Media Center

Press Release

New Year's Message from OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro

Dear friends,

We know that we still have hard work ahead of us for this year 2016 that is about to start.

Our plans at the OAS are still part of a dynamic of construction, but our efforts to facilitate the resolution of hemispheric challenges will be undeterred.

Justice and ethics must be the rules that guide the coexistence between countries and, within each country, they should be the basis for the relationship between government and opposition.

Let’s ensure that, during 2016, peace and justice are coherent with each other and with the meaning of life of the peoples of the Americas. Let's also ensure that Colombia finds peace as an essential right of its people and that we never have again an armed conflict in our Hemisphere.

No one can speak for the people, because the people speak for themselves. We cannot be neutral to the controversy, because democracy gives us the freedom and the responsibility to speak with courage to represent indispensable values and principles.

We congratulate all the elections held in 2015, all have meant much to the strengthening of democracy.

We especially congratulate Venezuela and ask that no one distort the voice of the people and its most genuine expression -which is the election results-, with schemes of dubious legality, or claiming biased decisions to bodies reconstituted ad hoc.

Arrogance should not be used either. Instead, peace and dialogue should be the guiding forces. Also, we should ensure that the right to denounce irregularities does not rely on the partiality of entities with new members of recognized political party affiliation.

We must redouble the fight against impunity to protect democracy and human rights, and we must ensure the honesty of the governments and the rights of the governed.

We must defend all human rights without specific beliefs or ideologies, because human rights violations and repression are made from the right and from the left, and are manifested in each journalist or human rights activist killed, in each student imprisoned or tortured, in each citizen abused by corruption or violence from organized crime.

The biggest fight of all, however, is the struggle for the well-being of all, for equality, and for the elimination of all forms of discrimination.

It is also the cruelest, because the reality and the present still hit hard at those who live the anxiety and anguish of poverty and violence. For them, 2016 is already late.

Friends:

Let’s work so that that our intentions for 2016 don't take the place of our ability to work and our continuous effort, inspired by the core values of peace, democracy, human rights, security and development.

Luis Almagro,
OAS Secretary General

Reference: E-358/15