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OAS Secretary General Inaugurates Conference on Hemispheric Cooperation against Corruption in Lima

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today recognized the progress achieved by the Member States of the OAS in the fight against corruption and urged them to strengthen cooperation in key areas of the fight against this scourge, upon inaugurating today the “Conference on the Progress and Challenges in Hemispheric Cooperation against Corruption.”

During the opening ceremony of the event, which is being held in Lima today and tomorrow, June 4, in the framework of the 40th OAS General Assembly, the Secretary General referred to corruption as “a constant preoccupation of the Organization” and highlighted the progress achieved in this respect.

“In the framework of the OAS we were pioneers and adopted the first Convention on this matter,” and today, he said, “the inter-American treaty has been ratified by 33 Member States of our Organization. He explained that the Convention not only was the first but that, in addition, “had the virtue of expressing an integral and complete understanding of the way in which corruption must be confronted, and that is why it became the great navigation charter for our collective work in this field.”

The topmost representative of the hemispheric organization explained that “the fight against corruption must be considered a process, and, in this sense, the most important success we have achieved is the mechanism for reciprocal evaluation, the MESICIC.”

The achievements in the framework of the MESICIC, he continued, are equivalent to “demonstrating that we can generate useful tools to strengthen our legal frameworks and that it is possible for our institutions to strengthen their actions to fight corruption in a more effective way, and for cooperation against corruption to have a treaty negotiated in the framework of the OAS.” Through this type of action, he said, “we strengthen multilateralism to solve common problems.”

Nevertheless, he said, despite these achievements, it is necessary to strengthen cooperation in some key areas like transparency in the funding of campaigns and political parties, in the direct participation of business in politics, defending the cleanliness of political processes, the strengthening of cooperation in the prosecution and punishment of corruption, the responsibility of businesses, the participation of civil society in the monitoring of public governance and freedom of the press.

In his intervention, the Secretary General took the opportunity to highlight the efforts of the host country in this area. “Peru has participated in the process of cooperation in the framework of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption. It ratified the Treaty and from the beginning has been part of the MESICIC. It has also participated in the program of plans of action for the implementation of the recommendations of the MESICIC, and has adopted the National Plan to Combat Corruption.”

In the inauguration ceremony of the regional meeting, which brings together more than 20 experts from the hemisphere, the President of the Council of Ministers of Peru, Javier Velásquez Quesquén, and the Secretary for Legal Affairs of the OAS, Jean Michel Arrighi, also participated.

The Conference marks a culmination of the program of cooperation that in recent years the OAS General Secretariat has developed through its Department of Legal Cooperation in its Secretariat for Legal Affairs to support Member States in the implementation of recommendations elaborated by the Committee of Experts of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption and the Follow-Up Mechanism for its Implementation (MESICIC).

A photo gallery of the event is available here.

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

Reference: E-215/10