GFDD and FUNGLODE to attend next OAS General Assembly in El Salvador advocating for International Coordination in Facing Citizen Insecurity

The Director of GFDD’s Washington DC office, Asun Sanz, will represent GFDD and FUNGLODE at the 41st OAS General Assembly to be held June 5 to 7, 2011, in San Salvador, with the theme of “Citizen Security in the Americas”.
 
In the run up to the meeting, the head of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza,
expressed that the countries of the region must adopt a multilateral and broad approach to the problem of citizen insecurity and organized crime; one that not only relies on law enforcement and repression, but that also includes drug demand reduction campaigns, and advocates for an improvement in penal and social reintegration services. In this context, he recalled that the Member States must be willing to commit resources that help improve cooperation among them.

Secretary General Insulza mentioned the “structural” problems that continue to be present in the region—among them poverty, inequality, and discrimination—and that are tightly linked to the problems of crime. In his view, all of them are obstacles to the economic growth experienced today by Latin America and to the optimistic forecasts on development for the future.
 
The Permanent Representative of El
Salvador, Ambassador Joaquín Maza, highlighted the importance of the theme his country’s government chose for the hemispheric meeting, explaining that insecurity “is not only an integral problem, but a problem that involves all of us.” He added that the key is in “finding a balance between a nations internal and external perspectives,” that is, between its national policies and a multidimensional strategy that benefits
it.

Ambassador Maza remarked on the tasks of the Working Group that is elaborating the text of the Declaration of San Salvador, a document that will allow governments “to achieve consensus among all countries, and secondly, to apply concrete actions for the coming year in the implementation and definition of a plan of action that contains those elements that are of interest and that naturally will improve the plan and breadth of the area of security in the
Americas.”
 
GFDD and FUNGLODE are members of the OAS’s Civil Society, a community of NGOs that supports the organization in realizing its goals and actively promotes the objectives of the OAS. The OAS GA will provide the opportunity to discuss and exchange candid and open opinions among the OAS Member States, the General Secretariat, and an excellent representation of the civil society of the Hemisphere, on how to tackle the challenges
of the region.