Contributions to the Agenda of Honduras

The 29th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), which will take place between the 2nd and 3rd of June in Honduras, will stage a new reality for Latin America and the Caribbean.

This time the agenda will include the problems of socio-natural hazards, humanitarian assistance and doubts about the usefulness of the Inter-American Convention to Facilitate Disaster Assistance. The OAS adopted this instrument in 1991, and 18 years later it has only been ratified by Panama and Peru. There were times when the Washington consensus made the political decisions on the continent. Your letter fails to conceal its focus, assimilating the conception of a militarized anti “risk” response. Unilateralism and welfarism point more to intervention than toward preparation and prevention.

Things have changed. The leading countries of Latin America agree on boosting policies to combat hunger and poverty. They point to the involvement of civil society, community organizing and reducing their vulnerabilities, providing a gender perspective and respecting the knowledge of aboriginal peoples. The nation whose IV fleet shocked the region by even threatening to navigate through our interior rivers has a new administration.

From the U.S. the intention to build dialogues was proclaimed. There are even spaces being planted without the likes of the exclusion suffered by Cuba for decades.

With the support received from a group of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, joined by the regional humanitarian volunteer Cascos Blancos (white helmets), Argentina will bring a concrete approach for this problem to the OAS. It will seek consensus to adapt these norms and coordination. It is imperative to accelerate the construction of instruments in line with the new vision of disaster, away from old practices where “solutions” were in the hands of a few, while the bulk of the people are sentenced to “contemplate” or be “saved.” From Katrina and Haiti to Tartagal, nothing is further from the real needs of our people.