CISC Ensures Maintainance of Link between Ministerials, General Assembly and the Summits
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The Committee on Inter-American Summits Management and Civil Society Participation in OAS activities (CISC) has met four times since February, 2010: March 19, April 19, May 6th, and May 10th.
The CISC, in keeping with Summits and OAS General Assembly mandates most recently incorporated in Resolution AG/RES 2520 (XXXIX-O/09), “Support for and follow up to the Summits of the Americas Process” (Operative Paragraphs 3 and 6) as well as Paragraphs 90 and 91 of the Declaration of Commitments of Port of Spain, has met regularly to consider the reports from the inter-American ministerial and sectoral meetings, with a view to ensuring that the linkage between the Summits of the Americas and the Ministerials are maintained.
At the CISC meeting of March 19, 2010, a representative of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) informed the committee that the organization had taken a number of initiatives to implement the health mandates arising out of the Fifth Summit of the Americas. These health related mandates emphasized poverty and malnutrition, maternal and infant health, HIV-AIDS prevention and control, as well as chronic non communicable diseases.
The PAHO representative further informed that the Pan American Alliance for Nutrition and Development, a coordinated international cooperation response, was being undertaken to combat chronic malnutrition in certain geographic areas and among vulnerable populations. Through this alliance, efforts are being made to bolster inter-programmatic and inter-agency coordination, highlight priorities and evidence-based strengths; identify and promote comprehensive, multi-sectoral interventions for each context, based on the determinants and the multi-faceted causes of the problems; establish close cooperation between countries and governments, particularly along shared borders; plan on the basis of lessons learned and actual experiences of countries; strengthen existing strategic frameworks; make better use of resources; become more politically visible in order to generate resources for action; and help translate political commitment into public policy.
With regard to improved maternal and infant health, the PAHO representative pointed to a 58% reduction in infant mortality and neonatal mortality. She stated that up to 70% of these deaths could be prevented by educating people about breastfeeding and immunization, and that consequently PAHO was promoting the Regional Strategy and Plan of Action for Neonatal Health within the Continuum of Maternal, Newborn, and Child Care in priority countries and other countries with high mortality rates.
PAHO is also coordinating the Regional Initiative for the Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Congenital Syphilis in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Regional Partners’ Forum for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, a multi-sectoral initiative geared towards generating and using health policies to prevent and control chronic diseases, with a social and environmental focus as well as the CARMEN Network (Joint Action for Multi-Factor Reduction of Non Communicable Diseases). The Forum was launched in December 2009 with the objective of preventing three million deaths over the next 10 years.
At the April 19, 2010 and May 10, 2010 meetings, the CISC delegates focused on preparations for the next General Assembly of the OAS scheduled to take place in Lima, Peru from June 6-8, 2010. The applications of 13 civil society organizations that wished to register with the OAS, so that they would be eligible to participate in the 40th General Assembly, were reviewed. A special request was made by some Member States for a review of the procedure for the acceptance of these organizations.
Reviewed along with the civil society applications were the resolutions on
“Follow up and Implementation of the Mandates of the Declaration of Commitment of Port of Spain of the Fifth Summit of the Americas”;
“Support for and Follow up to the Summits of the Americas Process”; and
“Increasing and Strengthening Civil Society Participation in the Activities of the Organization of American States and in the Summits of the Americas Process”. These resolutions re-emphasized the importance of the many mandates given to the OAS by the Fifth Summit of the Americas, and urged that the agencies and technical bodies of the OAS implement them as a matter of priority.
Links to Reports:
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