Organization Of American States Research Articles

A Kingdom of Possibility

A Kingdom of Possibility

CELAC in International Relations of Latin America (2010-2023)

The purpose of the research paper is to highlight the formation, development, and results of CELAC’s activities, as well as to define its place in international relations at both the regional and global levels.
 The scientific novelty is in the comprehensive analysis of the place and role of the regional international organization CELAC, its failures, and successful initiatives. The authors analyze the formation of CELAC as a representative body in relations with key world political actors – China, the EU, and Russia.
 Conclusions. CELAC continues to be an important factor in international relations, especially in the context of the desire of Latin American and Caribbean countries to strengthen cooperation and coordination. The establishment of CELAC was one of the vivid manifestations of the ‘left turn’ with its state-nationalist bias and emphasized interest in solving pressing social problems in domestic politics by the state from the top-down and ensuring its independence from global actors, primarily the United States. CELAC is not a replacement for the cooperation and integration groups – Mercosur, CARICOM, ALCA, etc. The desire for CELAC to be an alternative body – especially to the OAS (The Organization of American States) – does not enjoy regional consensus and it would be difficult to achieve with the resources this body currently has at its disposal.
 Although in general, CELAC’s activities were ineffective (most of the region’s problems had not been solved, including poverty, corruption, crime, etc.), there were examples of successful implementation of its decisions in 2013-2018. In recent years, we have observed the intensification of CELAC’s international activities, aimed, first of all, at establishing mutually beneficial and partnership relations with the key actors of world politics and economy – the EU, the USA, and China. But Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, its desire for self-isolation, the sanctions of the Western world, and the condemnation of aggression by the UN – all this pushes the Caribbean countries away from Russia, although it does not completely negate their cooperation.

The education of international educators: A personal view

Background“Que voyager c’est apprendre à vivre”. This is how Montaigne starts one his essays, “traveling is learning to live”. It was certainly my story. And this story begins in the 1970s. I went to the U.S. for graduate education, my interests have always been the psychology of learning and its practical implications for education. During my doctoral studies, I had the opportunity to engage in international projects led by my thesis advisor, Robert Morgan. At the time he was one of the principal advisors of the educational reform in Korea. In the early seventies there was great optimism about the potential of "new technologies," including emerging ones like Educational Radio, Educational TV, and Computer-based education. Ronald Gass was leading CERI – a Center for Educational Innovation at the OCDE, sponsored a tour which provided me with a taste of educational developments in Europe and also gave me to opportunity to evaluate a distance-learning program in Portugal. This is how I entered the world of international education.Returning to Brazil after completing my doctorate in the USA – I think I was the first Brazilian to obtain a doctoral degree in Education - I actively participated in various initiatives in Brazil between 1973 and 1986, including the Ministry of Education, in the area of distance education, in the Ministry of Planning, in the areas of Science and Technology and in a special non-portfolio Ministry in charge of “De-bureaucratization”. These experiences in my own country provided me with valuable insights into the possibilities and limitations of change, innovation, technology, and reforms in general.Three significant experiences shaped my understanding of change processes and their impact.First and more important, I learned that implementing educational technology projects was an attractive proposition, innovations are always welcome, but scaling up and interfering with regular school operations remained a chimera.Second, I witnessed the launching and implementation of policies and institutions in the fields of science and technology, the major push came from the Ministry of Planning. This effort taught me the importance of a strong start, selecting competent leaders and individuals with appropriate credentials. I also learned to recognize the significance of institution-building as a foundation for sustainable change.A third, and pivotal experience, was related to large-scale administrative reform.A special ministry was created to simplify rules and regulations in a highly bureaucratic and formalistic culture. I learned how power, bureaucracy and corruption were deeply interwined. I also learned that while initiating change may be relatively straightforward, the resilience of bureaucracies often undermines the best intentions. Bringing about and sustaining change requires addressing both structural and attitudinal transformations. Leadership, continuity, and accountability are essential. Chance can also play a role.These experiences led me to delve into the study of organizations and organizational change. A post-doc at Stanford Business School gave me the opportunity to study, learn, and exchange ideas with various experts on the sociology of organizations, such as Jim March (bounded rationality), Richard Scott (formal organizations), Judith Tendler (Inside Foreign Aid), Aaron Wildawsky (Implementation), and John Meyer (Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony), among many others. Despite the warnings, knowledge, and experience, hope prevailed.Despite being based in Brazil, throughout this period, I was engaged in numerous consultancy activities over the years, collaborating with organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), UNESCO, OECD, and USAID in various countries. I learned a great deal from Dean Jamison and François Orivel about economics and cost/effectiveness studies, and also learned how evidence played such a minor role in actual decision-making. I also learned a great deal about implementation of large-scale projects in several consulting missions with Emile McAnany and John Mayo. Throughout these experiences, I learned far more than I contributed.Just before joining the World Bank in 1986, I sought to understand how Brazil interacted with the institution. In a conversation with the Brazilian Minister of Planning at the time, I obtained an extremely valuable piece of information: Brazil was primarily interested in obtaining "hard currency" rather than specific projects. This revelation made me realize that the logic and intentions of the local government differed significantly from those of financiers or even sectoral ministries. This early insight made me aware of the limitations of project-based change. With this background, I could not be accused of naivety. And so, my international journey continued.

International Legal Aspects of Protection of Women from Violence within the Organization of American States Framework

The paper is devoted to the protection of women from violence and discrimination within the framework of the activities of the bodies of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Special Mechanisms for the Protection of Women’s Rights of the OAS form the Inter-American system for the protection of women’s rights, while only the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Court) has jurisdiction to make decisions binding on states. An analysis of the judicial precedents of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights allows us to conclude that violence against women in the Latin American and Caribbean region is classified as follows: violence against women committed by public servants; violence against women committed by private individuals; violence against women in the context of armed conflict; violence against indigenous women. The paper provides examples of cases in which the Court recognized the responsibility of states for non-compliance with international legal norms enshrined in the acts of the OAS, which resulted in a violation of women’s rights to a dignified life, free from violence and discrimination. Despite the imperfection of the OAS control mechanisms and the general politicization of this intergovernmental organization, its activities to protect women’s rights are unique and deserve in-depth study.

Quality infrastructure for energy efficiency of household appliances in Latin America and the Caribbean

The main activities and results of the energy efficiency component of the regional project ‘Quality Infrastructure for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean’ are presented. This project was implemented by the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American System of Metrology (SIM), the Pan American Standards Commission (COPANT), the Inter-American Accreditation Cooperation (IAAC), and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesantalt (PTB). The main objective of its energy efficiency component consisted in improving the regional quality infrastructure for energy efficiency of household appliances.

Latin American Strategies to Improve the Fight Against Drugs

This work explores the global strategies that have been implemented in Latin America in the fight against drugs, focusing on the work promoted by the Organization of American States, universal strategies such as those of the United Nations, and the work of the political conferences of the Americas that have specifically addressed the drug problem in their sessions.
 Among the objectives of this investigation are: to analyze the conflicts related to the consumption, distribution and illegal economy around drugs in all their types and the crimes linked to them, such as drug trafficking, organized crime, money laundering or corruption; another objective will be to confirm and compare, taking into account UNODC data, which countries continue to be the world's major coca growers. The method used was that of data retrieval by means of literature and statistical data, analyzed and interpreted according to objective criteria.
 The results provided highlighted the achievements of the different international organizations in the fight against drugs, as well as the needs that still have to be met in this area.

Che’s critique of the Organization of American States: from Punta del Este (1961) to Bolivia (2019)

ABSTRACT Che's revolutionary solidarity championed the Spirit of Bolivar and Marti across the Latin American Community. Underlying this solidarism was a fervent belief in the potential for an emancipated regional Americas freed of neo–imperialist control. Yet, Che saw this possibility thwarted by the regional hegemony of the US government and its dominance of regional organizations through which it was able to intervene economically and even militarily across its southern neighbours. In this article, we explore Che's critique of the US' dominance of the Organization of American States (OAS) and how this has distorted regional integration in the Latin American Community by focusing on his famous speeches at Punta del Este at the Alliance for Progress (AFP) conference in 1961. We argue that Che's critique remains relevant for analysing regional integration today by highlighting the role of the OAS and its intervention in the Bolivian coup of 2019.

El futuro de la Junta Interamericana de Defensa y su Relación con la Integración yResiliencia del Hemisferio Occidental

XXI Century speeded up the changes in the defense and security landscape, mainly by the interference of new technologies and the diversification of actors that influence the field of action in multiple domains. These changes must be studied and analyzed continuously to keep defense and security structures and alliances up to date and capable of facing all alternative actions, with a readiness that makes them always one step ahead of the opposing strategy. This article aims to identify, throughout a prospective analysis, the challenges and threats that are being addressed and will be faced by the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB) in the future's complex multidimensional, multi-domain, and transnational threats landscape. Additionally, the paper seeks for international cooperation opportunities that could provide IADB tools and new procedures to improve its capabilities, studying another regional and complex alliance such as the European Union, by a defense and security approach. The actions proposed not only will reinforce the own IADB but strengthen the Organization of American States (OAS) to reach a pioneering role as an international alliance committed to people’s equity and the defense of democracy, in a real non-polarized, and multilaterals world.

Democratic Peace and Liberal Peace: Argumentative and Intentions


 Some people believe that the concept of liberal peace should be seen in relation to the thesis of democratic peace. This literature focused more on whether democratic countries are more peaceful in their foreign relations and tried to provide a theoretical and empirical explanation for this. The democratic peace thesis states the following: 1) Democratic states rarely fight each other. 2) Democratic countries tend to be more open to international trade than non-democratic ones, which creates interdependencies that prevent war from breaking out between them.3) Democracies tend to be more internally peaceful than other systems. Here, it is important to point out that the thesis of democratic peace is closely related to Immanuel Kant’s idea of “perpetual peace”. As for the liberal peace thesis, from Richmond’s point of view, it bears four main aspects that emerged from the discussions in international theory and the different historical contexts related to the subject, especially in the West. These include the four aspects of liberal peace (victorious peace, constitutional peace, institutional peace, and civil peace). Richmond noted that the peace of the victor is the result of the old realist argument that peace depends on military victory and on the domination of the victor. But the peace of the victor may result in political resistance, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second, constitutional peace, derives from the Kantian argument that peace is the result of democracy, commerce, and a set of universal values based on individualism. Richmond notes that "the constitutional peace struggles with those who do not want to share power, and who do not want to entrench local legal structures that might prohibit their activities." As for institutional peace, it is the peace that results from normative and legal institutional arrangements between countries that agree - in a multilateral manner - on ways to act and impose or define their behavior. This can be found in international institutions such as the United Nations as well as regional organizations such as the European Union, the African Union (AU), the League of Arab States (AL), the Organization of American States (OAS), and subregional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The fourth aspect, (civil peace), which emphasizes the importance of the participation of citizens and civil society institutions in making peace. Unlike the other three aspects of liberal peace, the contribution of individuals rather than the state or international organization is included in this strategy.
 

The politics of legitimation in combined sanction regimes: the case of Venezuela

Abstract Regional international organizations (RIOs) and states are increasingly sanctioning governments, firms and individuals they consider to have violated international norms. How do different RIOs legitimize the decision to impose (or not impose) sanctions? And how do they react to the legitimation strategies of other RIOs and states? This article addresses these questions by analysing the legitimation strategies of the United States and four RIOs involved in the combined sanction regimes against Venezuela between 2014 and 2019: the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Common Market of the South and the European Union. Refining the environment-based perspective on legitimation, the article proposes that combined sanction regimes work as environments that shape the legitimation strategies of senders not only by providing templates to emulate but also by triggering processes of differentiation. The article shows how Latin American RIOs adapted their legitimation strategies dynamically in reaction to changes in the strategies of Washington and Brussels. This process, however, was not unidirectional. When Latin American RIOs managed to articulate coherent strategies, they forced Washington and Brussels to recalibrate their own positions and engage in discursive legitimation processes as well.

The concept of cyberspace in international law

The subject. The article is devoted to the analysis of approaches in the development of the concept of cyberspace in international law.The purpose of this article is to try to highlight the attributes of cyberspace, which will allow to resolve existing gaps in the field of universal cyber regulation in international law. The research presented in this article was conducted by combining various disciplinary approaches, including comparative law, comparative politics and international relations, political theory, and sociology. In addition, the study includes methods of dialectical logic, analysis and synthesis, as well as a formal-legal analysis of UN international legal acts.The main results and scope of their application. As states pay increasing attention to cyberspace management as the technical architecture that powers the global Internet and governance in cyberspace, in terms of how states, corporations and users can use this technology, the role of international law in cyberspace is increasing, becoming more prominent, becoming more important. At the same time, note that international law has no specific rules for regulating cyberspace. Moreover, the technology is both new and dynamic. Thus, for several years there have been open questions as to whether existing international law applies at all to cyberspace. Cyberspace is now the backbone of global commerce, communication and defense systems, and is a key aspect of the critical infrastructure that sustains our modern civilization. Technology and information spread almost instantaneously, and the global economy and supply chains are integrated to a degree unprecedented in history. Nevertheless, there is still no developed universal concept of cyberspace in international law, only approaches at the level of the UN, international organizations, including the First Committee of the UN General Assembly on Disarmament and International Security, the G20, the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Organization of American States and doctrinal approaches are singled out.Conclusions. The competition for strategic technology and the competition for advantage in the "information space" is growing, so far without the standard international rules of the road. Moreover, the future is likely to prove even more transformational. The potential threats are also extraordinary: autonomous weapons, cyber warfare, sophisticated disinformation campaigns and geopolitical instability. In such circumstances, it is crucial to develop a universal notion of cyberspace because of the persistent significant vulnerabilities and number of threats in global communications.

Organization of American States

Organization of American States

Who commits to regional human rights treaties? Reputational benefits, sovereignty costs, and regional dynamics

Over the past 50 years, regional international organizations have adopted several treaties on human rights. By ratifying them, member states can signal their commitment to the norms codified in the respective documents. Yet ratification patterns vary greatly across both states and treaties. Extant studies of commitment to human rights focus on the impacts of reputational benefits and sovereignty costs. These arguments, however, are largely based on studies of ratification behavior in Europe and the UN system. We extend this logic to treaties created in the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African Union (OAU/AU). Between them, the two organizations have adopted 15 human rights agreements, giving their member states ample choices about (non)ratification. We apply event-history analysis to newly collected data on treaty commitment. This reveals variation in line with regional differences in how treaties are elaborated. Benefits from commitment expected by democratic and democratizing states play an important role in the member-state driven process in the OAS, but this is not the case in the OAU/AU. In the expert-driven context of the OAU/AU, in contrast, concerns about sovereignty costs related to treaty design and the relative power of member states are more pronounced.

Land without Masters: Agrarian Reform and Political Change under Peru's Military Government

Land without Masters: Agrarian Reform and Political Change under Peru's Military Government

Anti-abortion strategizing and the afterlife of the Geneva Consensus Declaration.

The Geneva Consensus Declaration, introduced by the Trump-Pence administration in 2020 and signed by thirty-two countries, claims that there is no international right to abortion. Although the Declaration was subsequently repudiated by the Biden administration, it did not die. This paper traces the afterlife of the Geneva Consensus Declaration as part of an ongoing antiabortion strategy to form a global coalition. Its supporters hope to mobilize signing nations to remove sexual and reproductive rights from the agendas of multilateral agencies including the United Nations and Organization of American States. The Geneva Consensus Declaration puts antiabortion politics above all other considerations, creating common cause among governments that oppose reproductive and sexual rights by undermining multilateral governance.

The law and politics of transnational rights protection: Trusteeship, effectiveness, de‐delegation

AbstractInternational trustee courts embody a specific form of delegation, in which state principals confer on such courts the authority to interpret and apply treaties agreed by the states in order to realize specific values and interests. Human rights courts help states resolve commitment and enforcement problems that are inherent in human rights treaties. This study seeks to answer the question, what happens when states parties seek to reduce or eliminate the authority of a human rights court? To answer these questions, the article assesses six human rights treaty regimes: the Council of Europe; the Organization of American States; the African Union; the Economic Community of West African States; the East African Community; and the Southern African Development Community. The article identifies four types of de‐delegation possible with respect to international human rights courts and assesses the extent to which states have sought to de‐delegate from them. With one exception (the SADC Tribunal), the regimes examined here have so far successfully withstood the challenge of de‐delegation.

OEA y la democracia en Américas Latina: a treinta años de la Convención de Santiago y a veinte años de la Carta Democrática Interamericana

The Organization of American States (hereinafter OAS) is the only setting for dialogue and political meetings of all the countries of the Hemisphere, and in recent years democracy has become a priority objective and value. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyze the role that the OAS has had and may have in Latin American democracies, through its political commitments and its normative body. It is stated that the capacity of the OAS to promote and defend democracy depends on the existence, or not, of an ideological consensus in the political systems of the region on the priority that this universal value has, and that only with a vocation of greater supranationality will it be able to promote and defend to democracy.

Universidad, revolución y dólares: Dos estudios sobre la Guerra Fría cultural en el Uruguay de los sesenta

Universidad, revolución y dólares: Dos estudios sobre la Guerra Fría cultural en el Uruguay de los sesenta

Toward a Trans* Masculine Genealogy in South America

Toward a Trans* Masculine Genealogy in South America

CURRENT INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR CYBER CRIMES: A NEED FOR NEXT STEP

Through a wide variety of restrictions and regulations, the International Law regulates the relationship between nations and other international players (such as international organisations). From weapons control to international commerce, to environment, it has been used as a framework for governing global governance. The importance of international law in cyber environment has developed as governments pay greater attention to the ‘governance of cyberspace’ (the technological infrastructure that enables the global internet to work) and ‘governance in cyberspace” (how states, industry, and individuals may utilise this technology). However, apart from few exceptions such as the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime1 and the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (yet to be in effect), the international law does not provide specific guidelines for cyberspace regulation. Moreover, it's a cutting-edge technology that's constantly evolving. As a result, for many years, it was unclear whether or not existing international law extended to the domain of Internet. The nation states and international organisations such as the UN's First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, the G20, European Union, the ASEAN, and the Organization of American States (OAS) have all stated that existing international law applies to states' use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Thus, International Law is no more a question of whether, but rather how it functions. While many other international......