The signing on 28 January 1981 of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, better known as Convention 108, was a milestone in making it the first international treaty on the protection of personal data.

That is why in 2006 the Council of Europe and the European Commission took the initiative to adopt this date to establish an International Day for the Protection of Personal Data with the aim of helping citizens and businesses better understand their rights and responsibilities regarding data protection. Since then, guarantor bodies, civil society organizations, academic institutions and international organizations, among others, have marked this date with various training and dissemination activities on this right and the mechanisms to enforce it.

At the regional level, the OAS, through its organs, has been concerned with the protection of personal data since 1996, mainly through resolutions of the General Assembly, which has urged Member States to take certain actions and sometimes conferring specific mandates on other organs of the Organization; the Inter-American Juridical Committee (CJI), which prepared and approved in 2021, the "Updated Principles on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data, with Annotations"; and the Department of International Law (DIL) of the General Secretariat, which, in addition to being the Technical Secretariat of the CJI, provides advice and support on the matter to political bodies and Member States alike.

As it has been doing for some years, the DIL joins the activities held around the world on International Data Protection Day, organizing on this occasion an event aimed at familiarizing the Permanent Missions of the OAS Member States with the content of the 13 Updated Principles on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data approved by the General Assembly in 2021.

This briefing seeks to identify the basic elements of effective protection and reflect on how this inter-American soft law instrument can serve Member States as a point of reference for strengthening their own legal frameworks in this area and guide the collective development of the region towards a harmonious protection of personal data.

This occasion will also serve to provide delegations with updated information on the role of the OAS General Secretariat through the DIL, in its capacity as Observer of the Consultative Committee of Convention 108, to which it was admitted last November.

» To visit the Department of International Law (DIL) website, click here.

» To learn more about the DIL’s work in protection of personal data, click here.

» To view the Updated Principles on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data, click here.