Mr. President, Delegates

I thank you for the opportunity to address the Security Council on this matter of cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations for maintaining peace and security. I must say that the Organization of American States (OAS) shares and fully supports the United Nations Secretary-General’s initiative for a comprehensive regional strategic partnership in this field.

That is hardly surprising, given that the OAS is an organization with political purposes formed by 35 member states of the United Nations and, for that reason, the issues, challenges, and opportunities we face are often similar, above all in handling crises and in the areas of governance and development. As a result, since Security Council resolution 1631 in 2005 – which asserted the need to take major steps to develop cooperation among our organizations – we have been actively participating in that effort, of the Standing Committee, and in the activities undertaken in that direction.

We share the idea mentioned earlier about the need to move from policies of consultation to much more precise regulation of the operations we undertake together, and we hope to contribute to that through our efforts and also thanks to the specific experience we have acquired over the past year with respect to our joint work with the United Nations. Our most significant experience of that kind has undoubtedly been that shared in Haiti by the United Nations Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) and the Special Mission of the Organization of American States, to help restore democracy in that country.

There we undertook the joint task of cooperating with the Provisional Government of Haiti to bring about democratic elections. We established a satisfactory division of labor and, with the Haitian government, created a voter registration list of three and a half million voters. With logistical support from MINUSTAH, the elections held were the most democratic and participatory elections in Haiti’s history. I believe that our experience in that Caribbean country of cooperation between a regional organization and the United Nations enables us, first, to meet the challenges that we still face in that country during the transition phase and, jointly, to support the efforts of the government of President René Préval to bring about full democracy and national reconstruction, and to pacify the country. In addition, that experience teaches us what cooperation among institutions should entail.

That cooperation – with the participation of forces from seven OAS and UN member states in the MINUSTAH – enabled Latin Americans to initiate a much greater involvement in the settlement of their own conflicts, in a manner that, in our opinion, should constitute the new form of cooperation among us from now on.

I believe, Mr. President, that other positive experiences we have had – such as the dialogue we engaged in regarding other crises in the region (in Ecuador and Bolivia) – have shown that we can talk to one another and work together. However, those experiences also taught us that we should have had prior consultations, before entering into a parallel involvement in those member states of our Organization. We believe that it is better to act jointly to prevent crises, to engage in dialogue, and develop common policies on the subject and then decide, as we did in Haiti, on an appropriate division of labor and spheres of competence, so that our actions are as efficient as possible.

I believe that we have acquired experience in this area, cooperating extensively, for instance, with organizations in the United Nations system, such as the ILO in preparation for the latest Presidential Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina. In electoral observation missions, we have cooperated on a longstanding basis with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which for all practical purposes is also part of the inter-American system as well as that of the United Nations. The UNDP’s Human Development Reports have been an essential tool for a whole set of policies in our countries that the OAS has also sponsored.

We have to be able to coordinate all these factors in order to achieve effective and more institutionalized coordination, with stable rules indicating, for each institution, the areas in which cooperation will be effective. We believe that regional organizations can contribute greater commitment, clarity, and political and cultural insight into the conflicts that occur in their part of the world. Such cooperation will also enhance the effectiveness of the actions taken by the United Nations to maintain peace and security.

Thank you very much.