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OAS Secretary General Emphasizes Dialogue as Tool for Maintaining Unity in the Region

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today emphasized that dialogue and the search for consensus are the tools that have kept unity, links of stability and conditions of peace among the countries of the region, adding that, in this context, the OAS is the principal and oldest political forum that brings together nations rich and poor, large and small, to converse in a respectful and permanent way.

"Dialogue and consensus are what guarantee an internal cohesion that would otherwise break if the smallest wished to impose their own criteria, or if the largest sought to impose their judgments through the rule of power,” Secretary General Insulza said.

Inaugurated by the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, in the city of Santa Cruz, the IX Conference of Ministers of Defense of the Americas began this morning, with the participation of Secretary General Insulza and defense authorities from 28 countries of the hemisphere.

In his speech, and to emphasize his initial point, the head of the OAS held that “the greatest guarantee of unity and the peaceful solution of differences among us is Inter-American Law; that Law and the institutions of the Inter-American System continue to be the most important legal foundation and the institutions of reference for consistent and lasting agreements and conventions among the countries of the Americas.”

Insisting on the value of the principles contained in the inter-American legal system, the Secretary General recalled that this set of norms includes principles regarding respect for sovereignty, non-intervention, the defense of democracy and human rights, the legal equality of the States, the rights of women and the fight against discrimination.

Nevertheless, in retrospect, the head of the Organization said that “after the signing of the Bogotá Charter in 1948, for more than three decades, with the ‘Cold War’ in the background, the OAS distanced itself from some of these essential values and even accepted, justified and backed regimes built on the overthrow of democratically elected governments.” But he added that “the policy of intervention has left the OAS to give way to a modern multilateralism and international cooperation.”

Furthermore, Secretary General Insulza said the best proof of this change, “of this new era of the OAS, is the Inter-American Democratic Charter, approved in September 2001,” because it establishes not only that free and transparent elections are necessary for democracy but also that the exercise of democracy presupposes “the Rule of Law, the respect for institutions and the subordination of all powers to the democratically elected civil authority.”

The Secretary General reiterated that today in the OAS “it is only necessary to facilitate understanding so that solutions between the stakeholders themselves may be reached, without undue external interferences.” In this sense, he cited the profound political transformations that occurred in various countries of Latin America, and noted that “what we want today is to highlight that all these processes have been carried out in the context of the norms in place in those countries.” He added that even in cases where the results have been adverse, rulers have respected them.

The concept we are leaving behind, he said, “understood security in terms of the possibility of an armed conflict between States, but the new concept, which we have called Multidimensional Security, takes into account that situations such as natural disasters or pandemics, as well as transnational crime and terrorism, also must be considered threats to national, regional and international security.”

Secretary General Insulza held meetings in Santa Cruz with the ministries of defense of the United States, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and Mexico, and he plans to continue today with other bilateral conversations.

A photo gallery of the event is available here.

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

Reference: E-449/10