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Mexico Submits to OAS Ratification of Inter-American Convention on Transparency in Conventional Weapons Acquisitions

The Government of Mexico, through its representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), Ambassador Gustavo Albin, today submitted to the Organization’s Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, its ratification of the Inter-American Convention on Transparency in Conventional Weapons Acquisitions (CITAAC).

During the event, held at Organization headquarters in Washington, DC, the Secretary General asserted that “this ratification is evidence of Mexico’s commitment to regional security and the importance it gives to the issue in the context of the inter-American system.” He added that the instrument “relates to the concerns raised by some countries about weapons acquisitions, an issue that was also addressed during the last General Assembly in Lima.”

The head of the hemispheric Organization recalled that during the last Meeting of Defense Ministers of the continent, held in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, “the need to continue to promote transparency mechanisms in the acquisition of conventional weapons was highly stressed, and the OAS was charged with the follow-up work to this document.” He also added that “given the importance of this Convention as a great measure of fostering trust and security in the hemisphere and to the work of our Organization on the matter, the Department of Defense and Hemispheric Security has been created to be at the disposal of our Member States as technical secretariat to the CITAAC.”

Ambassador Albin, for his part, asserted that “the Government of Mexico considers that the actual performance of the Inter-American Convention on Transparency in Conventional Weapons Acquisitions has been satisfactory.” He noted that this Convention “has contributed to the strengthening of the existing mechanisms that apply in the framework of our Organization towards full regional openness and transparency in the acquisition of conventional weapons, through the exchange of information with the goal of fostering trust among the States of the Americas.”

On November 16, 2010, the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, issued the ratification instrument of the CITAAC. Recalling this milestone, Ambassador Albín said that with this step “Mexico shows signs of its commitment to the strengthening of the support of mechanisms and instruments of the inter-American System that contribute to hemispheric security.”

With Mexico’s ratification, there are now fourteen Member States that have ratified or joined the Convention. They are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. In this context, Secretary General Insulza took the opportunity to “extend and invitation to the countries that originally signed but have not ratified this Convention to follow this example.”

The CITAAC was originally endorsed on June 7, 1999, by 20 OAS Member States.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

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

Reference: E-555/11