Each year the OAS Secretary General publishes a proposed Program-Budget for the coming calendar year. The OAS General Assembly meets in a Special Session to approve the Program-Budget. Find these documents from 1998-2013 here.
Each year in April, the OAS Board of External Auditors publishes a report covering the previous calendar year’s financial results. Reports covering 1996-2016 may be found here.
Approximately six weeks after the end of each semester, the OAS publishes a Semiannual Management and Performance Report, which since 2013 includes reporting on programmatic results. The full texts may be found here.
Here you will find data on the Human Resources of the OAS, including its organizational structure, each organizational unit’s staffing, vacant posts, and performance contracts.
The OAS executes a variety of projects funded by donors. Evaluation reports are commissioned by donors. Reports of these evaluations may be found here.
The Inspector General provides the Secretary General with reports on the audits, investigations, and inspections conducted. These reports are made available to the Permanent Council. More information may be found here.
The OAS has discussed for several years the real estate issue, the funding required for maintenance and repairs, as well as the deferred maintenance of its historic buildings. The General Secretariat has provided a series of options for funding it. The most recent document, reflecting the current status of the Strategy, is CP/CAAP-3211/13 rev. 4.
Here you will find information related to the GS/OAS Procurement Operations, including a list of procurement notices for formal bids, links to the performance contract and travel control measure reports, the applicable procurement rules and regulations, and the training and qualifications of its staff.
The OAS Treasurer certifies the financial statements of all funds managed or administered by the GS/OAS. Here you will find the latest general purpose financial reports for the main OAS funds, as well as OAS Quarterly Financial Reports (QFRs).
Every year the GS/OAS publishes the annual operating plans for all areas of the Organization, used to aid in the formulation of the annual budget and as a way to provide follow-up on institutional mandates.
Here you will find information related to the OAS Strategic Plan 2016-2020, including its design, preparation and approval.
The Charter was adopted by acclamation at an extraordinary General Assembly of the OAS held in Lima on September 11, 2001.
The attacks of the same date against the United States affected the adoption of the Charter. The United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, requested that the order of business for the Assembly were reversed to immediately fly back to his country. Thus, they voted first and then foreign ministers delivered their speeches, starting with Powell himself.
It was a mandate from the Third Summit of the Americas, held in April 2001 in Quebec, Canada. There, the Heads of State and Government of the Hemisphere instructed the foreign ministers to prepare a letter that would strengthen "the OAS instruments for the active defense of representative democracy".
It is recognized as one of the most complete inter-American instruments, enacted for the promotion and strengthening of the principles, practices and democratic culture among the states of the Americas.
The main background is Resolution 1080, passed in 1991, which for the first time enabled the OAS, in case of rupture of constitutional order, or coup, to take sanctions and measures it deemed appropriate.
The ability to sanction Member States that suffer institutional, repeated and extended breaks in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, is unprecedented in the world: even today, only in the Americas (OAS and sub-regional organizations that have adopted the so-called "clause democratic ") it is legally contemplated.
The Charter was strongly driven by Peru in the OAS since the transitional government in 2000, at the suggestion of then Prime Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar and subsequently by President Alejandro Toledo, his Foreign Minister Diego Garcia-Sayan and then Permanent Representative to the OAS, former Foreign Minister Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros.
The Charter is divided into six chapters: I) Democracy and the Inter-American system II) Democracy and Human Rights, III) Democracy, Integral Development and Combating Poverty, IV) Strengthening and Preservation of Democratic Institutions, V) Democracy and Electoral Observation Missions, VI) Promotion of a Democratic Culture.
Until now, Chapter IV of the Democratic Charter has been invoked ten times. Seven times was applied preventively to avoid the escalation of political and institutional crisis, which could have jeopardized the democratic process or the legitimate exercise of power and lead to rupture of the democratic order. In two other cases the Charter applied in moments considered as ruptures of the democratic order. And for the first time recently and it was applied on the basis of Article 20.