Mr. Daubon began by listing
and giving a brief analysis of the effectiveness of each meeting of
the Summit of the Americas held since 1994. Daubon suggested that
perhaps the most effective Summit in terms of non-governmental
participation may have been the very first in Miami, where the US
official host invited non-governmental actors as participants into
the early drafting process in a number of official ‘task forces”
that jointly generated the first draft of the declaration that was
then taken to negotiation by the US. Also effective had been the
participation of non-governmental actors in the interim Summit for
Sustainable Development in Bolivia in 1996. There, the host
government entrusted a multi-party Technical Advisory Commission
with preparing the first draft of the document. Within the
Committee emerged a special drafting conference on the topic of
citizen participation which gathered 27 official delegations and
some 70 non-governmental actors in Montevideo that produced the
draft that was circulated and approved verbatim by the heads
of state at the Summit. After Bolivia, nevertheless, the civil
society coordinators chose instead a separate advocacy path outside
the official drafting process. The result was a broader
participation of more organizations, but a lessened impact where it
counted: in the negotiated language that got to the presidents.
Chile (1998), Canada (2001) and now Mexico in 2004 all had
ceremonial occasions for civil society actors to voice their
concerns, but little non-governmental presence in the official
process.
He mentioned that the
meeting, held this year in Mexico, was somewhat ineffective in terms
of the participation of non-governmental actors in the formulation
of the Summit agenda. Originally earmarked to be held in Argentina,
the meeting was hastily moved to Mexico – after Argentina became
preoccupied with its financial and political difficulties and,
became therefore, unable to host the event. The little time Mexico
had to prepare for the meeting (a meeting which was thrust upon them
and which they had scant desire to host) probably contributed to its
ineffectiveness. The official drafting process was conducted
entirely within the official confines of the Summit Implementation
Review Group (SIRG) with little if any non-governmental input from
any of the participating delegations. The forming hemispheric
network of civil society organizations that have been engaged in the
successive summits did not begin their attempts to influence the
meeting’s Final Document until the final days, after that document
had been effectively completed. The participating organizations thus
drafted a consensus position to be presented at the last minute to
the Summit countries, but more as a symbol than an effective input
into the by-then-ended process. Had their attempts at
participation been started earlier, Mr. Daubon suggested, via
participation with individual country delegations or selected
topical areas, the meeting might have been more constructive.
Moreover, the Civil Society representatives urged fundamentally the
same policies that they had been advocating since the first Summit
meeting 10 years ago. They did, on the other hand, urge that they
be included in the successor Summit’s meetings early – a request
which, if heeded, according to Mr. Daubon, bodes well for the future
of their endeavor. During the consultation session with
plenipotentiary ministers, granted to “civil society” by the Summit
organizers, the Foreign Minister of Bolivia offered the interest of
his government to the Civil Society representatives, to coordinate
with the Argentinean government to find the Civil Society a place
during the drafting process before the next meeting in Argentina.
The hope is that the Argentina process—perhaps with Bolivia’s
help—may open a controlled access to non-governmental voices early
in the drafting process, whole retaining the broad ceremonial
participation for later on. Ultimately, though, the question is
whether civil society might not be most effective in shaping the
positions of their respective individual countries, rather than in
the showier but ultimately less meaningful hemispheric access, and
whether the Presidents of Latin American countries were truly in a
position to implement those multi-year changes to which they
committed themselves during the conference far beyond their
presidential mandates and absent the consultation with their
respective parliaments.
Presentation by Peter Hakim
Mr. Hakim made three
points: He first mentioned that, although the first Summit in 1994
was constructive and saw many new and exciting ideas broached, the
meetings were becoming mundane. He also mentioned that the
countries whose Presidents attended these meetings no longer seemed
as interested in the proceedings. This lack of interest was
demonstrated, he suggested, by the conspicuous absence of the
discussion of trade (a topic of great importance to Latin American
nations) at the Summit. The Summit tends no longer to be, according
to Mr. Hakim, at the “leading edge” of policy-making.
Next, Mr. Hakim noted that
Civil Society is, in actuality, not one cohesive whole but, rather,
a confederation of groups each with its own values, views, and
agendas. These groups have agreed to work together and, at present,
present a unified front. Should they be taken more seriously at the
Summit, however, the opportunity to affect real change would bring
their differences to the fore and could lead to infighting and
strife. In order, therefore, to give Civil Society real power
without, paradoxically, planting the seeds of its own destruction,
Civil Society itself should be broken in groups – each of which
would work to bring about policy changes in one specific area (e.g.
health, micro-enterprise, environment, and so forth.)
As his last main point, Mr.
Hakim (like Mr. Daubon) wonders whether the Summit is the best place
at which the Civil Society may advocate for change. He mentioned
that, perhaps, Civil Society would be best served by working at the
various national levels and not in far-reaching international
summits, following the principle of “thinking globally and acting
globally.”
Discussion
A questioner asked whether
Haiti and its present crisis was mentioned at the Summit. It was
not, although some people did mention it informally. A follow-up
questioner asked what the nature of Civil Society’s participation at
the Summit should have been. Someone responded that Civil Society
should participate in the Summit Implementation Review Groups (SIRG)
and that there should be better communication between Civil Society
and the Summit Secretariat. The participant added that, in general,
people do not understand what the Summit is really for because they
do not read the Summit’s documents. The Summit creates a space for
discussion, consensus building, and peer pressure to enact policies
at the hemispheric level. The Summit declaration now has more
specific short-term commitments as opposed to the more grandiose
longer-term goals of the first Summits. Government and Civil Society
can follow-up on these commitments because they are backed by
Presidential mandate within the mandate of the President. Another
participant expressed the need to evaluate Civil Society’s
participation in the Summit process and to come up with
methodologies to improve it. Civil Society’s participation is
important because it both empowers them and gives them the
opportunity to say things that governments may not see from “within”
or will not dare express. A participant added that is important to
identify what can be done to improve trust between government and
Civil Society and to learn how successful countries can teach other
countries to forge such trust.
Speakers Final Remarks
Ramon Daubon
