN FLOWS: WMD NON-PROLIFERATION IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD UNSCR 1540 IMPLEMENTATION IN THE AMERICAS AND BEYOND

July 11, 2014 - Washington, DC

• Good afternoon, let me begin by welcoming our special guests today, firs a special welcome to Ms. Angela Kane, United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mr. Keith Porter, President of the Stanley Foundation, and Ms. Ellen Laipson, President and CEO of the Stimson Center, to this house of the Americas.

• Let me also thank our Secretary General, Jose Miguel Insulza, Mr. Brian Finlay of the Stimson Center, our representatives from the U.S Department of State, the United Nations as well as our Secretary, for Multidimensional Security, distinguished ambassadors; representatives of member states; alternate representatives and all colleagues from the General Secretariat, thank you for accompanying us this afternoon.

• It indeed a pleasure to be cohosting this event with the Stanley Foundation and Stimson Center on the issue of UNSCR 1540 and on the occasion of the launching of the book: Southern Flows: Pragmatic Approaches to Multidimensional Security in the Americas. As many of you know, my office has been supporting and working with our partners present today in the promotion of this valuable resolution in the Americas since 2006. It is for this reason, that I was pleased to also host the launching of an important body of work which clearly demonstrates the commitment of the Americas to the full implementation of United Nations Resolution 1540.

• Eight years ago, the OAS embarked on path of cooperation with United Nations office for Disarmament, the Stimson Center and the Stanley Foundation to assist Member states in the implementation of 1540 through a combined approach which brought the security and development agendas together into a whole of government and whole of society approach. Today, through this book, Stimson and Stanley are able to present a compilation of key regional perspectives on the matter we hope share the lessons and successes of this approach.

• To highlight this effort of systematizing what has been accomplished in the implementation of the resolution in our region, we are honored to have with us Ms. Angela Kane, High Representative of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs as key note speaker today. Ms Kane’s experience have spanned the broad spectrum of security affairs and has drawn crucial attention to the roles that all actors in the international community must play to ensure that the world inherited by future generations is secure and prosperous.

• For benefit of those who may not be as familiar with UN Resolution 1540, let me say that initially I was hesitant in providing support to a resolution which is complex and quite frankly not necessarily the top priority for many of our member states in the hemisphere. However as we began to support regional activities under the auspices of this global initiative with hemispheric responsibilities, we immediately saw the opportunities to bring several security and development priorities and needs of member states under one initiative.

• Additionally, it important to note, that OAS has been promoting a broader definition of security in this hemisphere since 2003, and when we began advocating the important links between security and development contained within the resolution, we realized that Stimson’s’ innovative approach to implementation of UNSCR 1540 is a pragmatic embodiment of the OAS concept of multidimensional and cooperative security.

• Thus this model and the OAS mandates in multidimensional security have proven to be beneficial to our member states both in economic and security terms. At its root, it has transformed Security Council Resolution 1540 from a burden on OAS member states, to an opportunity for not only OAS governments but the societies they serve.

• We, at the OAS want to thank Stimson and Stanley for taking on this issue as a priority area within their own institutions. It has been a remarkable, longstanding relationship with both Stimson and Stanley and the OAS is quite honored to have been part of this partnership for the last 7 years.

• As I stated when the OAS began working to raise awareness among its member states, we observed three very important issues: while the issue of the proliferation of WMDs was not be of immediate concern to all member states, it provided an opportunity, to build capacity at the national level in order to address key “soft” security concerns that were of the upmost interest to many of our countries—issues which our governments and societies were battling with for some time. As we traveled to different subregions and listened to the challenges and linked those problems with potential solutions, we began witnessing the true benefit and value of the dual use approach contained in Resolution 1540.

• Secondly, when, together with the Stimson Center, we started the process of engaging member states, very slowly, believing in the approach of bottom-up rather than top-down; this meant engaging with countries first and then building a level of ownership and commitment at a subregional level. Thus, came to into play the importance regional and sub-regional organizations such as CARICOM and SICA, the OAS together with Stimson were able to organize high-level outreach meetings, led by OAS in Jamaica, St. Lucia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, and many other countries. As we look back on eight years of cooperation, we certainly believe we not only generated awareness but moved towards practical implementation of the resolution in many countries of the hemisphere.

• Thirdly, the experience also highlighted to those committed individuals and organizations working on the implementation of this resolution, what can be done when there is real political will, real cooperation, real trust between civil society and government, and how when organizations take a chance on something they consider innovative and worth pursuing through a collective effort, how these initiatives can benefit society and government at the most critical levels needed for real citizen security. How did we accomplish this at the OAS? It was a strategic decision to advocate the implementation of resolution 1540 at the highest level but we also ensured we worked at the non-governmental level to engage key partners.

• So, advocacy, creating ownership, raising awareness at all levels––certainly at the level of governments and the authorities in the countries––of the potential, how to use 1540 to the benefit of strengthening security provisions is, in the OAS view, significant and strategically successful and we at the OAS are proud of the activities undertaken by governments.

• We also think there is an opportunity here, in the same context, to expand the same kind of advocacy/ownership issue to other stakeholders such as the private sector and industry experts, who are involved in some form or fashion in the process of building security. I think if this could be a component in further broadening the scope of activities of 1540 in the Hemisphere that would be a very useful undertaking.

• The third element is the creation of regional and subregional coordinator for 1540, an extremely useful mechanism which has been established, with the support of the United Nations Committee itself. We are very pleased that we played an important role in supporting the creation of the CARICOM subregional coordinator. OAS and CARICOM have worked side by side to share best practices on how this position has been able to engage and create ownership at the CARICOM level, and we hope that the same has been done, again in Central America where we began with a subregional coordinator but unfortunately due to a lack of funding, this position could not continue.

• It is our hope to find new opportunities to engage SICA and the Central American region in this process as we strongly believe Central America would truly benefit from a whole of government/whole of society approach. Security is a top priority for the entire subregion and both funding and technical assistance is sorely needed.

• I want to thank all the countries which have supported this process through their financial support over the past years but, specifically, I want to mention the United States Permanent Mission, Permanent Mission of Finland, and Canada for supporting OAS efforts so far. We look for to continued collaboration with our civil society partners as well as with other countries, in advancing the level of implementation of resolution 1540.

• Thank you again for coming today.