Media Center

Press Release

OAS Secretary General Calls for a Closer North-South Collaboration within the Americas to Address Common Challenges

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today reiterated the need for a greater and mutual understanding North-South within the Americas, the end result of which should be a closer collaboration to find solutions to common challenges throughout the hemisphere.

"The time has come to really put into practice this notion of making policy all together and not have a policy of one country to the others," said Secretary General Insulza in a speech at a Georgetown University Conference on "Making Latin America and the Caribbean a more Equitable Society: Economic Growth, Education, and Corporate Social Responsibility." At the same time he considered indispensable an "understanding of the importance that the United Sates and Canada have for Latin America and vice versa."

The OAS leader also noted that people in different countries in the region are increasingly interconnected, share strategic problems and common challenges, and therefore a logical consequence should be for countries to do alike. "If we face those challenges together, we can say that we will have not only a good decade for Latin America, but a much better decade for the region as a whole", he forecasted, as he identified that, contrary to what has been the norm in the past, the Hemisphere "is growing more self-assertive and stronger, and its countries understand that they have a role to play not only among themselves, but also in the world."

Secretary General Insulza recognized that countries in the Northern part of the Americas have been focusing lately on priority issues such as the economic crisis and international crises elsewhere in the world, such as "Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, the European crisis, Egypt, and 'The Arab spring', which has diverted their attention from changes taking place in our region." This "relative absence", according to Insulza, is a factor that has created a distance in relations, although he admitted that "none of this means that hemispheric relations have lost their heft or importance". "There is a large number of relevant topics that still engage all countries of the region, and they are viewed in a generally positive light", he added citing some examples of important steps taken in the past three years on issues such as energy, social protection and trade agreements.

The greatest achievement of Inter-American collaboration, though, "was the common effort made for over more than three decades to make the Americas one of the two democratic regions of the world, together with Europe". In this context, he recalled that the 34 Heads of State and Government to attend the VI Summit of the Americas in Colombia next April have been democratically elected.

Many other issues require grater collaboration, he said, and cited inequality, access to quality of education, crime, violence, unequal distribution of income, corruption, arms trafficking, and the lack of independence of the judiciary among them, But the priority issue that requires closer collaboration should be, in the eyes of the OAS Secretary General, migration, one of the important links that bind the countries together. "Figures from the most recent U.S. census show that over 50 million people of Latin American origin are living in the United States, which makes this country the third Latin American country in the world, after Brazil and Mexico," he said and recalled the growing trend of this statistic.

Secretary General Insulza said that the political collaboration within the Hemisphere should be easier considering the growing economic interdependence that exists among the region's countries, and also taking into account that investment and trade continue to link and mutually benefit them all. "Three of the countries of the region, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, are among the 15 top U.S. trading partners. If the analysis is broadened to include 30 partners, five more countries of the region make the list, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. The fact that the 7 largest of Latin America rank among the top U.S. trading partners obliges us to recognize the region's importance for economic recovery in the United States," he said.

He also added that the region's economic situation is very different from the past, and recalled that Latin America and the Caribbean grew more in the last decade than in the previous two combined, and it is starting to open up to the rest of the world. "At least two countries-Brazil and Mexico-, already rank as important middle powers, and the entire region is more independent and assertive than in the past," he said.

Speaking to an audience of academics, political, leaders, experts, and representatives from the business community; civil society and international organizations, at an event organized by the Georgetown University and the US Departments of Commerce and State, the OAS Secretary General closed his remarks by saying that there is a need for "greater reciprocity" among the countries of the Hemisphere: "The greatest risk for hemispheric relations would be the unwillingness of some of its most important members to continue working jointly, not attempting to impose solutions to common problems but rather demonstrating a readiness to engage in dialogue in the context of new realities."

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

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

Reference: E-093/12