International Organizations & Democracy: The OAS-Putting Principles into Practice

Abstract

Peter Hakim is the acting president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based center for policy analysis and exchange on Western Hemisphere relations. He authors a regular column for the Christian Science Monitor on international affairs. This essay draws heavily on Chapter H of the Dialogue's recent policy report, Convergence and Community: The Americas in 1993. The notion that violations of democratic practice and human rights in any one country of the Americas should be the concern of all countries is not a wholly new concept in inter-American affairs. This idea, as the preceding article by Heraldo Mufioz explains, has a long history and, indeed, is embedded in the legal framework of the Organization of American States (OAS). In one form or another, it has served to justify a variety of OAS actions. Over the past few years, the OAS has become a far more active and influential institution. During the 1970s and 1980s, it had been largely irrelevant and ignored in inter-American relations. Stymied by continual friction and mutual suspicion between the United States and Latin America, the prevalence of military rule in much of the region, and Washington's unilateralist impulses and Cold War preoccupations, the OAS sat on the sidelines as the major issues played themselves out in other forums. Called upon to help resolve the Panama crisis in 1989, the Organization suffered a humiliating setback when it was unable either to end General Manuel Noriega's rule or to prevent the United States from invading in order to depose him. Only a few months later, however, the OAS began a remarkable turnabout, starting with the Nicaraguan presidential elections of February 1990. At first, the nations of the hemisphere appeared to confirm the impotence of the OAS by recruiting the United Nations to take the lead role in monitoring the elections. Yet in a show of surprising resilience, the OAS joined forces with the UN in Nicaragua and ended up playing