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At the 2022 Summit of the Americas, Leaders Must Deliver for Their People [1]
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Date: 2022-09
This week, the United States will host the Summit of the Americas for the first time since the gatherings began in 1994. The main purpose of the summits has been to promote regional cooperation in key policy areas, such as economic development, trade, security, and democracy. But the assemblies of political leaders from across the Western Hemisphere have also offered an opportunity for civil society organizations, representatives of Indigenous communities, business executives, and young entrepreneurs to meet and develop their own action plans on important topics. These groups of citizens will be among the main beneficiaries of any progress that might emerge from the summit.
Unfortunately, many heads of state—including those of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico—have decided not to attend this year’s meeting, reflecting a deepening rift in the hemisphere between governments that seek to uphold democratic values and those that have either adopted or tolerated more authoritarian practices. This divide is certainly not a new one, but it has grown markedly worse over the past decade, and the resulting lack of cooperation at a time of great hardship could cost the people of the Americas dearly.
A history of achievement and controversy
At the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, the 34 heads of state in attendance were all democratically elected. The only country missing was Cuba. A notable outcome of that summit was the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption (IACAC), which was formally adopted by the member nations of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1996 and came into force in March 1997. The third summit, held in Canada in 2001, produced the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a groundbreaking affirmation that the peoples of the hemisphere had a right to democracy and that the governments had an obligation to promote and defend it. The charter was approved by all 34 members of the OAS, excluding Cuba, on September 11 of that year.
While the subsequent summits also generated some progress, democratic conditions in the region began to deteriorate. The 2012 summit in Colombia ended without agreement on whether Cuba’s authoritarian leaders should be invited to the next gathering. The presidents of Ecuador and Nicaragua did not even attend, and several others warned that they would boycott future summits if Cuba were left out. Cuban representatives were finally invited to the summit held in Panama in 2015, but new friction erupted between the United States and Venezuela, with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro accusing Washington of trying to overthrow his government. US president Barack Obama issued an executive order imposing sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials for human rights violations and declaring that the country was a threat to US national security.
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