Puerto Rico and the Unfinished Task of the American Empire

Captured as war booty in 1898 and managed since then as an unincorporated American territory, Puerto Rico’s 4 million American residents still await for a final resolution of their island’s relational status with the mother country. Meanwhile Congress, uncommitted, claims to wait for a clear signal of Puerto Ricans’ preference for either incorporation and eventual statehood into the Union, modification around the edges of the present status, or a declaration of nationhood under either full independence or a pact of free-association. Thus for 111 years Puerto Ricans have squabbled and Congress has demurred. As US relations with Cuba seem to offer new promise and as other sister territories in the Caribbean presently revise their former European imperial connections around integration, free association or independence, Puerto Rico is examining its Caribbean possibilities under new light.

To talk about the emerging options, we invited two distinguished scholars:

Awilda Paláu Suárez holds masters’ degrees in Social Work, Hispanic Studies and Sociology and a doctorate in Sociology from Universidad Complutense in Madrid. Now retired as Professor from the University of Puerto Rico, Dr. Palau has an extensive published bibliography on political and social behavior and a long record as a journalist in New York and Puerto Rico. She was Executive Director of the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture and a member of numerous boards dealing with Puerto Rican social and economic issues.

Alfredo Carrasquillo Ramirez is a practicing psychoanalyst, executive coach and consultant on organizational development, and associate professor of Business Administration, Non-profit Management and Communications at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in Puerto Rico.He pursued advanced studies in Puerto Rico, Spain, Mexico the United States and Quebec.He is a journalism essayst and columnist on topics of citizenship and democracy and author ofnumerous books, among them: Diálogos sobre iniciativas ciudadanas para el fortalecimiento democrático de las Américas (2009) and Los gobiernos locales en la construcción del futuro de los países (2009).

Discussing these presentations was:

David Lewis is Vice President of Manchester Trade Ltd. He has been involved in the CAFTADR-US and Andean-US FTA negotiations and in WTO-Doha negotiations and multilateral trade initiatives in Europeand Asia for Latin American and Caribbean clients.as well as on export development initiatives under the U.S. trade preference program AGOA – Africa Growth & Opportunity Act. He is a regular commentator on international trade to CNN “Economia y Finanzas” and e-publishes “Manchester Trade Updates”.He previously served as Deputy Executive Director of Caribbean/Latin American Action, Director/Chief of Party of the USAID/OECS Caribbean Policy Project, Assistant Secretary of State for Caribbean Development of Puerto Rico; and Director of Research and Regional Coordination for CRIES-Central America.

Minutes

Palau discussed at length how the Puerto Rican colony has lost importance in recent years. Once a key military and geopolitical outpost as an American response to Soviet support for Cuba, Puerto Rico is now a net burden on the US taxpayers and of benefit only to US commercial interests which are broadly represented there. Underneath those changing circumstances however, Palau added, the piracy and illegal trade which has characterized Puerto Rico over the centuries now comes to the fore as drug-related activity fills the void left by a foundering economy. In that long process and under the constraint of a US control over much of public life, the notion of “citizenship” has had little opportunity to develop in the island. Palau characterized this attitude as one of a societal adolescence and dependence on external powers, complicated by extreme mobility of the population over the last century after successive structural changes in the economy (from basic agrarian to sugar plantation to urban underemployment to circular migration to the US) disarticulated communities.

Carrasquillo continued the theme of the expectation of the “parent” to solve the island’s problems. Puerto Ricans, he argued, have gotten to see themselves as passive, reactive objects in the story of the master rather than actors in their own story. A characteristic developed under four centuries of Spanish tutelage and continued under US occupation, this dependence is perhaps best illustrated by Puerto Rico’s reverence to the Virgin of Providence as its patron saint.

Lewis elaborated on the theme further, but challenged the speakers with a distinction between colonialism and unexercised sovereignty. He argued that Puerto Rico has powers within the constraints of the present relationship similar to those of states of the Union, but which Puerto Rico chooses not to exercise. He argues that the felt limitations among Puerto Ricans are far more severe than the practical ones, and argues that Puerto Rico’s problem is one of management as much as it is of sovereignty, of an insular mindset as much as a colonial one, of governance as much as it is status. He further argues that Puerto Ricans have excluded themselves from US policy circles beyond those limited directly to the relationship, failing to press the limits of the limitations of the relationship to the extent that some states have done for example with issues regarding trade with Cuba and advocacy regarding foreign trade limitations.

The subsequent discussion focused on issues of the historical “bleep” of 1945-2005 which transformed Puerto Rico, but the latter’s failure to subsequently adapt to the new circumstances. The world has changed, quipped one participant, and Puerto Rico has not changed with it to the extent that states like Florida, Alaska and Arkansas have. Perhaps due to a poor self-image, Puerto Rico has become increasingly isolated and unresponsive to a globalized world, insisting instead on a supposedly unacknowledged exceptionality. “We’re just not that important anymore” said a participant. One observer noted that, were Puerto Ricans to seek US statehood, they would face opposition from Democrats who are still seeking statehood for the District of Columbia.

A participant reminded the group that “Puerto Rico” is not just the island and its residents but also a diaspora equally numerous that has may be mobilized at the service of a solution. The session ended in a sober but positive note that Puerto Rico will deal with its present crisis of governance, taking greater advantage of the opportunities that it does have at its disposal, a reliance on the effectiveness of US public institutions at its serve, and relying more on a newly evolving sense of civic engagement among its citizens.

Randall Nielsen (L) and Charlotte Jones-Carroll (R)

Esquel’s July 31 session of the Civil Society Task Force took as its premise: Aid has not meant development. This argument holds that that economic development assistance hasn’t really worked.  Aid-dependent countries tend to remain as dependent as they were sixty years ago.   Evidently, aid has not meant development.  In anticipation of more decades of pushing the Sissiphean aid rock up the development mountain, funders, aid agencies, recipient countries and eventual beneficiaries all agree that a “smarter” aid is needed, not just–or even necessarily–a larger amount of conventional aid.

The speakers to this thesis, including contrary views, were

• Randall Nielsen, Program Officer, The Civic-economic Connection Initiative, of The Kettering Foundation; and
• Charlotte Jones Carroll, former officer in the World Bank and US-AID.
• William Reuben, recently retired from World Bank NGO Unit, was unable to participate but Ramon Daubon, President, Esquel Group, spoke for him.

Nielsen accepted the core premise of the session– that economic development assistance hasn’t really worked– but made special note of the Kettering Foundation’s experiences in linking of “development” to “democracy.” The three elements that make democracy work, Nielsen argued, are

• that citizens see themselves as “actors” in their communities
• that the community provides opportunities for action and inter-action, and
• that there are “institutions” that make the actors and the community work well.

In brief, democracy requires associational life that is healthy. In this context, engaged citizens work with and through their organizations to achieve “development.”

In recent years, community based organizations have changed as have the donor organizations. The donors, however, sometimes see CSOs as obstacles to development, not as resources. Other times CSOs self-assign themselves protagonists roles as representatives “of the people” and speak on the people’s behalf, thus reducing the people’s capacity to speak for themselves. So the issue remains: When are outside aid agencies complementary to development, and when are they antagonistic?

Daubon, speaking for Reuben as well as expressing his own views, noted that the concept of “development” that originated with the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods institutions, effectively equated “infrastructure” with “development.” This view was best justified in the European context, where core skills and institutions were either in place or could be recovered once the roads, rails, factories and farms were rebuilt. The World Bank later evolved its views to include education and other institutions as critical elements to development.

By the 1970s (and the McNamara regime) the main focus of the Bank was on the developing countries. It became clear that deep changes were needed in both the Bank and in the countries in order to achieve development.

The views of the World Bank have continued to evolve. In the 1980s Bank policy was dominated by the Washington Consensus which limited the power of developing countries to finance social projects. But the increasingly important role of the larger developing countries (Brazil, China, India, etc.) in Bank policy and governance is also impacting Bank action. Much greater “participation” of NGOs in the selection and design of projects and setting of priorities may be found -but this is not universal nor does this result in more “development.” The issue remains “Who is capable of inventing a smarter aid?”

Einstein, Daubon mentioned, mused that the designers of a problem should not be in charge of designing its solution. The sense of the meeting was that given constraints of history, institutional cultures and self-interest, the present donor institutions are incapable of inventing the “smart aid” that every one agrees is needed.

Jones Carroll questioned some of the premises of the session. External assistance has brought substantial improvements in, for example, disease control, improved roads and communications (mobile phones leapfrogging old telephones systems). She also felt that the NGOs have been around longer than the AID agencies, and they too have not been more successful.

On he other hand, Jones Carroll took issue with the World Bank’s assertions that “development” does not necessarily require “democracy” but definitely requires a policy environment favorable for investors. The so-called David Dollar analysis “supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries.”¹ Jones Carroll said that critical elements are missing from such an analysis. Specifically, “democratic participation” is not given attention, much less priority.

Her experience with US-AID confirmed that this assistance was often inappropriate and misshapen by emphasis on US national security or commercial interests rather than recipient country development. Motivations of other countries’ assistance programs vary but the national interests of the donors tend to dominate, rather than recognizing that effective development must be endogenous.

She recommended as one of the best analyses of the role of external assistance in fostering development that of Norman Uphoff -what he characterizes as “assisted self-reliance.”² Jones Carroll agreed with both Uphoff and Thomas Carroll that development above all requires strong emphasis on endogenous capacity building.³

The wide-ranging discussion covered, among other topics, the nature of “development.” One speaker argued that a distinction must be made between economic “growth” and “development.” The first does not imply the latter. In fact, development typically requires a change in the status and power of various individuals in a community such that the former power-holders are replaced or supplemented by others-as when peasants have access to resources after reforms so that the former landlords lose their economic and political control in the community.

Ramon Daubon (L) and Randall Nielsen (R)

Another speaker expressed the view that the World Bank and other aid-agencies should continue to build needed infrastructure, but should separately give equal or greater attention to building the endogenous capacity and the conditions for democratic participation. This argues for expanded role for civil society organizations (CSOs to partner with their governments in the administration of aid programs since the World Bank lacks the institutional wherewithal to manage such programs itself.

Attention was called to the potentials for increased appreciation of civic action created by exchanges among communities in Latin America and the US. Esquel has been involved with promoting such exchanges as have other groups such as the Partners of the Americas and the Inter-American Foundation. US-AID has funded many of these activities in the past.

This roundtable session explored further how ordinary citizens -the presumed beneficiaries of development assistance– in collaboration with their CSOs, could engage in re-thinking development assistance, and how this enhanced deliberative grassroots capacity for public agenda-building might be achieve “smarter aid.”

¹ See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=632684

² For an extended expression of his thesis, see Norman Uphoff “Assisted Self Reliance” pp. 47-60 in Strengthening the Poor: What Have We Learned,  Overseas Development Council, Washington DC, 1988.

³ See also Thomas Carroll, Intermediary NGOs: The Supporting Link in Grassroots Development, Kumarian Presss, 1994

The Esquel Group’s Civil Society Task Force met on May 28 at the offices of the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) to explore “The US and Cuba: A Long View of an Obsessive Relationship, 1809-2009 and Beyond.” The discussion centered on the evolution of  Cuba’s apparent paranoia toward the US and the US  obsession with controlling Cuba, in the belief that a clearer understanding of the history of the last two centuries might open the door to a more constructive relationship.

Anna Nelson, Distinguished Historian in Residence at American University, presented the panorama of US ambitions and attitudes toward Cuba and the Caribbean islands beginning in the early stages after US independence. US Acquisition of Cuba —  Americans assumed they would enjoy eventual ownership of Cuba from the very beginning. To them it was an off-shore island (like Taiwan in relation to China). But it was all talk before 1811. Attention became focused during the Napoleonic Wars.  That was when Americans just moved in to settle East & West Florida, and thought they could do same in Cuba.

The US was concerned that Britain would take over Cuba since it was Spain’s ally against Napoleon –and the US was drifting into war with Britain in 1812.

As a result, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe found it clearly desirable to keep the Spanish in Cuba instead of England. Monroe even repelled an agent who wanted support for an insurrection. But this was representative of the views in the 1820s – the era of Monroe Doctrine. To John Quincy Adams, Cuba was of vital interest. What he feared at that time was US entanglement in the European war which would lead to Cuba being transferred to Britain “in such a way that it would threaten the security of the Union.”

The US – and Jefferson – were in fact concerned about “national security.” The Floridas were essential to control of the Gulf of Mexico. Cuba would make US even more secure on southern boundary. Jefferson voiced this in 1823:

“The control [of Cuba] would give us over the Gulf of Mexico and the countries and isthmus  bordering on it, as well as all whose flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political wellbeing,”

(Pratt,p.69)

What Jefferson wanted was an independent Cuba that would attach itself to the US like Floridas. Monroe, Quincy Adams and Jefferson (until his death) all wanted Spain to stay in charge of Cuba since the big threat seemed to be that England might take over.

Cuba became an issue again in the 1840s and 1850s as interest grew as part of American expansionism – the famous Manifest Destiny.

First, the Mexican War of 1846-48 turned attention to Cuba. Then, Cuban insurrectionists set up shop in NY. La Verdad newspaper and countless letters to presidents and cabinet members appealed for US help. The rebels won support from the penny press, the NY Sun in particular. John L. O’Sullivan, who coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” was an ardent supporter of the rebellion. New Orleans later served as a center for Cuban agitators.

Another side to the issue – “filibusters” from the US flourished in the 1850s when they began to advocate and occasionally carry out attacks on the Spanish. Narciso Lopez is the best known but the grip included a general from the Mexican War and countless other former soldiers who didn’t want to go back to their farms and families.  The US neither sponsored nor approved of their efforts since the Neutrality Acts made such efforts illegal. But that did not prevent President James K Polk from trying to buy Cuba. He met with Spanish hostility.

Ironically, in 1854, U.S. had an excuse for war over a ship. Black Warrior pulled into Havana with 900 bales of cotton. Spanish authorities seized it on a flimsy excuse and confiscated its cargo.

Speculators and Filibusters continued to dominate the Caribbean movements. These promoters of annexation were not in the business of protecting human rights; their annexation model was Florida and Texas. The lands they accumulated for nothing was valuable only if the US took over.

However, there was a different motive on the part of the slave-state South, They feared that if England gained control of Cuba, it would  free the slaves, causing havoc in the South. They were eager to have US in charge – with Cuba as a new slave state.

The Ostend Manifesto in 1854 was the high point of attempts to buy Cuba. Secretary of State Marcy directed three American ministers in Europe to develop plans for acquiring Cuba. The report of James Buchanan, Pierre Soule, and John Mason was not a manifesto but a secret dispatch – which, of course, soon leaked –which  declared that US had every right to wrest Cuba from Spain, indirectly threatening war if Spain wouldn’t sell. After his party suffered in mid-term elections, Marcy told Soule, whose aim was to create another slave state,  to cease efforts to buy Cuba.

When the Cuban insurrection began in 1868, the US was urged to intervene but Secretary of State Hamilton Fish felt the insurrection was disorganized and not going anywhere. At his direction Grant proclaimed  that the insurrection was not a civil war, so they did not recognize the belligerency.

Three years later, 1873, a Spanish gunboat captured the Virginius, a rebel ship flying an American flag. Spanish took the ship to Santiago, court-martialed and killed 53 passengers, including US and British citizens. This caused an understandable  uproar. Secretary Fish then learned that the ship belonged to the Cubans and was fraudulently flying a US flag and had carried armaments and insurrectionists. But Fish pointed out that without a war there was no legal right to capture a ship. Spain then released the ship and paid indemnity.

The diplomatic way the Virginius incident was received showed that the US was still suffering from the aftermath of the Civil War, and was not yet ready to pursue foreign military adventures.  However, US business interests grew ever stronger in Cuba’s profitable sugar business, and would play a role in US attitudes toward Cuba when the island again erupted in conflict in the mid-1990s.

Esquel Group President Ramon Daubon then focused on the period immediately before and after 1898 and on three premises: First, that the US had always presented Cuba as its own, seeing it as either a damsel in distress to be rescued from evildoers, a helpless child to be guided, or a rebellious youth to be disciplined. Daubon illustrated these perceptions using editorial cartoons published in the US in the early 1900s. These perceptions, he argued, are extremely irksome to Cubans, and persevere to this day.

Second, that with changes in the production technology of sugar and its profitability after the 1850s, American investors in effect took over essential ownership of Cuban production and trade from the former local landowning aristocracy which became instead partners, agents or employees of American firms and closely wedded to American political interests. The ex-landowners thus separated from the emerging nationalist bourgeoisie and from the former slave population, which had now become wage workers in the sugar industry, suffering under even worse conditions than they had as slaves.  The rebellion begun in 1868  was thus not just for independence from Spanish rule but a revolution for national sovereignty, for racial and social justice, and for democratic governance.  Spain’s struggle to retain control of the lucrative sugar trade, which eventually drew in the US, was therefore an overlay on top of a deeper political struggle pitting the nationalists against the “assimilationsists.”

Third, this bilateral civil struggle continued inside Cuba in the XX century until the success of Castro’s revolutionary force in 1959.  At that time the defeated assimilationists found an ally in the US, with many moving to Miami and elsewhere in the US. Meanwhile the nationalists, particularly after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1962, found a counter-balance in the Soviet Union.  This drew the internal Cuban civil war into the global Cold War arena and placed Cuba at the center of the East-West struggle for the hearts and minds of the “third world”.  Undaunted by the collapse of the socialist block in 1989-90, the struggle continues to this day with persistent US measures in support of the assimilationist exile faction and the stubborn intransigence of the Cuban nationalists which now had nearly unanimous international moral support, including Latin America.

Philip Brenner, Professor of International Relations and History, American University and Co-Editor A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution, offered his assessment of the current US-Cuban situation.

There is almost a giddiness in Washington about the possibility of a rapprochement between Cuba and the United States. It is understandable because there: a) is a new US president who is not beholden to Cuban-Americans for his election; (b) is a majority of Cuban-Americans now favor rapprochement and/or at least dialogue; (c) are business interests that favor rapprochement; (d) is no longer a military threat from Cuba; (e) is broad Latin American support for a rapprochement between Cuba and the United States (all now have diplomatic relations with Cuba); (f) is new leadership in Cuba.

However, I believe the expectations are inflated unrealistically, and that there will be only minor changes in the relationship during the next two or three years. This is partly due the fifty year legacy of hostility between the two countries, which has generated mistrust and fear that pervades the relationship. There are also particular factors that influence both the Raúl Castro and Barack Obama administrations that will discourage much change.

The current Cuban situation is defined by the shake-up in the Cuban government leadership two months ago. This provides clues about what is happening in Cuba. Most notable was the removal of three men who were considered in Washington to be likely future leaders of Cuba: Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister; Carlos Lage, the Cabinet Secretary and Vice President in charge of the economy; Fernando Remírez, head of the International Affairs Office of the Central Committee. At the same time, seven other ministers were replaced.

The common speculation in Washington is that Perez Roque and Lage were removed because they were caught on a secretly recorded tape making jokes about Fidel and Raúl Castro. But my interviews in Havana last month suggest two other reasons for their dismissal.

First, the Cuban economy is in a bad state. Indeed, earlier this week Cuba announced cutbacks and austerity measures because of economic problems. One high official graphically described the situation to me by asserting that Cuba consumes less toilet tissue per capita than Haiti. Lage was responsible for the economy, and in a sense for its failings. But Perez Roque was implicated because he and Lage had an economic strategy that depended on Cuba’s continued access to subsidized oil imports from Venezuela. Neither Raúl nor Fidel Castro wanted Cuba’s future to rely so heavily on one source of support.

Second, Perez Roque and Lage had risen to prominence as members of the grupo de apoyo, a small group of people who had effectively served as Fidel Castro’s special assistants. His style of governing was relatively informal, with a kind of creative chaos engendered by competition between  three centers of power: the party, the formal government, and the grupo de apoyo. This is not a governing style with which Raúl Castro was comfortable. He prefers clear lines of responsibility and accountability, and so he needed to destroy the remnants of the grupo de apoyo. It is for this reason that Fidel Castro who provided the reason for the cabinet shake-up with a scornful comment that those who were removed had lusted after the “honey pot of power”. He thus demonstrated that his small group no longer had any power, and that he endorsed his brother’s style of governing.

This suggests that Raúl’s plan is to consolidate authority in the government – in the ministries. Notably, three weeks ago there was an unheralded announcement that Miguel Díaz-Canel, the first secretary of the Communist Party in Holguin and a rising star known for his managerial competence, was appointed as the new Minister of Higher Education. I heard rumors also that the Ministry of Education would be merged with the Ministry of Higher Education, presumably under Díaz-Canel’s leadership. Raúl Castro has recently begun to promise as well that Cuba will guarantee universal higher education. His development strategy appears to be one that relies on an educated workforce and highly skilled services rather than on the sale of commodities such as nickel or on tourism.

But the strategy is in earliest stages, with great uncertainty about its success, and with new players still learning their roles. Under these circumstances, Cuba is wary about whether it might be overwhelmed by a flood of U.S. tourists and U.S. capital if relations with the United States improved too quickly. It reasonably worries, too, that the U.S. government would take advantage of any openings to destabilize the Cuban regime while it is vulnerable.

With respect to current U.S. policy, President Obama’s removal of restrictions on Cuban-American travel and on remittances was about as little as he could reasonably do. These were campaign promises he felt obliged to fulfill, and he hoped they would satisfy the clamoring by Latin American allies for a serious change in U.S. policy towards Cuba. The proposed easing of regulations on telecommunications has great hurdles to overcome, none of which the president acknowledged. There is a legacy of the United States using telecommunications for the purpose of subversion against Cuba. There also is a $95 million debt Cuba wants paid by telephone companies. Though owed to Cuba, the money was given to families of the Brothers-to-the-Rescue pilots killed in a 1996 shoot down by the Cuban air force. The President could have done much more quite easily. For example, he has the authority to lift tight restrictions on educational travel that President Bush had put in place in 2004, or to cut the budget for propaganda broadcasts by TV Martí.

But Cuba is a low priority for President Obama who does not want to create possible distractions from his focus on major issues. Moreover, he is just assembling his Latin America team. Given past efforts at détente with Cuba, the president may also be wary of a “surprise” from Cuba that could hurt him politically. Here, too, the legacy of hostility gets in the way of better relations today.

In short, both Cuba and the United States have reasons to go slow on an improved relationship. Each has gained something from the recent changes. Cuba stands to gain some short-term benefits from increased Cuban-American travel, and the United States seems to have reduced a bit the pressure from Latin America for a rapprochement.  Each now calculates that more change may generate higher costs than gains. Notably, at the OAS ministerial meeting scheduled for next week, it is likely that the only two countries opposing the removal of Cuba’s 1962 suspension from the organization will be Cuba and the United States.

Civil Society and Social Movements: Building Sustainable Democracies in Latin America. Edited by Arthur Domike. Inter-American Development Bank, 2008, 413 pp. $23.00.

Policymaking in Latin America: How Politics Shapes Policies. Edited by Ernesto Stein, Mariano Tommasi, Carlos Scartascini, and Pablo Spiller. Harvard University Press, 2008, 500 pp. $29.95.

Reviewed by Richard Feinberg, University of California, San Diego

____________________________________________________________

For investors, diplomats, and journalists struggling to comprehend why things work the way they do in Latin America, Policymaking in Latin America is an astute guidebook. Breaking loose from the academic straitjacket of “rigor” that narrows analysis to a few measurable variables, this group of mostly Latin American social scientists takes a more comprehensive approach to policymaking, one in which presidencies, legislators, courts, regulators, civil servants, central bankers, governors, and the multilayered rules that govern interactions among them drive the complex design, implementation, and verification of policy choices. This is not a juicy insider account of policy dramas. Instead, it offers judicious, coherent explorations of local institutions and incentives that yield cooperation or distrust; the “rational” outcomes may or may not serve a broader public purpose. Most frustrating is Argentina, whose dysfunctional culture produces myopic, self-serving, weakly enforced, and highly volatile policies. In sober, successful Chile, in contrast, high-quality, tightly knit political leadership generates farsighted strategies. The policymaking process is improving in Brazil and Colombia, in need of a new consensus in Mexico, and deteriorating terribly in Venezuela. There can be no cookie-cutter path to improvement; institutional reforms must be firmly rooted in local history.

The contributors to Civil Society and Social Movements are less concerned with efficiency and outcomes than they are with participation and process. Whereas the economists Stein and Tommasi fear that large numbers of participants slow and sometimes block timely decision-making, Domike’s associates seek to deepen democracy and transform political culture through a wider inclusion of diverse voices. Speaking of the “bruising nature of democracy,” the Mexican academic and activist Sergio Aguayo grapples passionately with the tensions inherent in many social movements between those who practice a perennial “culture of denunciation” and those who move from protesting to proposing specific policies. A particularly rich and skillful contribution by Joan Caivano and Thayer Hardwick chronicles the progressive advances of Latin American women. They find that increasingly, results-oriented technical nongovernmental organizations focused on policy impact are gaining more funding and influence than traditional social movement groups geared toward feminist consciousness-raising and mobilization.

In his upbeat conclusion, Domike contends that where citizen engagement expands and conflict resolution is smartly practiced, Latin American democracies can become at once more participatory and legitimate and more effective at achieving economic and social development.

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¡Se Buscan Ciudadanos!
-Ramón Daubón en conferencia magistral resalta la participación ciudadana, la inclusión y el buen gobierno como claves para el desarrollo

Plan Estratégico de Juárez, A.C., en el marco de su Ciclo de Conferencias 2009, presentó el pasado 25 de febrero en el Centro de Convenciones Cibeles al Dr. Ramón Daubón con la conferencia “¡Se Buscan Ciudadanos! La participación ciudadana, la inclusión y el buen gobierno como claves para el desarrollo”

Ante un público de cerca de 1,200 personas de los diferentes sectores de la comunidad, el Dr. Daubón elucidó sobre nuestra responsabilidad como ciudadanos para lograr cambios estructurales en nuestro entorno. Hizo énfasis, además, en la importancia y peso del papel del ciudadano al hacernos conscientes de lo siguiente: “El gobierno es fiduciario, administrador de los asuntos públicos de la ciudad” refiriéndose a la corresponsbilidad que como ciudadanos debemos ejercer al lado de quienes son nuestros fiduciarios pues hay momentos en que debemos ser actores y momentos en que debemos ser vigilantes de los asuntos de la ciudad.

Lo anterior refuerza las bases de lo que busca el proyecto del Pacto por Juárez (hacer, participar, exigir) y los ciudadanos que escucharon al Dr. Daubón se mostraron entusiastas al reconocer en sus palabras una lógica que a todos dejó motivados.

Ramón Daubón, quien como connotado economista cuenta con 35 años de experiencia en el desarrollo de comunidades socialmente sustentables, es actualmente presidente del Grupo Esquel en Washington, D.C. y asesor del Banco Mundial además de haberse desempeñado durante una larga temporada como directivo de la Fundación Inter-Americana con base en Estados Unidos.

Colaboraron con Plan Estratégico de Juárez, A.C. para lograr esta importante conferencia magistral las siguientes entidades: el Centro de Convenciones Cibeles, Ciudadanos por una Mejor Administración Pública y la Fundación del Empresariado Chihuahuense, A.C.

Para consultar la presentación íntegra del Dr. Daubón, te invitamos que visites la página del Pacto: www.pactoporjuarez.org

February 20th, 2009
International Center for Non-Profit Law
Washington, DC

I – Welcome and Introduction of Panelists

• Ramon Daubon, Esquel Group President

II – Book Discussion Presentation

• Dr. David A. Crocker, Author and Senior Research Scholar, Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, School of Public Policy – University of Maryland

Five Scourges of the Earth
- Poverty
- Violence
- Environmental Crisis
- Tyranny
- Degrading Inequality

Ethics of Global Development offers a moral reflection on the ends and means of local, national, and global efforts to overcome these five scourges.

We need to disenthrall ourselves of the grip that the proposition of development holds on us, based on the idea that economic growth is the end all and be all of development.

In order to do this we need to get ethics on the development agenda by acknowledging the role of ethics in development studies, policymaking, and practice. This includes: a deepening and broadening of cross cultural interaction and institutionalization; the extended and improved use of the capabilities approach; addressing the issues of over consumption (core) and under consumption (periphery) in different parts of the world; extending development ethics and capabilities approach to international scene; and the usage of deliberative democracy in both institutional and informal settings.

Central questions in the book include how the benefits and burdens of development should be distributed? And, who should do the distributing? As well as, what are the virtues and vices of development workers?

For Amartya Sen the basic purpose of development has to be to facilitate, enhance and protect freedoms. Development needs to move its focus away from the production of commodities and income. Instead it needs to stress the acquisition of capabilities and freedoms. It needs to recognize the individual and collective agency of people and communities, their desire and capacity to run their own life and make their own decisions individually and collectively.

Martha Nussbaum focused Sen’s concepts and attempted to derive a core set of universal capabilities that all people value at all times. She proposed that these core capabilities be enshrined in all constitutions.

The crux of the book is that agency-focused capability approach can then be extended and strengthened by applying it to the challenges of consumerism and hunger, the development responsibilities of affluent individuals and nations, and the dilemmas of globalization. Particular emphasis is needed to understand the globalization of democracy and the need for a democratization of globalization. This deeper approach to democracy in both government and outside of it can be found through discussion, dialogue and creating spaces of common ground upon which emerging consensus can be identified.

III – Speaker Commentary

• Patti Petesch, Independent Researcher and Policy Analyst

There is a need, not for strict equality, but some kind of equality of opportunity. High mobility communities have lower group participation than poorer communities. High mobility communities have more violence than poorer communities. Conflict offers opportunity for institutional experiments to be deliberate. Communities can’t always stand harmful partnerships and governments are not always transparent. Some development partnerships reinforce cohesion and some corrode capacity.

IV – Speaker Commentary

• Katherine Marshall, Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and Visiting Professor in the Government Department and the School of Foreign Service – Georgetown University

In the context of the World Bank, ethics has long been seen as related exclusively to the real of government corruption and the proper filing of financial statements. Ethics is not about unethical people, it is about what one should do when faced with hundreds of decisions every day that impact the lives of others. One particular problem in large international development institutions is the sense that some people get that “we’re more ethical than you. After all whose ethics are these anyway? One controversial example of the warring moralities relates to reproductive health rights. Development is a complex and non-linear process. While the Millennium Development Goals provide morally simple objectives, their implementation is very difficult. To achieve them the development community needs to focus on results with technical rigor, yet simultaneously act with compassion and humility. Equity comes from justice, and currently the way that the world’s power and opportunity is development is not fair. We need a fairly even distribution of opportunity. This discussion of development ethics must inform our perspective on what society and world. We need to help see the world from multiple perspectives in order to be truly able to deal with the complexity and competing priorities that abound.

V – Public Questions and Answers

Public comments, questions and answers included discussions on: the need for deliberative spaces as means to find the footholds of consensus; the question of the validity of searching to define a common (or universal) ethic to guide development work; the challenges presented by the asymmetry of power and what happens when one group uses their freedom to dominate others; and, how power is distributed and under which conditions can we do something to change that.

Ramon Daubon: ”Good governance emerges slowly and from below.” Photo Credit:Marta Roviro

CAPE TOWN, Feb 20 (IPS) – Dr Ramon E Daubon not only believes in democratising development but takes umbrage at the ‘‘cult of tangible results” in development assistance.

In a paper written for the non-governmental Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) he argued that aid will not generate sustainable socio-economic progress if the recipients are not in charge of what he calls ‘‘indigenous development”.

This is the opposite of what is happening. Presently, donors rely on advice from so-called experts and community elites. The result has been that recipient communities have been turned into dependent clients of endless philanthropy.

To change this result, donors should move away from quick-fix aid and even face up to a shift in power relations between donors and recipients, wrote Daubon, who is president of the Esquel Group. Esquel is a non-profit organisation operating in North and South America, promoting social equity and sustainable development.

Stephanie Nieuwoudt picked his brain in search of lessons for Africa based on his experience in the Americas.

IPS: To critics it seems as if aid in Africa has yielded more failures than successes. Why are aid interventions on the continent seemingly less successful than elsewhere?

Ramon Daubon: It is hard to define either ‘‘successes” or ‘‘failures”, but from the outside it does appear that Africa tends to have more trouble than most other regions.

Without going into long explanations, I’d say that the colonial and prior history has a lot to do with this, but I’d also put a lot of the blame on the development assistance failure to come up with a mode of intervention more appropriate to the African institutional reality.

I’m only marginally familiar with the African experience but, if anything, development assistance may have encouraged strife and delayed development by fostering dependence on – and competition for the favours of – the outside ‘‘gods of development”.

IPS: What is the solution? If not the ‘‘outside gods”, what form of aid would be appropriate to the African institutional reality?

RD: There are two kinds of aid: disaster relief and development assistance. The first one is unfortunately indispensable and unavoidable but should be short-term. Such is help after catastrophes, vaccination campaigns, et cetera. There is no stigma associated with that.

The second one is for long-term results, some of which would mitigate the need for some of the first kind in the long run. As a country progresses it has less need of assistance with vaccination campaigns, for instance.

This is where development assistance has failed. It has addressed the symptoms of nations’ poverty – lack of income, schools – but failed to address the reasons behind the symptoms: their institutional incapacity to govern themselves well.

If anything, having outsiders attending to the symptoms delays the indigenous development of that capacity.

IPS: In a paper for IDASA you wrote that private sector donors should see themselves as civic investors. What are civic investors? And why is it important that the donor community become civic investors?

RD: Because otherwise they are not ‘‘doing development”, they are just throwing money around. When the money runs out, everything stops. We’ve wasted 60 years of misconceived development assistance in this way.

Development requires an institutional under-girth, which in turn requires good public governance, which in turn requires strong civic oversight over public life. Investing directly in ‘‘development” while assuming away all the other prerequisites produces what we have unfortunately come to see.

The challenge for development assistance is how to promote by its interventions such civic ownership on the part of citizens. That is investing in civic capacities, or ‘‘civic investing”. Donors should see themselves first and foremost as such investors.

IPS: This seems logical and laudable, but is it feasible? Building governance capacity, accountability, transparency and good governance in countries where humanitarian aid is required takes time. In the meantime, what does one do about the immediate suffering of people at grassroots level?

Also, would investing in capacity building not become a black hole – lots of workshops and conferences swallowing aid money without tangible results? Repressive governments would not allow even humanitarian aid if it came with strings attached, such as demands for good governance.

RD: Again, outsiders can attend to those desperate needs immediately while at the same time supporting projects that engage people in learning to address their own needs in the longer run.

And, by the way, I take umbrage at the cult of ‘‘tangible results”. The race to generate them makes donors hurry to provide them directly rather than helping the beneficiaries learn to provide for themselves.

We’re not talking about holding conferences but rather supporting well-conceived projects that compel people to collectively learn how to make decisions, design plans, execute them and judge whether the are working. This way takes longer, for sure, but contrary to the quick-fix approach, the results are sustainable.

And, by the way, ‘‘good governance” emerges very slowly and from below. Donors cannot demand it, but they can help beneficiaries design projects that in the course of their execution help people discover that they can indeed govern themselves well.

IPS: Is there not a danger that Western donors who want to become civic donors in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world would, by promoting good governance, be seen as patronising meddlers? How can the aim of civic development be achieved without being prescriptive?

RD: Every society must develop its own style of good governance. However, donors can help them discover what their style is. I personally subscribe to some universal indispensable values, essentially contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I strongly believe that citizens are indispensable to this discovery and that every person has the right to be an equal, full citizen.

IPS: There have been many critics of aid who say that aid makes beggars of the people who are supposed to be helped.

RD: Yes, that is the biggest harm done by development assistance: it turns communities and whole countries into supplicants.

IPS: You have said that participation in the creation of public life is important if communities want to help themselves. Please explain.

RD: The unit of analysis of development is the community. Sure, the policy environment is critical but the effective demand for and implementation of ‘‘good governance” measures happens in communities. For that, communities must learn to articulate and exercise their public voice; they have to learn to think, talk and act as communities.

IPS: Should aid be focused on a micro group in a certain region or should it be expanded to perhaps include all communities in that particular region? Or should aid be a national project?

RD: Hard to tell. Countries should develop themselves. There are no ‘‘poor” countries, only mismanaged ones. I like to point out that one of the ‘‘poorest” countries in the world is Switzerland. God gave it practically nothing… except the Swiss and their capacity to govern themselves.

Development assistance should provide replicable models of activities that communities and countries can carry out on their own.

IPS: What would be the ‘‘magic formula” for intervention by donors?

RD: There is no magic formula. Each country must discover its own path. The Spanish poet Antonio Machado once said: ‘‘Wayfarer, there is no path. The path is made by walking.” Development assistance could be very useful in helping countries make that discovery.

Instead donors make external ‘‘needs assessments” and descend on the countries bearing gifts. Egad!

(END/2009)

Originally Posted by IPS:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=4583

January 22nd, 2009
Organization of American States
Washington, DC

I – Welcome and OAS Building Tour

• Aline Hommes, Specialist, Department of International Affairs – Secretariat for External Relations, Organization of American States

II – Introduction of Panelists

• Aline Hommes, Specialist, Department of International Affairs – Secretariat for External Relations, Organization of American States

III – Speaker Remarks

• Jane Thery, Head of OAS-USA Relations, Organization of American States

The principal focus areas of the OAS are: multidimensional security, integral development, political affairs and democracy, and human rights. The OAS is composed of representatives from all of the member states, that make up the board of directors, and a technical staff to help facilitate and carry out the resolutions and mandates that are generated in the General Assembly and the Summits of the Americas. The technical secretariat is about 600-700 people, although it was much larger in the past. Every year, in the first few weeks of June, the OAS holds a general assembly of foreign ministers, which always takes place in one of the member states. This year it will be in Honduras. The General Assembly produces an annual report on the progress of the OAS and creates the mandates for the next year.

The technical secretariat helps to identify new issue areas, and what role there might be for the OAS. The organization brings together experts to provide the latest analysis on developing issues and the ambassadors may then choose to put forward a resolution to address them. Sometimes the resolutions are supportive of the work of other states or international organizations, and other times they call for the OAS to work on the issues directly and set up some Inter-American instrument to achieve that purpose. In the second case the OAS will begin to facilitate the process of joint negotiations, such as in the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. This instrument outlined the shared vision of the member states on democracy and set up a process for addressing threats to democracy in the hemisphere. The result is that most of the work of the Secretariat for Political Affairs in supporting democracy is guided by the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

In the realm of integral development, which has been evolving very rapidly to include a very broad range of issues, the OAS is seeking to provide small grants to innovative projects as well as provide space for ministerial meetings that address the relevant sectors. All of the ministerial meetings, which are about every two years, are then supposed to feed into the summit process. Such that if the Education ministers meet and decide on certain common issues of interest, then that can be fed into a Summit declaration that the Presidents can then support.

The Human Rights area is unique in that individual citizens can appeal their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Therefore, the Commission needs to be semi-autonomous in order to insure that country’s can be critical of themselves when they make mistakes or have internal problems. The Commission also has special rapporteurs for freedom of expression, for indigenous people, for handicapped, etc. that are supposed to do regular reports about the member states on these issues.

Questions and discussions with the audience included conversation about: the number of member state signatories to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; the changing role of multilateral institutions in world affairs; the connections and need for increased joint strategic planning between the OAS, IADB, World Bank and IMF; the effects and changes in OAS-civil society engagement over the past ten years; what the OAS has done to preserve the legal space for civil society activity in member states; the existence and activity of health and medically focused civil society organizations, and their relationship to the Pan-American Health Organization; the role of the private (business) sector in civil society funding and activities as they relate to the OAS.

IV – Speaker Remarks

• Pablo Zúñiga, Director, Department for State Modernization and Governance,
  Secretariat for Political Affairs Director, Organization of American States

The OAS is a multilateral organization made up of the executive branches of member state governments. Therefore, the strength of the OAS is its technical expertise in these multilateral affairs and negotiations, and its weakness is that it depends on the invitations and mandates of the executive branches of its member states to take action on issues. Our strength is when the OAS can serve to get the member states to agree on an issue by consensus then it creates a big door of opportunity that you can drive things through. However, this can be a limiting factor when you talk about civil society.

When we talk about ourselves as the OAS we are really talking about the General Secretariat, the executing organ of the OAS. The OAS is really the General Assembly, the consensus of the governments. If utilized well the OAS can be a very strong instrument for countries large and small.

The year 1991 is an important date because it was at the General Assembly of Santiago Chile that marked the first moment of hemispheric consensus with regards to democracy. All of the governments agreed about the need to promote democracy, and that the people have some type of right to democracy. At that point the OAS did not have any capacity to strengthen democracy, so they created a unit within the General Secretariat to focus on strengthening democracy. The main focus then was institutions of democracy, mostly elections.

Ten years later many countries became disappointed that the OAS Resolution 1080, which had come out of the Santiago General Assembly (1991), because it was a responsive but not proactive tool to address any rupture in a legitimate constitutional process of a member state. It was used to defend democracy when it was in peril, such as the 1991 coup in Haiti, when the resolution was used to convene the ministers of foreign affairs to address that situation. However, it was not able to promote and strengthen democracy. So many of the governments began discussing the development of a pro-active tool.

What came out of that was the Inter-American Democratic Charter. As a document it gives us a snapshot of what constitutes democracy, and it provides an integral approach. It says that the people of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote it and defend it. The Charter has a huge power as a normative instrument that can change behavior. In the past OAS democracy promotion has been limited by the principle of non-intervention into the internal ongoings of a state. The OAS is not an NGO nor is it a supranational body, it is simply a conglomeration of the governments of the hemisphere, who have come together to strengthen their own common good.

The Democratic Charter states that human rights are an element of democracy, and that development and the fight against poverty are also elements of democracy. It also continues the elements of Resolution 1080, so it does have a means to protect and defend democracy where it is in danger of being interrupted. It also talks about promoting a democratic culture. So it comes to view democracy as not just institutions and norms, but as a way of life and a construct of values and principles. In this way it promotes a civic morality associated with democratic values like tolerance, participation, respect, anti-discrimination.

For civil society Articles 1 and 6 reference the importance of active citizen participation that is ethical and responsible. So the charter gives governments an obligation to involve civil society, to involve their people in the democratic process. It ties democracy directly to the protection of human rights, to the need for transparency in government action. It speaks to the importance of democratic political parties and political organizations, as well as the equal participation of women in politics. Other issues such as human development, quality education and the respect for the environment are also included as elements of democracy. Which means that civil society and citizens can use this Charter to hold governments accountable.

At present the Secretariat of Political Affairs is aware that we have never had as much institutional democracy, elections, and a commitment to it. At the same time we have never had more inequality in the region. The situation is that the governments of Latin America have not been able to deliver the public goods, they have not been able to create a citizenship that is more complete. There have been advances in the realm of political citizenship, such as enhanced rights to suffrage, increased electoral transparency, strengthened institutions and political parties. The human rights system has been geared towards strengthening a civil citizenship, with the rights and responsibilities. However, citizenship is more than that. There is also a social-economic citizenship that has a right to education and to employment as well as to the expectation of good governance, and the governments have a right to look out for this.

That is where we are right now, that the General Secretariat is working toward right now. Our areas of work have been and continue to be: election monitoring and reform of electoral institutions; strengthening the representative systems such as the congresses and parliaments, issues of de-centralization and strengthening local government; and, issues of values and practices of conflict resolution and promoting a culture of peace and dialogue. We have also strengthened the OAS’s analytical capacity, to look at the hot spots to advise the Secretary General so that he can use his resources when requested to mediate and to work on politically delicate issues.

The Department of State Modernization and Governance focuses on strengthening the state’s capacity to deliver on the types of citizenship that I have described. We also do institution building in the area of legislative technical assistance, through forums with presidents of legislatures and congresses. We support FOPREL (Foro de los Presidentes de Poderes Legislativos de Centroamérica y la Cuenca del Caribe), and help train the presidents of the legislatures or their commissions on issues of the Inter-American system. We also provide individual assistance to legislatures who are seeking to modernize with new technologies and who want to establish units to respond to citizens and civil society organizations. We have also worked with the Red Interamericana sobre Descentralización, which has worked to convene ministers and high officials responsible for policies of decentralization, local governance and citizen participation. We also do studies and research on topics such as the impact of decentralization.

One of our new areas of work is in transparency of governance, which is based on the Inter-American Convention against corruption. We are just about to launch a webpage that will be a guidebook on transparency and integrity, which will show everything that the governments in the Andean Region and Chile are doing to promote transparency. We are designing an online training course to help directors of government agencies to be more transparent. There is also a section on the training of public officials and young leaders on how they can be agents of democratic change in their professional lives and perform public service with a democratic culture. The most recent area that we started working on is a special focus on the English speaking Caribbean.

One of my passions is education for democracy. We have worked together with our OAS Department of Education to establish an Inter-American Program on Education for Democratic Values and Practices. The program is an alliance of all civil society organizations that promote democracy through formal and non-formal education.

Questions and discussions with the audience included conversation about: how the General Secretariat can strengthen the capacity of the member states by involving civil society; the impact of Canada’s entrance into the OAS on the issue of democracy; active and passive transparency; and, pedagogy of democracy.

V – Speaker Remarks

• David Morris, Director of the Summits of the Americas Secretariat, Organization of American States

The OAS has gone through a modernization process and continues to go through it today. This is because the 14 year old process of the Summits of the Americas and the considerable growth of the Inter-American system over those years have led to the development of a mechanism which we call the Joint Summits Working Group. It is composed of 12 Inter-American institutions working collaboratively in coordination on the conduct of each of their respective roles vis-à-vis the Summits. This grew out of a 2001 agreement at the Quebec Summit, which established the Joint Summit Working Group between the OAS, ECLA, IADB, and PAHO. It has since expanded to include the World Bank, all of the regional financial institutions, plus international migration and labor organizations, and the Institute for Productivity in the Americas. The growth in membership is a reflection of an increased need for institutional coordination, and a need for clarity of the mandates, rules and responsibilities. In this way it is analogous to the process of modernization that our member states have been going through, except at the hemispheric level.

We need that kind of clarity in the Summits process. What is the role of the General Secretariat? What is the role of the National Secretariat? In this current summit process the National Secretariat is in Trinidad and Tobago. The host government has a responsibility in the preparation stage of the summit process. However, one of the things that we have begun to hear increasingly is a need to reflect on what the summits have accomplished over the past 14 years, and what is the challenge and responsibility of the OAS as a multilateral institution to incorporate the summit dynamic as an ultimate programming compass. Secretary General Insulza has said that this is what he wishes his legacy to be.

There has been a lot of criticism, disappointment and failure of some of the summits to perform. We need to bring summitry into the rubric of being results based and focused on real commitments, and not just a forum for making platitudinal statements. There have been 1026 paragraphs of consensus language negotiated in the past 14 years of the summits. The language negotiated in Mar del Plata (2005) were not signed by hemispheric leaders, which said something about the bilateral tensions, sub-regional blockings and concerns over issues of trade that existed at that moment in history.

If we look back at the summit process there has been tremendous engagement of civil society. We have increased this in the past year and a half in preparation for the upcoming summit. We conducted a hemispheric forum here last March, we followed that with a hemispheric forum specifically for the summit process in May held in Miami, and we have since then followed that with civil society consultations for the English speaking Caribbean in Trinidad and Tobago in October, and one for Central America, Mexico and the Dominican Republic that was held in El Salvador last month. And we are now planning a civil society consultation for South America in Peru in February. This will be followed by another Hemispheric forum here in DC in March. More information is available on our website. Finally we will hold another civil society forum just prior to the summit in Trinidad and Tobago.

If we look back at Mar del Plata, Nuevo León, Quebec, Santiago and Miami, there wasn’t yet that institutionalized engagement and consultation of civil society. There were a lot of protests, there was a lot of expressions of concern, and there were a lot of demonstrations, but it wasn’t institutionalized with the same degree of rigor and the same dedication of OAS resources to ensure that the process is engaging, is disciplined, is structured to enable the voices from the sides to be heard.

In addition to that, this year we launched the Summits of the Americas Virtual Platform. That is an online consultative process open to the public, and focuses mostly on the themes of the summit declarations. So we have had discussions on human prosperity, energy security. We are launching a discussion on gender equality, another on public security and democratic governance, as well as another on private sector engagement.

We have also had an increase in expressions of interest for engagement by the private sector. Looking to develop pubic-private partnerships, and the conduct of a private sector forum just prior to the summits themselves. In the lead up to April 17th to 19th in Port of Spain, there will be in the three or four days preceding: a civil society forum jointly organized by the National Secretariat and our office; a private sector forum which is being jointly organized by the Private Sector of the Americas and the OAS department of Trade and Tourism; an indigenous forum being sponsored by the Canadian government in partnership with the Assembly of First Nations and the Association of Women of Canada; a consultation of labor movements with COSATI which is a labor union that works closely with the Inter-American Ministerial on Labor and the recently established Confederación de Sindicalistas de las Americas in conjunction with the OAS Department of Social Development and Labor; a youth forum being organized jointly by the Young Americas Business Trust with the OAS department of Trade and Tourism. The Trust for the Americas will be engaging the private sector through a gala dinner on the eve of the summit to mobilize private sector resources to expand their program to offer training in information and communications technology through out the Caribbean for youth at risk. This is an effort to deal with unemployment problems, and crime and security problems. There will also be a sub-regional forum for people who are Afro-descendants, held by Global Rights, the Summits of the Americas Secretariat with the support of the Inter-American Foundation. Finally we are also planning a forum for people with disabilities.

We work with all of these groups in addition to the main thrust of our work in supporting the National Secretariat and the Planning and Implementation Review Group process, and supporting member states in their access to information about the summits and their events. We also provide support in the process of getting the declarations ready and the preparatory process. Therefore, for us the Summits are very much a process and not just an event. They culminate in an event, which will then launch the next series of activities for its implementation.

A big emphasis of the host government this year is that we have to move out of the rhetoric of the last fourteen years and into a commitment and results. We have yet to see what implications this will have in terms of the declarations, the commitments of member state resources and what impact it will have on the OAS General Secretariat. In the past when people were negotiating declarations they never defined what is a mandate. To me a mandate should be a commitment by leaders for actions that need to be taken by their own governments, because the primary responsibility for the summit implementation rests in the hands of the member states, since they are the owners of the process. As members of civil society you have an opportunity and a responsibility to hold your governments and elected officials accountable to these mandates.

Ideally when I talk about the modernization of the summit process what we would like to work towards is the summit being on a regular basis, possibly every three years, or every two years in substitute for the General Assembly. If the summits are going to be institutionalized as the ultimate governing body of the OAS, this does not need to change the constitution of the OAS, it would just mean that every second or third year the summit would replace the General Assembly. During these General Assemblies foreign ministers would attend because they are the board of governors of the OAS, but additionally they would happen to be attended by their presidents and finance ministers as well. This would be a tremendous affirmation of the importance of the summits in the context of the OAS by all member states and the General Secretariat if we were to achieve that.

Another interesting idea would be for every two or three years that the summits to be a substitute for the general assembly and that we would coordinate it such that the annual meeting of the IADB would take place either directly before of immediately after in the same venue. This would be impressive since the IADB is the single largest provider of finance capital to the Americas. Up to now the IADB has not yet aligned its lending priorities or its country program strategies with the mandates established at the summits, nor has there been an inter-agency alignment. The OAS as a political driver of commitments and the IADB as a financial driver of commitments need to be synchronized.

I think that we are at a watershed mark where this summit can demonstrate that institutionalized capacity to start getting the necessary resources into the OAS, and get resource allocation aligned with member state commitments. It must have an implementation plan that can incorporate a monitoring and evaluation mechanism that can be agreed upon by member states. This way we can get consistent tracking where member states can bring back their own reports of progress, and at the same time their own requests for help. After all the General Secretariat is at the service of member states, we do not set the agenda, we respond to the needs of member states in the best way that we can. I think that we are on the right track.

Questions and discussions with the audience included conversation about: whether the summits have ever addressed the issues of the legal environments for civil society organizations; role of citizens in supporting and sustaining democracy; need to get civil society voices heard by member states before the summits to insure representative process; national consultations and citizen participation; what is the next step of what is minimally acceptable in terms of citizen engagement in their own government; and the possibility of splitting the Summit Implementation and Review Group into two committees one dealing with implementation and another for planning.

December 19th, 2008
Washington, DC

I – Welcome Remarks and Introduction of Program Moderator

• Ramon Daubon, Esquel Group President

II – Introduction of Panelists

• Jane Thery, Head of OAS-USA Relations, Organization of American States

III – Speaker Remarks

• Amb. Hector Morales, United States Permanent Representative, Organization of American States

Implementation is the element that makes the Summit of the Americas successful. The member states are key to the negotiation of the now over 812 mandates. However, many times it is the NGO community and civil society that makes sure that mandates get implemented.

We are seeing more and more a collective approach to challenges and issues, one clear example is sub-regional organizations such as CARICOM, MERCOSUR, Rio Group, UNASUR, NAFTA, Central American System, etc. OAS is the only one that unites all 34 democratic countries in the Hemisphere, and it is the one that has the most robust legal foundation. Sub-regional and Hemispheric organizations are complementary.

Collective approach and building partnerships will be one of the central aspects of the upcoming 5th Summit of the Americas. The theme of this summit will be “Securing our Citizen’s future by Promoting Human Prosperity, Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability”.

Summit will take place 89 days after President Obama takes office, so it will come along very quickly in the begging of his administration and presents an excellent opportunity for him to show interest in the region, listen to regional leaders, and set the tone for his foreign policy engagement with this Hemisphere by putting forward any initiatives he may seek to develop.

Although the financial crisis was not included in the original agenda, it will also be introduced into negotiation sessions. A particular focus will be given to the inclusion of emerging countries into the discussions and actions of groups like the G-20 with regards to the financial crisis going forward.

Hemispheric partnerships include private sector and civil society. The US has assisted the Summit Secretariat in Trinidad and Tobago put together a Civil Society Forum. There will be more meetings going forward and it is not too late to have your point of view heard. You can do this by going to the Summit of the Americas website. You can share it with the US Department of State and with the OAS. The process seeks to foment a dialogue on important issues like health, education, energy security, environment, etc.

The success of the implementation of the Summit mandates on these and other topics will require the participation and collaboration of many actors including some from civil society. However, trade will not be one of the main pillars of the Summit because the host country of Trinidad and Tobago wanted to focus more on other issues including regional integration.

The Western Hemisphere has 34 democracies and while some are stronger than others we still need to work on institution building because true democracies provide avenues for economic, social, political and cultural development. So the selection these topics, along with that of energy security and the environment, are very timely. Therefore, there is a strong desire from all of the countries of the region to participate in the Summit, and there is a significant need for civil society to participate and help to implement the Summit mandates.

IV – Speaker Remarks

• David Morris, Director of the Summits of the Americas Secretariat, Organization of American States

There is an ongoing process of civil society consultation at the Hemispheric, and Sub-Regional levels, which has engaged civil society participants in meetings that were recently held in Miami, Trinidad and Tobago and El Salvador. This includes forums held for the Meeting of the Summit Implementation Review Group. This has become a rich and diverse process of engagement that is ongoing now for 15 years since the Summits of the Americas began in 1994 in Miami, Florida.

There have been 1023 paragraphs negotiated so far during this time. The fact that OAS member states have sat together for these many years to try to build a Hemispheric agenda is both an acknowledgement by the member states that there are trans-boundary issues and that collective effort is the only appropriate way to address them. Although each Summit has had a central theme all of them have dealt with a diversity of issues which have developed a sense of partnership not only among the 34 member states but also among networks of civil society actors.

The Summit Secretariat gathers civil society recommendations at the various forums, which are held and bring them to the national coordinators. The national coordinators then meet in the Summit Implementation Review Group. The importance of the Summits is not only the Declarations that emerge from them but the Summit process itself with its continuous engagement and the recognition that despite the differences we can find common ground on what are the issues and what are the building blocks for democracy and governing democratically.

One of the key notions of the upcoming Summit is a drive to strengthen the democratic process of the Summits themselves. This can be achieved by strengthening the institutionalization of the Summit architecture. It is necessary to achieve this because Summits are the pinnacle of the Inter-American system as a whole.

When leaders make commitments at the Summits they say that as member states they will undertake actions and draw on the resources at their disposal to implement the mandates. The challenge is that with a document that may have 1023 paragraphs it is not possible to give equal attention to all of the items. The implementation group therefore deals with over 30 themes.

The Summit process is evolving and challenging not only the member states and their partner institutions but also the citizens of the Hemisphere to mobilize the resources to get the job done. What we have seen with the maturing of the Summit process is that civil society actors are forming their own networks to follow up on the implementation of the mandates, and challenging their own governments to execute the necessary initiatives. Civil society meetings at the Sub-Regional level are then prompting actors to go back and hold meetings at the national level, and have dialogues with their national coordinators.

As a compliment to the Summits of the Americas there are now a series of Inter-American sectoral ministerial meetings. These meetings deal with a wide range of topics including labor, sustainable development, science and technology, culture, and education. The ministers engaged in these sectoral ministerial meetings can then suggest actions that they want to take and receive mandates from the Summits. The participatory process involves member states engaging with their civil society, and matching up the efforts of the region’s civil society with the institutions of the Inter-American system in shaping an agenda for our future.

This year the OAS launched the Summit Virtual Platform, which is an online consultation mechanism. It functions like a moderated blog to focus on issues related to energy security, gender equality, environmental sustainability, etc. This helps generate feedback that can be discussed during the policy dialogue periods. Additionally the OAS had an essay competition open to students from all member states. These are both ways in which the OAS is taking steps to engage the Hemisphere’s civil society and to help them participate in the Summit process.

V – Speaker Remarks

• Stephen Vetter, President and CEO, Partners of the Americas

The dream of civic participation, civic diplomacy is very important in the Americas today. There is a palpable interest in many citizens who are in the network of the Partners of the Americas to find out how we can learn from each other, how we can support each other in creating a true democracy based on civic participation.

In a recent trip to Cartagena, Colombia some network members were discussing the recent US elections. They were asking about what it was that President Elect Obama understood about organizing volunteers that no one else did? What informed their question was a desire to develop their voluntary sector.

Through that question we can begin to see the importance of bringing this voice together in the Summit of the Americas. Partners of the Americas has been working for over 40 years to build a partnership of exchanges which has generated a rare phenomenon of very long term volunteers. These long-term volunteers focus on their role as citizens in creating education centers, drug prevention programs, eco sustainable programs, etc. The reason why they do this work is because when one is in a situation of poverty and one tries government programs, works in trade unions, or belongs to political parties, there is always a backdrop of some other larger agenda where things are being manipulated that bring into question the genuine honesty of that which you are trying to do. Therefore many of them have discovered that the most powerful model for change is simply to volunteer, without the background of reward and serve their community.

The ability to create learning networks is the essence of citizen diplomacy. We need to come back to informal community to community exchanges, around activities like sports, culture or education, which provide opportunities for citizen to citizen engagement. The Brookings institution has recently called for new partnerships with the Americas. However, in the past hemispheric partnerships have been elusive because if we look at the types of partnerships that we have had in the past between the Americas there has been a lack of fundamental respect, a lack of willingness to really hear others say what it is that they need, and a lack of effort to genuinely work together to solve these problems.

If the Summit of the Americas can bring together that underlying tone of fundamental respect and help member states and civil society actors really listen to each other then it can be a vehicle to take this Hemisphere to another level of cooperation. Cooperation not just between government actors, or civil society actors working to get attention from Hemispheric institutions, but cooperation between communities and citizens in different countries that can learn from and support each other.

Partners of the Americas has a Youth Ambassadors exchange program that brings young leaders from around the Hemisphere to the US and provides them with opportunities to learn from and interact with the rich civic life of many communities in the US. Many of these young leaders then seek to go back to their impoverished countries and build volunteer service programs. The Summits of the Americas can be an avenue to provide the Hemisphere with initiatives to develop the legal, programmatic and promotional support so that community leaders and others can generate their own resources to push forward volunteer initiatives. Summits can therefore play a very powerful role by looking at the power of citizens to underscore many of these important issues.

The Partners of the Americas and the Esquel Group are working on a concept paper on a “Hemispheric Initiative for Citizen Diplomacy by the US at the Summit of the Americas”.

VI – Moderator Comments and Overview

• Jane Thery, Head of OAS-USA Relations, Organization of American States

The Summit process has survived through many changes and the ideas that we have are that entire nations should agree to cooperate, not just Presidents agree to cooperate. One change which could assist member states in better carrying out the Summit mandates is to have one group that works exclusively on implementation of past mandates, while another group works on developing the agendas for the next summit.

There is a need to engage young people more effectively in the Summit process, because the current format of long drawn out discussions and lengthy procedures and protocol tend to loose the interest of young people. There is a clear need to improve the online presence of the Summits.

VII – Public Question and Answer Period

There were discussions about possible reforms to the Summits of the Americas and other international institutions that would increase their representational capacity as well as their responsiveness to the needs and goals of the hemisphere’s citizens.

Another discussion centered on identifying the concrete actions and achievements of the OAS and the other hemispheric multilateral institutions with relation to the mandates established at the past Summits of the Americas.

Finally, a brief discussion was conducted about the extent to which the needs, opportunities and challenges facing civil society organizations themselves have been addressed within the Summits of the Americas. The discussion suggested that the Summits could become an avenue to highlight these issues and possibly set a mandate to help address them.