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Summit of the Americas Concludes…Countries seek more unified, prosperous, equal region
By Rabindra Rooplall in Panama City
With every member country of the Organization of American States underscoring
Summit leaders who attended the event at the sprawling ATLAPA Conference Centre.
their perspectives on inequality at the recent Summit of the Americas, the event closed with a promise that it will deliver a historic opportunity to revitalize hemispheric relations.
Guyana’s President Donald Ramotar was among three heads of government who were absent from the Seventh Conference of the Americas hosted in Panama. The country is however being represented by Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett and Ambassador Bayney Karran.
The buzz surrounding the summit was the historic meeting between Cuba and the US after more than 50 years of embargo.
The central theme of this year’s summit was ‘Prosperity with equity: the challenge of cooperation in the Americas’. Heads of States addressed the growing global concern of rising inequality, a problem that has come increasingly to the fore, after Oxfam International released a report claiming that one per cent of the world’s population will own more wealth than the other 99 per cent by 2016.
Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organizations working together with partners and local communities in more than 90 countries.
Such inequality is all too prevalent across Latin America, widely regarded as the world’s most unequal region. Yet while inequality has been gradually shrinking in the poorest countries over the past decade, developed nations such as the United States are today seeing the gap between the haves and have-nots widen.
“Inequality is no longer a Latin American issue, but rather a hemispheric issue, because the region’s most developed countries are also facing growing conditions of inequality. There is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few households, while large sectors of their society are being excluded,” according to Secretary General of the OAS Jose Miguel Insulza.
At the conclusion of the recent summit officials agreed that the Americas will look to seize the opportunity in Panama and work towards a more unified, more prosperous, more equal region than ever before.
Already there are plans afoot for the Eighth Summit which will be held in Peru in 2018.
The announcement was made at the conclusion of the seventh Summit of the Americas on Saturday by the host-country Panama. Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has already given his consent, according to reports.
The Summit of the Americas is a gathering of countries from the Western Hemisphere in which policy solutions to urgent regional challenges are discussed. It takes place every three years.
The Summit of the Americas 2015 started on Friday evening and concluded on April 11. The event was attended by delegations from 35 countries and the leaders of 33 states.
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