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OAS Secretary General Receives Decoration of the Gran Cruz from the Andean Parliament for his Support for the Building of a Regional Agenda

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today received a decoration from the Andean Parliament of the Grade of Great Cross for his determined support “for the building of a regional agenda” and for “his concrete actions to promote legislative harmonization on issues of importance to the region.”

The leader of the hemispheric Organization received the distinction from the President of the Parliament, the Peruvian politician Javier Reátegui Rosselló, in a ceremony held in the context of the plenary meeting of the legislative institution taking place at its headquarters in Bogotá, Colombia to debate the initiatives for the consolidation of peace in Colombia and the region and the approval of the Andean Statute of Mobility.

In his acceptance speech, Secretary General Insulza highlighted that, as the place in which “agreements are debated and agreed to that represent the social consensus possible in each moment in the history of our nations,” the Parliament “continues to be the purest expression of democracy and politics; it is the institutional materialization of the fact that in every complex society there are different opinions and visions that should be heard and harmonized to allow for their contribution to the development of society. That is democracy and that is the Parliament.”

In addition, Insulza reviewed the political and social situation in the region, and in particular highlighted the fact that all the countries in the OAS today have had democratically elected governments for a quarter century. “Democracy is based above all on this fact, the cornerstone of the system. The legitimacy of the political process has its origins in democratic, clean, competitive and inclusive elections,” he said.

At the same time, he noted that “the long history of ups and downs of democracy in Latin America has shown us that democratic development is not a linear process, but one filled with progress and setbacks,” and warned that “having stable governments with legitimate origins does not necessarily mean strong governments. They are, stronger than a decade ago, but that strength is affected, in general, by the lack of resources and the distance with important sectors of the population.”

For this reason, he said that often the expressions of democracy collide “with the reality of our Hemisphere, where poverty and extreme poverty are still excessive, and inequality and discrimination frustrate many millions of people who, having emerged from poverty, remain in an alarming situation of vulnerability and lack of opportunities. And social exclusion also takes on the form of gender and minority discrimination,” problems that are not resolved by the market, but only by decided action by governments to apply appropriate policies, based on maintaining governability.

The Secretary General of the OAS added that, currently, “the majority of the problems, challenges and even threats facing the societies and democracies of Latin America tend to be common and cannot be resolved unilaterally or within the borders of a country.” Therefore, he continued, the search for ways to overcome these obstacles “often requires cooperation and harmonized or coordinated legislative responses. They require the internalization of rules agreed to regionally and the ratification of conventions or treaties that later need internal legislation or regulation.”

Therefore, the OAS leader concluded by expressing his wish that the Andean Parliament as well as national parliaments that comprise it “as our democracies are consolidated and improved, they modernize and strengthen in the compliance of the tasks demanded of them by democracy, in a context of separation, independence and balance of powers.”

Memorandum of Understanding

Previously, Secretary General Insulza and President Reátegui Rosselló signed a Memorandum of Understanding by which the two entities commit themselves to unite forces to promote the institutional strengthening of legislative function and the exchange of experiences with legislatures of the Americas.

Through this instrument the OAS and the Andean Parliament will jointly realize projects and activities such as the accompaniment in the Organization of a permanent space that offers courses and seminars for the updating and training of legislators, young Andean parliamentarians, and university students, advisors and officials. Moreover, the hemispheric institution will provide legal, political, and specialized technical consulting and assistance for the production of model laws for the Andean region on issues of institutional interest, at first on issues related to education, social protection, and the environment, transparency and anti-corruption efforts.

The agreement also includes the organization of forums and meetings for the exchange of experiences and the facilitation of horizontal cooperation activities with legislative institutions of the OAS member states and with other international and national organizations.

During the plenary meetings, in which recognized Colombian politicians and Andean parliamentarians from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru participated, the Permanent Representative of Colombia to the OAS, Andrés González Díaz, took part as a speaker on the issue of the challenges in the Inter-American System for the consolidation of peace and development.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-104/15