Summits of the Americas Newsletter
February 2010 | Summits Online | Espaņol

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: SISCA | See also: CISC 2009 - CISC 2010 - Think Tanks - OAS / Colombia - UNDP

First CISC meeting of 2010 held on January 22

The CISC held its first meeting of 2010 on January 22nd, at the OAS Headquarters in Washington, DC.

With the Colombian Ambassador, Luis Alfonso Hoyos, in the Chair, the meeting started out with the presentation from the Director of the Department of International Affairs (DIA), Dr. Irene Klinger, on the “Draft Strategy for Strengthening Civil Society Participation in the activities of the OAS”, which was developed in accordance to the 2008 Resolution - AG/RES. 2395 (XXXVIII-O/08) - “Increasing and Strengthening Civil Society Participation in the activities of the Organization of American States and in the Summits of the Americas Process”, as well as other resolutions and Summits documents. After this presentation, Member States commented and shared their views on the Draft Strategy. Moreover, Secretary General Insulza also shared his thoughts about the importance of this document and highlighted that the OAS has “a great heritage of civil society participation; this is not minor… especially since the 1998 Summit in Chile, point from which the participation has been in crescendo, because we understand that part of democracy is the existence and participation of diverse groups in each society and that is why we must strengthen this heritage of our institution”. He concluded that we have to find the best ways to conserve this “richness” and the path to conserve it is by allowing more access and receptivity.

The draft strategy will be reviewed according to the comments received by Member States and it will be presented for approval at a later instance. Please click here for the complete video of this session.

Continuing to the second point of the agenda, the Summits Secretariat introduced to Member States the Summits of the Americas Follow-up System (SISCA). This system, which was first introduced to the Member States at the 39th OAS General Assembly in June 2009, was officially launched by the Secretary General on this occasion. SISCA is an on-line mechanism that provides Member States thematic access to information, facilitates an organized reporting on the achievements in implementation and allows follow-up on the goals that were committed in previous Summits. Member States affirmed their gratitude to the Summits of the Americas Secretariat and expressed their interest in utilizing the system. To see the complete video of this presentation and the official launch of the system, please click here.

The Director of the Department of Public Security presented a report on the Second Meeting of Ministers of Public Security of the Americas (MISPA II), which took place in Montevideo, Uruguay on November 19th, 2009.

Finally, Dr. Klinger presented to the member States 13 new applications from civil society organizations of the Hemisphere to be registered at the OAS. According to its procedures, Member States will make a final decision on these applications during a subsequent meeting of the Permanent Council.

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