THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES: An Introduction

Guillermo Belt June 2002 Washington, DC

CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION

Historical background Simn Bolvar: his initiative and ideals The Congress of Panama (1826) The First Congress of Lima (1847-1848) The Continental Treaty and the Treaty of Washington (1856) The Second Congress of Lima (1864-1865) The juridical congresses of Lima (1877-1880) and Montevideo (1888-1889)

Principles enunciated by the Latin American republics Solidarity against aggression Peaceful settlement of disputes Nonintervention Inviolability of national territory Extradition and asylum Abolition of slavery Equal treatment for nationals and foreigners Uti possidetis juris

Initiatives of the United States Invitation to a meeting to be held in Washington in 1882 Invitation to a meeting to be held in Washington in 1889 First International American Conference, Washington, October 1889-April 1890

The Inter-American Conferences (1901-1947) II. III. THE OAS CHARTER The Bogota Charter (1948) The Protocol of Buenos Aires (1967) The Protocol of Cartagena de Indias (1985) The Protocol of Washington (1992) The Protocol of Managua (1993) DEMOCRACY AND THE OAS The promotion and consolidation of democracy in the OAS Charter

 IV. V. VI.

Resolution 1080 of the OAS General Assembly Case studies: Panama, Suriname, Haiti, Peru, and Guatemala Conclusions PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES Incident between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela Honduras and Nicaragua Costa Rica and Nicaragua Belize and Guatemala OAS PRIORITY AREAS The Summit Process Human Rights Drug Abuse Control Trade The Environment THE OAS: PRESENT AND FUTURE Overview of current programs and activities Challenges in the new millennium

THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES An Introduction

I.

INTRODUCTION

Historical background The deepest roots of the Organization of American States are found in the ideals of Simn Bolvar, the Liberator. In 1822, as President of Colombia, Bolvar had invited the governments of Mexico, Peru, Chile and Buenos Aires to form a confederation. He had also proposed to hold an assembly of plenipotentiaries, in Panama or wherever the majority agreed upon. The assembly would advise on major conflicts, serving as a point of contact when countries faced common dangers, and as faithful interpreter of treaties; in sum, it would be a body for conciliation of national differences that might arise. On 7 December 1824, Bolvar followed up on his idea. Writing from Lima, he invited the governments of Colombia, Mexico, Central America, Chile, Brazil and the United Provinces of Buenos Aires to attend the conference in Panama, which he felt could no longer be postponed in expectation of further accessions to the incipient confederation. Having committed Peru to participate, Bolvar set an overly optimistic timetable: the meeting should take place six months later. The Liberators aim was to unite the Latin American nations that had recently won their independence from Spain. There were no explicit dissenting opinions and it may be said that the idea of the meeting received general support. However, Brazil did not send representatives. Neither did the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata (which later united to form Argentina, and which at the time held almost as much territory as Brazil). Chile agreed to attend but could not appoint representatives without the consent of Congress, which was not in session. The Congress of Panama.1 The conference took place in Panama between 22 June and 15 July 1826. In attendance were plenipotentiaries from Peru (which comprised what is now Bolivia); Colombia (which included present-day Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama); Mexico; and Central America (at the time a federation of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua). The Congress of Panama produced the Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation, signed on 15 July 1826 by all the participating Latin American nations. The main objective of the pact, according to Article 2, was the collective defense of the sovereignty and independence of those nations against all attempts at foreign domination. More important than the treaty and the deliberations that led to it, however, is that Latin America proclaimed a spiritual union that went beyond distinctions of geography, language, religion, and race. Countries that had fought
1

The summaries of this Congress and of the others in this section are based on F.V. Garca Amador, Sistema Interamericano, Vol. I, Secretara General de la Organizacin de los Estados Americanos, Washington, D.C., 1981.

hard to win independence had agreed to meet and discuss matters of common interest. As we shall see, their commitment has survived to this day. The First Congress of Lima (1847-1848). In order to strengthen their relations, the signatories to the 1826 treaty had agreed to hold, every two years in peacetime and annually in times of war, a general assembly of plenipotentiaries (Article 11). Political and other considerations made this impossible, and instead another congress was convoked by invitation of the Government of Peru, which stressed the need of the South American peoples to unite and form alliances to repel foreign pretensions hazardous to the American cause. Two treaties and two conventions were signed during the meeting in the Peruvian capital. The Treaty of Confederation, binding Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Nueva Granada (Colombia) the only countries attending fulfilled the main purpose of the invitation. The other three instruments were nonpolitical: a consular convention, a postal convention, and a treaty on commerce and navigation. The Continental Treaty and the Treaty of Washington (1856). The Continental Treaty, signed in September in Santiago de Chile by Peru, Chile and Ecuador, departs from the initiatives on confederation launched in Panama thirty years earlier, and seeks to strengthen Latin American solidarity in other areas. In addition to the three signatories, only Nicaragua adhered to this treaty. The following November, another group met in Washington, this time on the initiative of Costa Rica and Guatemala, and on the 9th of that month a new Treaty of Alliance and Confederation was signed by the two Central American nations plus El Salvador, and by Nueva Granada, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. The Second Congress of Lima (1864-1865). This meeting was the last of its kind in 19th century Latin America. The main purpose was to cement the relationship among the American States (so designated in the letter of invitation), facilitating their commercial and other ties, and to counter attempts at foreign domination, if any. Four treaties emerged. Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Venezuela signed a defense treaty and one on maintenance of peace. The representatives of Argentina and Guatemala were unable to sign because they lacked sufficient powers, but took authenticated copies so that their governments might adhere to these treaties. The other two treaties on postal maters and on commerce and navigation reiterated and developed the provisions of the instruments signed at the first Lima congress. The juridical congresses of Lima (1877-1880) and Montevideo (1888-1889). In the closing decades of the 19th century the fear of extracontinental aggression had abated, and the congresses of the Latin American republics reflect a change in focus, moving away from the primarily political objectives of the previous ones. The first in the new series is the Congress of Plenipotentiary Jurists that met in Lima between December 1877 and March 1880. The letter of invitation from the Government of Peru suggested that the congress might harmonize the laws of the American states and proposed an agenda that

included questions of private international law, commercial law, extradition, literary property, weights and measures, and monetary system. The results of the meeting were limited to a treaty establishing uniform rules in matters of private international law, and a treaty on extradition. Peru, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Costa Rica signed the first treaty; those countries plus Guatemala and Uruguay signed the one on extradition. Argentina and Uruguay took the initiative of convoking the first South American Congress on Private International Law. It was held in Montevideo between August 1888 and February 1889, with Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Peru attending in addition to the two organizers. Eight treaties were signed concerning procedural law, literary and artistic property, patents, trademarks, international criminal law and international civil law. An additional protocol was also signed, dealing with uniform rules for the application of the laws of a contracting state in the territory of the others. The treaty on international criminal law contained provisions on territorial asylum and extradition. As Garca Amador points out, it is important to note that even when the threat of aggression loomed foremost in the minds of Latin American leaders, the meetings that took place in the 19th century always had additional objectives to that of common defense. Evident throughout is a serious effort to establish juridical principles and create multilateral institutional structures that would govern the international relations of the new American republics. Principles enunciated by the Latin American republics A brief look at the principles that the Latin American republics enunciated in the meetings summarized above will show that they are valid today. The Organization of American States, of which the United States and 20 Latin American nations were founding members, today includes the countries of the Caribbean that were formerly British colonies and one that obtained its independence from the Netherlands, as well as Canada. The ensuing diversity has not entailed a revision of those principles, although the priorities assigned to them may vary, both in time and in the perception of individual Member States. As Gerhard Masur states, it is true that the Congress of Panama was a failure because it did not achieve its main objective, the creation of a South American league.2 However, the congress was the first to call for international arbitration in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the first to demand the abolition of the slave trade. Its vision on the common defense of the hemisphere would not become reality until the 20th century, but Pan American conferences henceforth became a permanent institution. The ideas that Bolvar put forward took root, and the fruits are there today. Solidarity against aggression. The primary purpose of the confederation of Latin American states as conceived by Bolvar was to form a political and military alliance. Article 2 of the treaty
2

Gerhard Masur, Simn Bolvar, The University of New Mexico Press, 1948. Translated into Spanish by Pedro Martin, Editorial Grijalbo, S.A., Mxico D.F., 1960. Updated edition, Academia Nacional de la Historia, Grijalbo, S.A., Caracas, 1987.

signed in Panama in 1826 stated: The purpose of this perpetual pact is to maintain in common, defensively and offensively if necessary, the sovereignty and independence of each and every one of the confederated powers in America against all foreign domination3 The commitment to reciprocal assistance in the face of aggression is found in Article 3: The contracting parties are bound and committed to defend each other from any attack that jeopardizes their political existence and to employ, against the enemies of the independence of all or some of them, all their strength, resources, and sea and land forces, according to the contingents which each is obliged to contribute The commitment to reciprocal assistance was reaffirmed in Article 1 of the 1848 treaty on confederation, which stipulated that the high contracting parties would render assistance with their land and sea forces and other means of defense available to them. Article 3 introduced a very important new institutional element in the collective security system. While the 1826 treaty was silent on this point, by 1848 Latin America had decided to entrust to a collective organ the decision to declare the casus foederis. The country under aggression had to bring its case before the Congress of Plenipotentiaries of the Confederated Republics which, as a first step, would decide whether the claim was just. In the affirmative, each of the contracting parties would demand satisfaction or reparation from the aggressor, and if this were denied without just cause, the Congress would declare the casus foederis. Once the Congress had communicated that decision to the contracting parties, all of these were to consider themselves at war with the aggressor, according to Article 6, and therefore would sever all relations including commercial ones.4 In 1856, the Continental Treaty broadened the concept of reciprocal assistance to include acts of private persons, whether citizens or not of the state against which they were directed. Therefore, the parties agreed to prevent hostile activities on their soil directed against any of them, including those by emigres or political exiles. This provision was ratified the same year in Washington by the Treaty on Alliance and Confederation. Finally, in 1865, through the treaty signed at the second Lima congress, the principle of solidarity against aggression was for the first time extended to cover acts of aggression on the part of any of the signatory states. As Garca Amador states, the essential elements of modern collective security systems are clearly present in the provisions adopted by Latin American nations in the 19th century. Of particular interest is the competence attributed to collective organs to apply sanctions in the face of certain violations of treaty stipulations. Peaceful settlement of disputes. This principle also appears in the 1826 Panama treaty, which provided for the peaceful settlement of disputes among the American States and, as well, for those that might arise between these nations and one or more powers outside the confederation. Garca Amador notes the importance of entrusting to the General Assembly the role of conciliator of differences between the signatories, and the responsibility to seek conciliation and mediation between them and nations alien to the confederation. The contracting parties
3 4

The English translations in this section are by the author of this paper. The text of the articles cited is found in Garca Amador, op. cit., from which this summary is drawn.

undertook to request the good offices, interposition and mediation of their allies before declaring war. If a party to the treaty were to declare hostilities without first following this procedure, it would be excluded from the confederation and could not be readmitted without unanimous approval of the other signatories. The 1848 treaty forbade explicitly the use of force and established the obligation on the part of the signatories to settle by peaceful means all their differences and disputes. It contemplated good offices or mediation as a duty of the states not directly involved in the dispute, and it entrusted the Congress of Plenipotentiaries with handing down a decision in the event that those procedures failed and in the absence of an agreement to arbitrate. The Continental Treaty of 1856 established a mediation mechanism that the parties to the dispute were obligated to accept. However, the Congress of Plenipotentiaries now had the right to mediate, and not the function nor obligation to do so. The treaty signed in Washington later that year further weakened the system because it assigned to the confederated republics not party to the dispute only the right to attempt a conciliation. Nevertheless, in 1865 Latin America made its most important contribution to the methods and procedures for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. The treaty on peace maintenance signed in Lima that year established compulsory and automatic arbitration in the event that other procedures failed. It also set up a system whereby, through the participation of third parties, lack of agreement of the parties could be overcome. The arbiter was to be appointed by a special assembly of plenipotentiaries and could determine procedures if the parties to the dispute were unable to agree on them. Nonintervention. In the international tradition of Latin America this is without doubt the most cherished principle. It is implicit in almost all the political instruments that have been cited before, and appears explicitly in Article 12 of the 1848 treaty, which forbids intervention in the internal affairs of the confederated republics by another, or by the Congress of Plenipotentiaries. Again in 1856, the Continental Treaty included provisions (Article 22) which prohibited deliberations by the Congress on internal matters of the signatory states. Both treaties refer to what nowadays are held to be matters essentially within the internal jurisdiction of states. However, even with regard to those, collective action was not completely excluded. Article 12 stated that the assistance that the signatories had to render under the treaty, and the measures taken to comply with the treaty and others adopted by the confederation, did not constitute intervention. Also, various forms of intervention are identified as casus foederis in the 1848 and 1865 treaties. The occupation or attempted occupation by a foreign power of any portion of the territory of an American State; the use of force, again by a foreign power, to alter the institutions of any confederated state; or to demand something illicit under international law, or impede compliance with the laws of a contracting state, are all casus foederis under the 1848 treaty. Likewise, the 1865 treaty would come into play to counter actions designed to annul or change the form of government, the political Constitution or the laws of the contracting parties; and

actions aimed at the violent alteration of their internal order. The treaty also condemned actions aimed at subjecting a contracting party to a protectorate, or to compel it to sell or cede territory, or to establish over it any authority in detriment of the ample and total exercise of its sovereignty and independence. Inviolability of national territory. The right of conquest, like intervention, was recognized at the time in Europe as a right of the state. As has been shown above, conquest was proscribed repeatedly in the Latin American treaties of the 19th century. This led to the proclamation that the territory of the newly independent republics in Latin America was inviolable. This principle and that of nonintervention were obviously born out of the concern to maintain and safeguard the independence and territorial integrity of the new nations. An equally political origin can be established for those related to collective security and, to a certain degree, to the peaceful settlement of disputes. Other principles and institutions have a different foundation. The following are mentioned as further examples of the contribution of Latin America to international law. Extradition and asylum. Both matters were regulated multilaterally for the first time in the 1848 treaty. Article 14 provided for extradition of persons accused of common crimes when requested by the authorities of the country in which the crime was committed, which had to submit documentation on the laws applicable to indictment and incarceration. Persons accused of treason, rebellion or sedition by a signatory country who took asylum in the territory of another could not be extradited. The treaty thus made the distinction between common and political crimes, while recognizing territorial asylum. As has been mentioned, the juridical congress held in Lima between 1877 and 1880 produced a Treaty on Extradition, which contains seventeen articles on this institution, covering almost all the provisions found in todays treaties. In excluding political crimes from extradition, this treaty gave to the country where the accused had taken asylum the right to determine the political nature of the crime charged. The treaty on international criminal law signed in Montevideo in 1889 regulated diplomatic asylum. A person charged with a common crime who took asylum in a legation (today, embassy) had to be turned over to local authorities, spontaneously or at the request of the ministry of foreign affairs. Persons accused of political crimes would be granted asylum, with the head of the diplomatic mission being obliged to report the fact at once to the government to which he was accredited. The government had the right to demand that the accused be sent out of its territory as soon as possible. The head of mission, in turn, could demand the necessary guarantees for the persons departure. Abolition of slavery. In 1826, the parties to the Panama treaty undertook to cooperate in the total abolition of the traffic of slaves from Africa (Article 27). To this end they declared that slave traders whose ships flew the flag of any contracting party would be considered pirates. This article originated in Bolvars instructions to Peruvian representatives to the Panama congress to

have the General Assembly take the most efficacious measures to stop the traffic of slaves in all America. The treaty on commerce and navigation signed in 1848 reaffirmed this Latin American position, declaring that the confederated republics abolished forever the traffic of slaves and that they would consider traffickers as pirates and deal with them accordingly. Equal treatment for nationals and foreigners. This principle also appears in various treaties, beginning in 1826. Article 24 of the Panama treaty guaranteed to citizens of a signatory country who preferred to reside in the territory of another all the rights and prerrogatives of naturalborn citizens. Accordingly, they could practice their profession or occupation and dispose of their property as they wished, subject to the laws of their country of residence. Similar provisions are found in the commerce and navigation treaty of 1848, which referred to the right to trade freely and gave foreigners equal access to the courts and authorities in the country of residence. Beginning in 1856, equal treatment is subject to the limitations that the Constitution of each country may set. The Latin American principle of equality of foreigners and nationals has these essential elements: equality in the enjoyment of civil rights and in the right to protection of the laws. These are conditioned by the proviso that foreigners may not expect greater protection nor enjoy more rights than those accorded to nationals. Uti possidetis juris. This is another of the better known Latin American principles. It served to define the frontiers of the new republics and was often used to resolve their border disputes. Basically, in light of this principle the borders that the various Spanish dependencies in America had as such, generally in 1810, are recognized as valid. The principle was inscribed multilaterally in Article 7 of the treaty on confederation signed in 1848. Both before and after that date, it appeared in several national Constitutions and bilateral treaties. Initiatives of the United States As Garca Amador states, notwithstanding the considerable influence exerted on the InterAmerican System by the Latin American congresses of the 19th century and by the principles and institutions derived therefrom, its most direct antecedent is an initiative taken by the government of the United States. On 29 November 1881, Secretary of State James G. Blaine addressed a circular note to the United States diplomatic representatives accredited to Latin America, asking them to invite the independent nations of America, North and South, 5to a general congress in Washington on 24 November 1882. The sole purpose of the conference, as stated by Blaine, was to consider and discuss means of preventing war among the American nations. However, the implicit purpose was to discuss means for pacific settlement of disputes, including arbitration.

All the present-day countries of Latin America, except Cuba, which was still a Spanish colony, and Panama, then part of Colombia.

In August 1882 the United States communicated its decision to postpone the conference in light of the unstable situation in South America. When the Secretary of State issued a new invitation on 13 July 1888, the proposed agenda had been considerably broadened, and the governments of Mexico, Central and South America, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and the Empire of Brazil were asked to meet in Washington the following year to discuss eight items. These were: peacekeeping and prosperity building measures; creation of a customs union; establishment of regular communication among American ports; adoption of a uniform system of customs regulations; adoption of a uniform system of weights and measures; adoption of a common silver currency; agreement on arbitration: and all other matters related to the prosperity of the states attending the conference that any of them might see fit to raise. As was the case in the original U.S. invitation, political topics to which Latin America had devoted years of efforts, such as collective security, were entirely left out. The only subject of a political nature was the prevention of intracontinental wars, chiefly through arbitration and other means for pacific settlement. The First International American Conference was held in Washington from 2 October 1889 until 19 April 1890. It adopted more than two dozen opinions, recommendations and resolutions. Of particular importance in the context of the Organization of American States was the establishment of the International Union of American Republics, represented in Washington by the Commercial Bureau of the American Republics. By decision of the Second Conference (Mexico City, 1901-1902) the name of the bureau was changed to International Office of the American Republics, and in 1910, by the Fourth Conference, to Pan American Union. It would keep the latter designation until 1970, when the OAS Charter reformed by the Protocol of Buenos Aires gave the name of General Secretariat to the permanent body that, since 1890, had been entrusted with increasing responsibilities for the daily conduct of inter-American affairs.6 The Inter-American Conferences (1901-1947) Important institutional changes were introduced in the inter-American organization originally conceived in Washington. The Second International American Conference placed the International Office of the American Republics under a Directing Council made up of the diplomatic representatives of the governments of those countries accredited in Washington. The previous arrangement had placed the Commercial Bureau under the stewardship of the US Secretary of State. The Third Conference, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1906, gave greater powers to that office, including that of acting as permanent committee of the Conferences. At the Fourth Conference in Buenos Aires, beyond the name change to Pan American Union, it was decided that a Latin American republic without diplomatic representation in Washington could appoint another member of the Directing Council to represent it; that member would have one vote for each country represented. The Fifth Conference (Santiago de Chile, 1923) decided that governments would be represented at International American Conferences and on the Directing Council of the Pan American Union in their own right. Therefore, nations without diplomatic representation in Washington could appoint special representatives to the Directing Council. Also, the US Secretary of State, who had until then been ex-officio Chairman of the Council,
For a thorough study of the institutional evolution of the Inter-American System between 1890 and 1948, see Garca Amador, op. cit., pp. 133-146.
6

ceased to hold that office, and the Council would henceforth elect its Chairman and Vice Chairman. A further attempt was made to restructure the regional system. At the Sixth Conference in Havana in 1928 a Convention was signed which reflected a more elaborate and systematic institutional structure for what was then named the Union of the American States. However, Article XIV of the Convention required for its entry into force the unanimous ratification of the 21 American States. Sixteen instruments of ratification were deposited a proportion of the total number of signatories that nowadays would be sufficient to modify the OAS Charter but that was insufficient then in light of the stringent requirement set by the Convention. Until the end of the Second World War in 1945 no further restructuring was formally considered. However, a new organ arose, the Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. A method of consultation had been established in 1936 at the Conference on the Consolidation of Peace held in Buenos Aires. The mechanism was perfected in 1938 at the Eighth International American Conference that took place in Lima. The resolution approved there provided for the personal attendance of the foreign affairs ministers and made the consultation applicable to any matter of an economic or cultural nature that by its importance justified the use of this mechanism, and in which the American States had a common interest. The first three meetings of consultation were in 1939, in Panama, 1940 in Havana, and 1942 in Rio de Janeiro. Other regional organs and entities were created during this period, such as the Inter-American Commission of Women and the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, both specialized organizations. The Second Meeting of Consultation established the Inter-American Peace Committee. In 1939 the Inter-American Committee on Neutrality was set up; it went on to function as the Inter-American Juridical Committee from 1942 until today. In order to study and suggest to the governments measures for the defense of the Continent, the Third Meeting of Consultation created the Inter-American Defense Board in 1942. Shortly before the end of the war, the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace was held in Mexico City (February-March, 1945). The Conference approved Resolution IX, one of the most important in the history of the Inter-American System. The resolution provided, inter alia, that the International American Conferences would be held every four years, and decided that the next meeting would be held in Bogota. It also mandated an annual regular session of the Meeting of Consultation, to be convoked by the Council of the Pan American Union. It called for the Directing Council to be made up of ad hoc delegates with the rank of Ambassador, who could not be part of the diplomatic mission accredited to the host country of the Pan American Union (i.e., the United States). It gave broader powers to the Directing Council, which was to meet at least once a week. The resolution also created the Inter-American Economic and Social Council as a permanent organ dependent on the Directing Council. These and other guidelines set in Mexico in 1945 formed the basis for the document that the Council, under mandate of the resolution, presented to the Ninth Conference in Bogota in 1948. That document, in turn, was the working basis for the drafting of the Charter of the Organization of American States.

One more meeting was to take place before the Ninth Conference. In 1947 the Inter-American Conference on the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security met in Rio de Janeiro and, on 2 September, approved the Inter-American Treaty on Reciprocal Assistance. This treaty had been recommended by the Mexico conference (Resolution VIII) and was intended to forestall and repel threats and acts of aggression against any American state. War was formally condemned in Article 1, and the signatories renounced the threat or the use of force in their international relations in any manner incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations or the treaty itself. The High Contracting Parties agreed that an armed attack from any state against an American State would be considered an attack against all. Therefore each signatory committed itself to render aid against the attack, in exercise of the right of individual or collective legitimate defense recognized in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The American States could use legitimate defense measures until the UN Security Council had taken steps to maintain international peace and security. The treaty also contemplates an aggression that does not constitute armed attack, but that affects the inviolability, territorial integrity, sovereignty, or political independence of any American State, as well as an extracontinental or intracontinental conflict, or any other situation that might endanger the peace in America. In these cases it calls for an immediate meeting of the Organ of Consultation to adopt measures to assist the country under aggression, or those that may be required for common defense and to maintain Continental peace and security. Article 8 states that the Organ of Consultation may adopt one or more of the following measures: withdrawal of heads of mission; breaking of diplomatic relations; breaking of consular relations; partial or total interruption of economic relations, or of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, telephonic, radiotelephonic or radiotelegraphic communications; and the use of armed force. A two-thirds majority of signatory countries that have ratified the treaty is required for adoption of decisions by the Organ of Consultation. All states that have signed and ratified the treaty are obliged to comply with the measures adopted under Article 8, with the sole exception that no state may be compelled to use armed force without its consent. The treaty would enter into force among the ratifying states upon deposit of the instruments of ratification of two-thirds of the signatories. It was quickly ratified by the Dominican Republic and the United States in 1947, and thirteen Latin American countries ratified it in 1948, so that it entered into force that year. Subsequently, the remaining founding Member States of the OAS ratified it and, in 1967, Trinidad and Tobago did so. II. THE OAS CHARTER

The Charter of the Organization of American States was signed in Bogota on 30 April 1948 during the Ninth International American Conference. It contained 112 articles. In Article 32 the Charter enumerated the organs of the OAS: the Inter-American Conference; the Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs; the Council; the Pan American Union; the Specialized Conferences; and the Specialized Organizations.

The Charter entered into force on 13 December 1951, upon deposit by Colombia of the instrument of ratification. The structure and mechanisms envisioned more than a century before had finally taken institutional shape, and the Organization of American States was born with a rich and sometimes controversial legacy. The OAS has been often criticized for moving ponderously. Former Secretary General Baena Soares addresses the point this way: There is no doubt that between its origins in the First International Conference of American States of 1889-1890 and the adoption of its Charter in 1948 the Organization developed only slowly. However, if one bears in mind that, in the time that elapsed between Washington and Bogota, an entity originally dedicated to promoting hemispheric trade converted itself into a politicaljuridical organization with ambitious goals, it will be easier to grasp that such a transformation, based as it was on refining and reconciling national interests, could not have been accomplished against the clock. 7 The Protocol of Buenos Aires. The Bogota Charter stood unchanged for twenty years. In 1967 the Protocol of Buenos Aires, which came into force in 1970, created new deliberative organs. The General Assembly, which was to meet in regular session every year, and in special session whenever necessary, replaced the Inter-American Conference as the forum for periodic review, at the highest diplomatic level, of the main events occurring in the Western Hemisphere. The new Inter-American Council for Education, Science, and Culture (CIECC, in the Spanish acronym), together with the existing Inter-American Council for Economic and Social Affairs and the old Council, that now became the Permanent Council of the Organization, constituted the three pillars under the General Assembly. Mainly, the Protocol of Buenos Aires strengthened the General Secretariat of the OAS. The Secretary General and the Assistant Secretary General were now to be elected by the General Assembly, rather than by the Council. They were responsible to the Assembly, without prejudice of the overview function of the Permanent Council to ensure faithful compliance with the General Standards to Govern the Operations of the General Secretariat. The Secretariat was also entrusted with the promotion of the economic, social, juridical, scientific, and cultural relations among Member States, a function formerly assigned to the Council. This first Charter reform is evidence of the concern of Member States with keeping OAS priorities in line with the changing times. Obviously, the priorities prevailing in the aftermath of World War II had to be changed, and Buenos Aires was an initial step in that direction. In 1973, only three years after the Charter reform was implemented, the General Assembly established a special committee to conduct, in the words of Resolution 127, a comprehensive critical study, analysis and evaluation of the philosophy, instruments, structure, and functioning of the Inter-American System and to propose its restructuring and the reforms and measures

Joao Clemente Baena Soares, Profile of a Mandate: Ten Years at the OAS, General Secretariat, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., 1994, p. 3.

necessary to enable it to respond adequately to the new political, economic, social, and cultural situations in all the Member States and to hemispheric and world conditions. The special committee, known as CEESI, held sessions in Lima and Washington between June 1973 and February 1975. In May of that year, the Permanent Council, under instructions of the General Assembly, took up the revision and coordination of the texts proposed by CEESI. This process, although it began quickly, occupied the attention of Member States for another ten years. Finally, in 1984 the General Assembly decided to meet the following year in order to examine and, as the case might be, adopt the proposals agreed on by Member States regarding the basic instruments of the OAS. The Protocol of Cartagena de Indias. The special session of the General Assembly met in Cartagena de Indias in December 1985, at the invitation of the Government of Colombia, and on 5 December the Protocol that bears the name of that historic city was signed. Baena Soares says that the Protocol was seen by some as an attempt to reestablish a balance between long-standing juridical-political concerns and the trend toward international cooperation that was a high priority for many Member States in the sixties. In that view, Cartagena played a corrective role with regard to the 1967 reform. He adds his own insight, from the vantage point of his unanimous election in June 1984: Personally, I think it is more exact to say that the second reform of the Charter responds aptly to the concern of governments to endow the Organization with more agile and effective mechanisms to ensure peaceful settlement of disputes; that geopolitical realities in the Hemisphere during the eighties moved us closer toward the principle of regional universality; and that the regional priority thesis, defended vigorously and successfully by Latin America in San Francisco in 1945 and enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, as well as in the Bogota Charter three years later, was upheld without denying the fact that the Member States of the OAS wish to preserve their rights and duties in the world forum.8 Baena Soares sees a fundamental change in the attitude of governments toward the Secretary General. The highest-ranking official had been previously characterized as a manager without any political initiative. At best, he was to carry out faithfully the political decisions of the governing bodies whenever they chose to assign to him a specific and clearly demarcated task. This attitude changed for the better in Cartagena. The 1967 reform had established the Inter-American Committee on Peaceful Settlement under an elaborate set of rules of procedure. This did not turn out to be an improvement over the old InterAmerican Peace Committee that had operated successfully under very flexible rules, so much so that not one case was brought before the new organ. Cartagena sought to correct that situation. Article 84 of the Charter states that any party to a dispute in which none of the peaceful procedures provided for in the Charter is underway may resort to the Permanent Council to obtain its good offices. The previous rule required the consent of both parties before the Permanent Council could examine the issue.
8

Baena Soares, op. cit., pp. 6-7.

Also, the Protocol of Cartagena empowered the Permanent Council to create ad hoc committees, provided the parties agreed. This new mechanism contemplated in Article 85 came to replace the Inter-American Committee on Peaceful Settlement, which was abolished. Baena Soares concludes that the greater emphasis placed at Cartagena on the Permanent Council as the ideal instrument for the peaceful settlement of disputes brought with it a revaluation of the role traditionally assigned to the Secretary General. In cases where there were no parties to a conflict because there was no real controversy as such, a way had to be found to bring them to the attention of the political bodies. The Permanent Council examined this topic in the course of its preparatory studies for the Cartagena meeting. The result was Article 115 of the Charter, which states: The Secretary General may bring to the attention of the General Assembly or the Permanent Council any matter which in his opinion might threaten the peace and security of the Hemisphere or the development of the Member States. Thus, the member countries established within the OAS a political function which goes beyond the one assigned by the UN Charter to its Secretary-General. In the OAS, the Secretary General is not restricted to questions of peace and security. He can bring to the political organs issues that might, in his opinion, affect the development of Member States. The Protocol of Cartagena de Indias came into force in 1988. However, the spirit of Cartagena (as it became known immediately after its approval in 1985) was abroad in the Americas. In February 1986 and in November of that year, the Secretary General acted in that spirit, first in regard to Haiti and then to promote a peaceful solution in Central America. Baena Soares resorted to the powers implicit in his position. Although with some initial reservations, his interpretation prevailed. It may be said that in the OAS, the Secretary General had come of age.9 The Protocol of Washington. In May 1992 the OAS Member States decided to amend the Charter once again. This time the process culminated much faster. In December of that year the third Charter reform was approved at the Organizations headquarters in Washington. Argentina took the initiative at the regular session of the General Assembly in Nassau. The Government of Argentina was convinced that the OAS should reaffirm the commitment to help consolidate democracy in the Western Hemisphere that it had undertaken the year before in Santiago de Chile. On that occasion the General Assembly had approved Resolution 1080, a discussion of which will follow in this paper. It was now time, Argentina said, to study the possibility of suspending governments of Member States that had resulted from the overthrow by force of legitimately elected ones. Also, Argentina proposed studying critical poverty as the main threat to institutional stability.
On the spirit of Cartagena as applied to Haiti, see Baena Soares, op. cit., pp. 8-12; and on Central America, pp. 189-196.
9

As mandated by the Assembly, the Permanent Council convoked a special session of the higher body to consider the new Charter reform. At the same time, the Council created a special committee within its ranks to study and eventually propose the amendments that would be required. The governments scrutinized the proposal. Evidence of their care is the report of the special committee, which together with appendices is almost 700 pages long. One must bear in mind that this would be the first time that the OAS adopted a suspension mechanism in the Charter. By the time Argentina made its proposal, Resolution 1080 had been put to the test twice: first in Haiti, in September 1991, and then in Peru, in April 1992. As Baena Soares states, those events tarnished the feeling of optimism that democracy would prevail in the Americas, and they predisposed governments in favor of the Argentinian suggestion that the mechanism established in Santiago needed strengthening. On 14 December 1992, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and heads of delegation meeting in the General Assembly approved the Protocol of Washington. The amendment whereby eradication of extreme poverty came to be an essential purpose of the OAS under the Charter was approved by consensus. On the other hand, the suspension mechanism was approved by 29 votes in favor, 1 against, and 2 abstentions. Article 9 of the Charter reads as follows: A member of the Organization whose democratically constituted government has been overthrown by force may be suspended from the exercise of the right to participate in the sessions of the General Assembly, the Meeting of Consultation, the Councils of the Organization and the Specialized Conferences as well as in the commissions, working groups, and any other bodies established. The power to suspend shall be exercised only when such diplomatic initiatives undertaken by the Organization for the purpose of promoting the restoration of representative democracy in the affected Member State have been unsuccessful: (a) the decision to suspend shall be adopted at a special session of the General Assembly by an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the Member States; (b) the suspension shall take effect immediately following its approval by the General Assembly; (c) the suspension notwithstanding, the Organization shall endeavor to undertake additional diplomatic initiatives to contribute to the reestablishment of representative democracy in the affected Member State; (d) the Member which has been subject to suspension shall continue to fulfill its obligations to the Organization; (e) the General Assembly may lift the suspension by a decision adopted with the approval of two-thirds of the Member States; (f) the powers referred to in this article shall be exercised in accordance with the Charter.

The Protocol of Washington came into force in 1997. To date no case for suspension has been brought before the OAS. The Protocol of Managua. A few months later the General Assembly held its annual session in the capital of Nicaragua. In June 1993 the Protocol of Managua was approved. It established the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI), which has taken on the functions of the former councils for economic and social affairs and for education, science, and culture. The Assembly also resolved to hold a special session on cooperation for development. It took place in Mexico City in 1994, and worked out plans and mechanisms for integral development, the struggle against extreme poverty, and improvement of basic levels of social and economic well being in the Hemisphere. The Protocol of Managua highlighted the elimination of poverty. It amended Articles 4 and 5 of the Charter, providing the framework for CIDI and establishing as an overall purpose the eradication of extreme poverty. This Protocol has also entered into force. As will be seen later on, in 1999 the OAS General Assembly in its regular session examined a far-reaching proposal to create a new inter-American agency for technical cooperation services and activities and, later in the same year, approved in special session the Organization of American States Special Development Agency (OASDA), which is expected to begin operations in January 2000. As may be concluded from this summary of OAS Charter reforms, the Organization has moved more expeditiously than is generally recognized to adapt its structure and mechanisms to the changing priorities of the Member States. In twenty years it has introduced substantial reforms to the Charter on four occasions. All of these reforms are currently in place. III. DEMOCRACY AND THE OAS

Hugo Caminos, who was Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs of the OAS from 1984 until 1994, and who currently is a Judge on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, writes: The OAS, a regional organization of 35 States, comprising all the independent countries of the American continent and the Caribbean, all of which except the United States and Canada are developing States, has adopted legal rules for the defence of representative democracy unparalleled in other international organizations.10 The inter-American system recognized the existence of democracy as a common cause in America for the first time in 1936, in the Declaration of Principles of Inter-American Solidarity

10

Hugo Caminos, The Role of the Organization of American States in the Promotion and Protection of Democratic Governance, Recueil des cours, Vol. 273 (1998), offprint (for private circulation only), Academy of International Law, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague/Boston/London, 1999, p.114.

and Cooperation adopted at the Inter-American Conference for the Consolidation of Peace held in Buenos Aires.11 The promotion and consolidation of democracy in the OAS Charter. The OAS Charter, from Bogota to this day, enshrines the principle of representative democracy. The Preamble contains these two paragraphs (third and fourth): Convinced that representative democracy is an indispensable condition for stability, peace and development of the region. Confident that the true significance of American solidarity and good neighborliness can only mean the consolidation on this continent, within the framework of democratic institutions, of a system of individual liberty and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of man. Furthermore, Article 2 (b) proclaims that one of the essential purposes of the OAS is To promote and consolidate representative democracy, with due respect to the principle of nonintervention. Article 3 (d) sets this requirement: The solidarity of the American States and the high aims which are sought through it require the political organization of those states on the basis of the effective exercise of representative democracy. Subparagraph (e) of the same article has been interpreted as an application of the method of balance and counterbalance:12 Every state has the right to choose without external interference its political, economic, and social system and to organize itself in the way best suited to it, and has the duty to abstain from intervening in the affairs of another state. Subject to the foregoing, the American States shall cooperate fully among themselves, independently of the nature of their political, economic, and social systems. The Protocol of Washington developed the concept of the promotion and consolidation of representative democracy. It incorporated in Article 3 the new subparagraph (f), which reads: The elimination of extreme poverty is an essential part of the promotion and consolidation of representative democracy and is the common and shared responsibility of the American States.

11 12

Caminos, at p. 121. Caminos, op. cit, p. 125.

Furthermore, as has been cited above, the Protocol of Buenos Aires incorporated Article 9 and created, for the first time in the OAS, a formal mechanism for suspension of a Member State whose democratically constituted government has been overthrown by force. The principle of nonintervention, as has been shown in the historical background section of this paper, has always been a pillar of the inter-American system. Nevertheless, Article 23 of the Charter makes it clear that measures adopted for the maintenance of peace and security in accordance with existing treaties do not constitute a violation of the principle of nonintervention. Therefore, Caminos concludes that the measures provided for in the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the Rio Treaty, could be applied in cases where the irregular interruption of the democratic institutional process might endanger the peace of the Americas.13 The author emphasizes that the Protocol of Buenos Aires was conceived with a binary objective: a legal objective the suspension mechanism and a policy objective. On the latter he writes: it is the policy objective which evidences a collective recognition by the OAS Member States of the relationship between the economic stability of a country and its ability to sustain representative democracy. The Protocol of Washington, thus, establishes an institutional linkage, enshrined in the Charter, between the strengthening of democracy and the eradication of extreme poverty.14 In its Resolution on Partnership for Development and Struggle to Overcome Extreme Poverty (Resolution 1354, adopted in 1995), the General Assembly reinforced this link, and, again, in the Declaration of Montrouis: A New Vision of the OAS, also adopted by the Assembly meeting in Haiti that year. The OAS commitment to the eradication of extreme poverty is most clearly reflected in the Charter as modified by the Protocol of Washington. Its provisions on this matter, as Caminos states, signal the diversification of OAS efforts and strategies towards the promotion and protection of democratic governance.15 The author underscores the importance of this topic as follows: It is important to realize, however, that building democracy is a long term process and that sustainable democracy may only truly be realized when the indigenous forces within a society can maintain and strengthen democracy without external support. Despite the OASs legal instruments in defence-of-democracy, democratic governance will continue to be an unattainable ideal as long as the conditions relating to extreme poverty are not fully addressed and eradicated.16 Resolution 1080 of the OAS General Assembly. Meeting in Santiago de Chile in 1991, the General Assembly of the OAS unanimously adopted the Santiago Commitment to Democracy
13 14

Caminos, op. cit., p. 127. Ibid. 15 Ibid., at p. 131. 16 Ibid., p. 132.

and the Renewal of the Inter-American System. This Declaration, approved early in the meeting, set the tone for what would be the main preoccupation of the Organization throughout the last decade of the twentieth century. In the afterglow of the collapse of the Berlin wall and the subsequent changes in Eastern Europe, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, in the preamble of the Declaration stated, inter alia, the following: Aware that profound international political and economic changes and the end of the cold war open up new opportunities and responsibilities for concerted action by all countries through global and regional organizations, as well as in their bilateral relationships; Bearing in mind that the changes toward a more open and democratic international system are not completely established, and that cooperation must be encouraged and strengthened so that those favorable trends may continue; Mindful that representative democracy is the form of government of the region and that its consolidation, improvement and true enjoyment are shared priorities. These three paragraphs show that the optimism derived from the end of the cold war was tempered by the reality that there was still a way to go before democracy could be consolidated in the region. Accordingly, the Ministers declared their decision to adopt efficacious, timely and expeditious procedures for the promotion and defense of representative democracy, in keeping with the Charter of the Organization of American States.17 Those procedures were created at the same meeting through Resolution 1080 on Representative Democracy. In this Resolution, after recognizing that the region still faced serious political, social, and economic problems that may threaten the stability of democratic governments, the General Assembly devised a new mechanism to deal with two types of situations. These are the sudden or irregular interruption of the democratic political institutional process, and the interruption of the legitimate exercise of power by the democratically elected government in any of the OAS Member States. The mechanism is quite simple. In the event of any occurrences giving rise to either situation, the Secretary General is instructed to call for the immediate convocation of a meeting of the Permanent Council. The Council will examine the situation, and convene an ad hoc meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs or a special session of the General Assembly. The entire procedure must take place within a ten-day period. The purpose of the ministerial meeting (whether in the ad hoc format or as a special session of the Assembly) is to look into the events collectively and adopt any decisions deemed appropriate, in accordance with the Charter and international law.18
For the text of the Santiago Commitment to Democracy and the Renewal of the Inter-American System, see OEA/Ser.P/XXI.O.2, Vol. 1, of 20 August 1991, pp. 1-3. 18 Ibid., pp.4-5.
17

The 1991 General Assembly marks a milestone in the OAS. In Santiago, not even the most skeptical could foresee that Resolution 1080 would be put to the test in very short order. Case studies. The following case studies illustrate the application of several OAS mechanisms in situations where democracy was at risk. The OAS faced a crisis in Panama in 1989, two years before the adoption of Resolution 1080, and therefore resorted to the Meeting of Consultation. Beginning in 1990, the situation in Suriname called for diverse measures, all undertaken at the request of the government of that Member State and none of them under either mechanism. In September 1991, the first application of Resolution 1080 took place in Haiti. The new resolution was put into play again, for very different reasons, in April 1992, in the case of Peru, and in May 1993, for the third (and, so far, last) time, in Guatemala. As we shall see, the efforts of the Organization have met with successes and failures, and in one instance neither can yet be declared. PANAMA Under the military rule of General Noriega, the Panamanian people nevertheless put their faith in democracy and turned out in very large numbers to vote in the presidential elections of May 1989. About 250 international observers not including the OAS, which was not invited participated in the process. In addition, more than 1,000 volunteers, organized by the Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church in Panama, gathered data from the voting centers and fed it into a central computer to develop a statistical sample. The political opposition to Noriega organized its own parallel vote count and attempted to include all voting stations. The Catholic Church published the results of its sample on May 8, the day following the elections. The figures gave 74.8% to ADOC, the opposition alliance, and 24.4% to the government coalition. One week later, the opposition, having covered almost 76% of all voting centers, had 66.9% in its favor and 26.2% for the government parties. The margin of error in both counts made these figures consistent, and therefore the international observers agreed that the political opposition had won a clear victory. However, it became evident that Noriega had no intention of losing, no matter what. On May 9 a semi-official announcement had been made claiming victory for the government candidates. This was met with widespread popular demonstrations. The press, and especially U.S. television, was present in force. Guillermo Endara had won the presidency, with Ricardo Arias Caldern as first vice-president. The second vice-president-elect, Guillermo Ford, was leading one of the demonstrations when, in full view of the television cameras, he was struck repeatedly by a uniformed member of the Panamanian Defense Forces. That picture was seen all over the world and undoubtedly contributed to the strong international reaction against Noriegas attempt to thwart the will of the people. Faced with this situation, the OAS acted quickly. At Venezuelas request, the Permanent Council met in special session and convoked a Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs under Article 60 of the Charter, which provides for this mechanism in order to examine a

problem of an urgent nature and of common interest to the American States. The meeting, which began at OAS headquarters on May 17, was called to consider the serious crisis in Panama in its international context. Under the able presidency of Ambassador Julio Londoo, the Foreign Minister of Colombia, the meeting that same day adopted Resolution 1, by which the foreign ministers of Ecuador, Guatemala, and Trinidad and Tobago were charged with the urgent mission of promoting, with the assistance of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, conciliation formulas for arriving at a national accord that can bring about, through democratic mechanisms, a transfer of power in the shortest possible time, and with full respect for the sovereign will of the Panamanian people.19 The Mission, in which the Secretary General participated actively on an equal footing with the three foreign ministers, traveled to Panama on five occasions between May 23 and August 17, 1989. On the first, four-day visit to the country, the Mission obtained agreement from all the parties that negotiations among themselves were feasible, and that political formulas based on mutual concessions were within the realm of possibility. The normalization of Panamas international relations and the economic reactivation of the country were shared concerns. On this basis, the Meeting of Consultation extended the Missions mandate, as recommended in its report.20 On its second visit (June 12-15) the Mission, seeking the national accord it had been charged with promoting, set the basis for tripartite talks among the opposition, the government, and the Defense Forces. Obstacles were encountered even to general outlines for the talks. Consequently, the Mission suggested a period of reflection as a formula to get the parties to sit down and negotiate face to face. The Mission subsequently received replies from all sides that they were willing to begin negotiations without preconditions, and with the commitment not to exclude any topic. The latter proviso was most important, because it meant that even the resignation of General Noriega as Commander in Chief of the Panamanian Defense Forces could be taken up. With those assurances, the three foreign ministers and the Secretary General returned for a third visit on July 14. Faced with the fact that the Meeting of Consultation would reconvene on July 19, as previously determined, the tripartite dialogue began on Sunday, July 16. The members of the OAS Mission, acting as moderators, invited the parties to state their initial case and to propose topics for the dialogue agenda. The two government sides (political parties and the Executive, which included the Defense Forces) proposed topics related to the economic aggression and military threat against Panama by the United States; strict compliance with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties; and non-interference in the political affairs of Panama. The opposition proposed the departure of General Noriega from his post; a definition of what each party understood by transfer of

19

See Final Act of the Twenty-First Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, OEA/Ser.F/II.21, Doc. 83/92, of 17 December 1992. 20 OEA/Ser.F/II.21, Doc. 25/89, of 6 June 1989.

power; the May 7 elections; human rights violations and violations of constitutional guarantees; and external factors. This stage of the process ended with the parties thanking the Mission for having helped to bring about dialogue, and requesting its continued assistance in the negotiations. In its report to the Meeting of Consultation on July 19, the Mission stated that the continued presence of General Noriega as Commander in Chief of the Defense Forces has been identified by both supporters and opposition as one of the factors, if not the factor, which must be addressed in order to solve the crisis as a whole21 The new President of Panama was to take office on 1 September 1989. The majority opinion was that a solution to the crisis had to be reached through a national accord that would guarantee an orderly transfer of power by that date. The OAS Mission stated in its report that the accord would have to contain these principal objectives: the elimination of prevailing tensions in Panama; the reestablishment of guaranteed respect for human, civil, and political rights; national reconciliation; the establishment of a truly democratic system of government; full normalization of relations between Panama and the United States; and the adoption of measures, both of a domestic nature and in the sphere of international cooperation, to reactivate the Panamanian economy and to promote the economic and social development of the country. The Mission reported to the Meeting of Consultation that all participants in the tripartite dialogue had those objectives in mind. Baena Soares points out that the Missions mandate was limited to promoting a process leading to a framework within which Panamanian themselves could decide the content of a viable national accord. In two months, the Mission had managed to get political enemies to sit down and seek a solution to the crisis. Furthermore, The tripartite form that the dialogue took followed a suggestion we had made; the participants were authorized to act on behalf of their sectors; and the agenda included all the items that each party thought should be discussed. With those results, the Mission could have announced the successful completion of its mandate and asked the Meeting of Consultation to relieve it of further responsibility. Nevertheless, in view of the clearly and even vehemently expressed desire of the parties to continue availing themselves of our cooperation in the negotiation process, we transmitted that wish to the Meeting, as indeed we were obliged to do.22 The result of the Missions scrupulously thorough report was that the Meeting of Consultation, at its session of July 19, took note of the request of the negotiating parties and accordingly requested the Mission to assist the parties in the conduct of the negotiation process and thereby ensure, through democratic mechanisms and in accordance with domestic procedures in effect in

21 22

OEA/Ser.F.II.21, Doc.40/89, of 19 July 1989. Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 34.

Panama, a transfer of power on September 1, 1989 and the holding of free elections as soon as possible.23 In fulfillment of its new mandate, the Mission returned to Panama for the fourth time on August 1. The dialogue resumed on August 3. It was obviously going to be a weeks-long process, and therefore at the Missions suggestion, the parties agreed to take on the moderating role on a rotating basis. Two sessions were held under the new format in the Missions presence, both on August 4. However, the talks foundered when the participants were unable to agree on the oppositions proposal to hold a national plebiscite on August 20 in order to settle the basic differences arising from the dialogue. A recess was agreed upon and between August 14 and 16 two additional sessions of the dialogue took place. The Mission traveled to Panama for the fifth time on August 17 for what would turn out to be its last visit. Sessions 6 and 7 of the tripartite dialogue were held in the first two days without results. The Mission then proposed a new negotiating modality: separate dialogues between the Mission and the opposition alliance, on the one hand, and between the Mission and the government political coalition and the Executive, which as always included the Defense Forces, on the other. The Panamanians accepted this and three days of practically non-stop talks ensued. The Mission was able to outline a possible package of understandings and the core of a negotiated solution was in sight. However, in Baena Soares words, The military officers representing the Defense Forces in the delegation of the Executive Branch were Noriegas men. That made it possible to talk frankly with them, as with the other parties, about the need for the General to leave his post before a legitimate government could take over. In its talks with the Mission, the opposition had shown signs of flexibility regarding the form that Noriegas departure could take; and in particular regarding his leaving or staying in the country. There had been talk of the possibility of him staying in Panama after leaving office. In fact, he could have retired without any loss of face to himself as a professional soldier. When everything suggested that he would seize that opportunity, and literally as we were leaving the country, we heard that he had decided to reject the idea and hang on to power.24 One week before President Endara was to assume the office to which he had been elected the Meeting of Consultation reconvened in Washington. The very long session was held under much tension between August 23 and the early hours of the following day. The OAS Ministers of Foreign Affairs, through the Declaration of the President of the Meeting of Consultation, exhorted the Panamanians to come to an agreement before September 1, and offered to send the Mission once again if all parties requested it.

The complete text of the Declaration of the President of the Meeting of Consultation is in OEA/Ser.F/II.21, Doc. 45/89. 24 Baena Soares, op.cit., p. 37.

23

No request ever came. No more talks were held in Panama, and, as Baena Soares says, Noriega refused to have any further contact with us, either individually or collectively.25 Noriega was to pay a high price for his obstinacy. The OAS had strongly condemned the abuse of the electoral process. Several Member States had withdrawn their ambassadors from Panama and had interrupted trade with the country. Private and public exhortations had been made to reinstate the violated rights of the Panamanian people. The OAS Mission had acted with diligence, patience, and imagination. A peaceful solution, however, was not to be. On October 3, 1989, about 200 members of the Panamanian Defense Forces attacked their own military headquarters, where Noriega was at the time. Although the attempt failed, ending with the on the spot execution of several of its leaders, the myth of monolithic support by the military for Noriega had collapsed, as Baena Soares puts it. He nevertheless continued to hold on to power until December 20, when United States military forces invaded Panama. A few days later, U.S. troops arrested Noriega, brought him to the United States, tried him in a Florida court, and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. He is serving that sentence a decade later, as the 20th century draws to a close. SURINAME Very early in life as an independent nation, Suriname turned its eyes to the Organization of American States. The country obtained independence in 1975 and in 1977 became a Member State of the OAS. A few years later, many of the mechanisms that the Organization employs were placed at the service of the relatively new member, at its own request, to help it restore peace and to strengthen its democratic institutions.26 A guerrilla war broke out in 1986. At the time, Surinames natural wealth was concentrated in the urban and coastal regions. The Jungle Commando, the Tucayana Amazons, the Mandelas, the Angulas, and the Koffiemakkas all sought an economic rather than a political objective: to broaden the participation of the population of the interior in economic activities. The war dragged on for the remainder of the eighties, and, after various attempts to achieve peace failed in 1989 and 1990, President Shankar requested OAS Secretary General Baena Soares to provide assistance in the peace process. The Organizations efforts began in 1991, on the basis of a letter from President Kraag dated 31 January inviting the Secretary General to appoint observers for the May 25 elections of members of the National Assembly and of the District and Local Councils. Within a fortnight, a small mission headed by one of the Secretary Generals advisers, Edgardo Costa Reis, was in Suriname. In mid-March Baena Soares paid the country an official visit and signed two agreements with the Government, one on relations between the electoral authorities and the OAS observers and the other on the privileges and immunities of the latter.

25 26

Ibid. p. 38. For a fuller account, see Baena Soares, op. cit., pp. 122-129.

The elections were of paramount importance to the peace process. According to the Constitution, the National Assembly elects the President and Vice President by a two-thirds majority. If they are not elected after two rounds of voting, then the United Assembly of the People, a body composed of the National Assembly and the District and Local Councils, elects the new executives. The OAS Observer Mission was made up of 40 persons from 16 Member States, half of these Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. Canada, which had become a member of the OAS one year before,27also took part in the mission, together with countries that had been founding members: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and the United States. The OAS observers were present throughout the electoral process, from the opening of voter registration lists in February until the election of President Venetiaan on September 6, with a smaller group remaining in the country until he took office ten days later. The process took a bit longer but worked as provided for in the Constitution. In mid-July, the members of the National Assembly and of the Councils were elected, and the Assembly proceeded to elect Mr. Jules Adjodhia as Vice President. However, it was unable to muster the two-thirds majority required to elect the President. Therefore, the United Assembly of the People met and elected Mr. Ronald Venetiaan President of the Republic. Shortly thereafter, on 6 January 1992, President Venetiaan requested OAS assistance in strengthening the democratic institutions in his country and in promoting peace in Suriname. Again, the Secretary General designated his adviser, Costa Reis, to head this new phase. In July of the same year, President Venetiaan met with leaders of the Jungle Command and obtained their agreement to reach a complete peace agreement by August 1. For his part, Venetiaan committed his Government to seek OAS advice in the peace negotiations and in the demobilization and reintegration processes, as well as in the granting of an amnesty. With that tight timetable in mind, Baena Soares again visited Suriname, in July, and signed agreements on the OAS Special Mission. The OAS moved swiftly, with the other three armed groups joining the Jungle Command and the Tucayana Amazons, which had participated directly in the negotiations from the start. Almost precisely on schedule, on 8 August 1992, the Government and the five armed groups signed the Agreement for National Reconciliation and Development.28 This agreement covers the 14 points mentioned in the program for the peace talks that had been drawn up with the assistance of the OAS Mission. Its main provisions refer to: National Development

27

Canada became an OAS Member State on 8 January 1990, upon deposit of the instrument of ratification of the Charter of the Organization.

28

For the text of the Agreement, see the Report of the Secretary General on OAS Activities in the Peace Process in the Republic of Suriname, OEA/Ser.G CP/doc.2335/93, of 15 January 1992, pp.43-54.

A Council for Development of the Interior was established, and the Government committed itself to short-term measures on medical care, educational facilities, social security, water supply and energy, roads and bridges, and public transportation facilities. Military affairs

The Jungle Command and the Tucayana Amazons agreed to point out the location of mines, unexploded shells and weapons stored away. All weapons and military material were to be handed over to the OAS and destroyed on site. Amnesty

The Amnesty Act approved in 1989 but not endorsed by the President of the Republic would be applied to persons guilty of criminal offenses as defined in the Act. Publication of the amnesty had particular importance because it was a condition for disarmament of the guerrilla groups, an objective to be achieved two weeks after the signing of the Agreement for National Reconciliation and Development. Return of property

The guerrilla groups agreed to return all property and belongings of third parties within 30 days from the signing of the agreement. Security

A special supporting unit of the Police Corps was created, for which members of the Jungle Command and the Tucayana Amazons who wished to join it would be considered. Illegally armed groups

These would cease to exist once their members had been demobilized. The agreement contained three Protocols. Protocol I deals with housing and social facilities, refugees, public health, natural resources, the police, education, transportation facilities, communications, tourism, and public works. Protocol II addresses the illegally appropriated property of third parties. Protocol III, which established procedures for demobilization and disarmament, merits special mention here. Protocol III begins with a general declaration, which states: The signatories of this Agreement formally declare that they shall accept the presence of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the process of demobilization and that all parties will guarantee the free access of the

members of the OAS to the demobilization zones. Such acceptance and guarantees will be made public.29 The General Commission for Disarmament established by this Protocol was made up of one member from the OAS Mission and two members appointed by the Government. All arms, munitions and other military material would be handed over to an OAS representative at the disarmament locations; the General Commission would accept those arms and material, which would then be identified and inventoried by the OAS. The General Commission would in turn hand the material to the Joint Commission for the Destruction of Surrendered Weapons comprising five members: the OAS, the National Army, the Police, the Jungle Command and the Tucayana Amazons. In the week of 22-28 August 1992, disarmament took place in the east and southeast areas of Suriname. The process began with the first peaceful encounter between the rebels and the military, at a place near Moengo-Tapoe in eastern Suriname, close to the highway that runs along the coast. The group of about 50 guerrillas, headed by their main leader, Ronnie Brunswijk, fired their weapons into the air as they approached the clearing in the jungle, as an expression of joy for the peace that had been attained. Immediately thereafter, Brunswijk handed his assault rifle to the top OAS official, Costa Reis, and his men followed suit one after the other. The scene was repeated throughout the week in different areas of the country. Subsequently to the success of the peace efforts, the OAS has carried out special projects in Suriname. Among them, the modernization of the Independent Electoral Council is a project designed to ensure a more active role for this body. The project recommended, inter alia, that the Council do a quick-count on Election Day and verify the way electoral results are listed. It also made recommendations on computer equipment and the development of statistical and database procedures. The OAS has assisted Surinamese authorities in the removal of mines and explosive devices placed throughout the interior during the guerrilla war. Brazil provided the OAS with the technical equipment, which it donated to Suriname when the project was completed. Brazilian military officers acted as technical advisers to the project. The army of Suriname undertook the removal and destruction of these artifacts. Another OAS project was directed to the identification of former members of the armed groups. This became necessary to facilitate the rehabilitation of the former combatants, which required the creation of job opportunities for them and their acceptance by civilian society. The OAS recommended the issuance of an identity card to each former combatant and the creation of a database with information on each mans work experience, skills, education and socioeconomic condition. These recommendations were implemented and were instrumental in the work of the Reintegration Commission set up by the Government under the terms of the Agreement for National Reconciliation and Development.

29

Op. cit., p. 52.

The OAS enjoys a high level of credibility in Suriname and its presence there has been constant to this day. Its activities have no doubt been a stabilizing factor in the process of reaffirming democracy in this Member State. HAITI Towards the end of his mandate as Secretary General in June 1994, Baena Soares wrote: As this book went to press, Haiti continued to be of concern to the OAS. As the decade and the century drew to a close, the same could be said of this troubled country, where in 1991 the Organization of American States, by unanimous vote of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, applied Resolution 1080 for the first time, in the hope of restoring democracy to those who had almost never enjoyed it. The Economist summarized the situation in December 1999 in the article entitled Haitians turn their backs on President Preval and politics.30 Recalling that the last election was held in 1997, when only 7% of Haitians cast their vote to elect a third of the Senate, The Economist stated that the countrys government had been practically paralyzed for 30 months. The impasse began when the prime minister at the time resigned over alleged vote-rigging in those elections, whereupon the parliament, dominated by an offshoot party of the original Lavalas movement that had brought Aristide to power, blocked all President Prevals nominations for that office. A parliamentary election scheduled for November 1998 did not take place, and new ones, both parliamentary and local, scheduled for November 1999, were put off twice. After scheduling those elections again for 19 March 2000, the third postponement in four months was announced by Haitian officials, citing voter registration problems and without setting a new date.31Political leaders attribute the postponement sine die to reluctance on the part of the Executive Branch to hold elections, according to press accounts.32 The UN Security Council, the European Union and the OAS have called for these elections to be held as soon as possible.33 As pointed out in this article, the economic picture is bleak, with official figures masking dreadful poverty, unemployment estimated to be 50-70%, and with Haiti fast becoming a popular cocaine-smuggling route. And to sum up: Disenchantment with politics, or at least with the democratic brand of it that has turned out so disastrously for Haiti over the past decade, is growing. An equally pessimistic picture was painted in the U.S. press.34 Whether or not the OAS shares The Economists assessment, the fact is that after all its efforts over several years the Organization cannot declare victory in Haiti, nor should defeat be recognized as of this writing. The OAS had paid special attention to democracy in Haiti in 1986 upon the fall of the Duvalier regime. On the initiative of the Secretary General, who acted in the spirit of Cartagena, that is, under provisions of the Charter reform approved in that city even before they had come into
30 31

The Economist, Vol. 353, No. 8148, December 4th-10th, 1999, pp. 35 and 36. The Washington Post, 4 March 2000. 32 Dispatch by EFE, Port-au-Prince, Boletn Informativo de la OEA, 15 March 2000, p. 19. 33 Dispatch by AFP, Washington, Boletn Informativo de la OEA, 20 March 2000, pp.1-2. 34 The Washington Post, 21 September 1999, p. A13.

effect, the Organization had taken steps to safeguard the budding National Governing Council.35 In December 1987 the Permanent Council deplored acts of violence during the electoral process. In June 1988, following the installation of a de facto government, the Council reaffirmed the principle of representative democracy. In February 1990, the Council asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to pay priority attention to Haiti. It also directed the Secretary General to organize an electoral observation mission at the countrys request. Accordingly, the OAS observed the elections of 16 December 1990 in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the presidency by an overwhelming and unquestioned majority. There was still another setback on the path to democratic government. On 7 January 1991, an attempt was made to overthrow President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot. She was taken prisoner in her residence by a group of armed men headed by Roger Lafontant, who had served under Duvalier as Minister of the Interior and Defense, and then forced to appear on television and announce her resignation. There was prompt condemnation of these actions by the international community. The OAS acted swiftly. The Secretary General made a public appeal to the Haitian people and the armed forces to reject the coup. The Ambassador of Nicaragua to the OAS, Jos Antonio Tijerino, requested an urgent meeting of the Permanent Council. In the meantime, the chief of the Army made a public statement in Haiti condemning the plot and vouching to restore order. Mrs. Pascal-Trouillot reassumed her office and assured the Secretary General by telephone that the presidency would be turned over to Aristide, as scheduled, one month later, on 7 February. The Council met that afternoon and issued its own condemnation in Resolution 555 titled Support for the Democratic Process in Haiti.36 Aristide took office in February and governed until 30 September. In the early hours of that day, the first news reached the Secretary General that a military movement was underway to overthrow the President of Haiti. Baena Soares requested an urgent meeting of the Permanent Council, which convened that evening. At that point, the Secretary General had obtained additional information on the basis of which he asked the Council to examine the situation under Resolution 1080. Thus, the new OAS mechanism, created in June 1991 to deal with precisely such an event, was put in play for the first time. The Permanent Council took immediate and categorical action. It unanimously approved Resolution 567 demanding respect for the Constitution and the legitimate government. The resolution also called for an end to the violation of the rights of the Haitian people, and demanded that the life and physical integrity of President Aristide be respected and that he be restored to the exercise of his constitutional authority. The Council also decided to convoke an Ad Hoc Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs under Resolution 1080. Swift action was the order of the day. The Meeting held its first session at the OAS on October 2. President Aristide had been flown to Caracas in a plane sent for him by the President of Venezuela. The Secretary General telephoned him there and invited him to address the Meeting in person. In his appearance before the OAS ministers, Aristide told of his arrest and described the scene at army headquarters in Port-au-Prince. He said that General Raoul Cdras told him upon arrival: I am the President now. He also related that the general asked his soldiers what
35 36

Baena Soares, op. cit., pp.9-12. OEA/Ser.G CP/RES. 555 (842/91), of 7 January 1991.

they should do with the deposed president, and that some of them replied "Kill him." Others, however, said that it would be best to send him out of the country. The decision to let him live allowed Aristide to come to the OAS, a deposed president pleading his case before the interAmerican community. Aristide requested the OAS to send a delegation to Haiti as soon as possible in order to tell those who had deposed him that the Organization condemned the coup and to warn them of the consequences if they persisted. He made it clear that such action would not constitute interference in the internal affairs of his country; rather, he said, the OAS would be expressing the will of the Haitian people for the restoration of his government. The Ad Hoc Meeting reconvened after Aristides departure and took up a three-point proposal by the Foreign Minister of Venezuela. First, he recommended the political, diplomatic, and economic isolation of Haiti. Secondly, the immediate dispatch of a Mission presided by the OAS Secretary General, accompanied by a group of Foreign Ministers, to state to the leaders of the coup that the OAS would not tolerate them. And thirdly, in the event that this statement were to go unheeded, he exhorted the Meeting to be prepared to take any steps required to restore democracy in Haiti. The Venezuelan proposal received general approval and a working group met that same night to draft a resolution containing the measures that the OAS was prepared to adopt. Although there was much discussion concerning coercive action and the legal grounds therefor, when the Meeting reconvened at 2:30 a.m. it unanimously adopted Resolution 1 which authorized the Mission to Haiti as follows: To request that the Secretary General of the Organization, together with a group of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Member States, go to Haiti immediately, to inform those who hold power illegally that the American States reject the disruption of constitutional order and to advise them of the decisions adopted by this Meeting.37 In Resolution 1 the OAS condemned the coup and took, inter alia, the following decisions: to recognize the representatives designated by Aristides government as the only legitimate representatives of Haiti before all organs and agencies of the Inter-American System; to recommend to OAS Member States that they take action to bring about the diplomatic isolation of those holding power illegally in Haiti; and to recommend to Member States that they suspend economic, financial, and commercial ties with Haiti, as well as any aid and technical cooperation, except that provided for strictly humanitarian purposes. The resolution went on to recommend that the OAS General Secretariat suspend all assistance to the illegal holders of power, and requested regional organs and institutions (such as the Inter-American Development Bank, for example) to do the same. It also urged all States to provide no military, police, or security assistance of any kind to Haiti. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs decided to keep the Ad Hoc Meeting open to receive the report of the Mission, and in order to adopt any additional measures that might be necessary and
37

OEA/Ser.F/V.1 MRE/RES.1/91, of 3 October 1991, operative paragraph 2.

appropriate to ensure the immediate reinstatement of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the exercise of his legitimate authority. Finally, the OAS urged the United Nations and its specialized agencies to take into account the spirit and aims of Resolution 1. After approving Resolution 1, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs met that night in private. The President of the Meeting, Carlos Iturralde, Foreign Minister of Bolivia, volunteered to take part in the Mission. Others did the same, and the Foreign Ministers of Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, and the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs of the United States accompanied Iturralde and Secretary General Baena Soares in this very difficult undertaking. For the first time ever, a group of OAS representatives at the highest diplomatic level was traveling to a Member State whose authorities the Organization had refused to recognize. This presented a number of problems. One logistical obstacle was surmounted with the assistance of the Canadian government, which sent a plane to take Foreign Minister Barbara McDougall and her colleagues from Washington to Port-au-Prince. No visas were requested, and the only formality was the request by the pilot for permission to land. Once on the ground, the Mission made its way to the airport terminal building and there held a meeting with General Cdras and the officers and other military personnel who accompanied him. The situation was very tense. No one said any form of greeting; no one smiled, much less shook hands. The briefest nods were exchanged. The faces of all the participants on both sides of the table were grim. There was one security officer with the Foreign Minister of Canada, standing just outside the door, and that was all. Presumably, men in civilian clothes, obviously not Haitian, who had been stationed on the tarmac to meet the OAS plane, were security forces, most probably for the protection of the U.S. representative.38 Cdras took a seat alone, with his men in a row behind him. Across the table, the seven Foreign Ministers, the Assistant Secretary of State, and the Secretary General faced him, with their ambassadors and advisers behind them. It looked like a trial was about to begin, and in a sense that was the case. Iturralde, as agreed beforehand, gave a brief introduction to Resolution 1 and then read it aloud. The verdict of the inter-American community had been handed down. The consequences of ignoring it were made clear in the text of the resolution. The word ultimatum was never uttered, but that was exactly what had been given. Baena Soares recalls the reaction of Cdras and his men: Cdras kept his gaze fixed on the table and with a look of deep preoccupation on his face. I was struck by the fact that he did not look straight at us. Those with him listened closely, without making a move. Then, little by little, first one, followed by another two, they moved to sit at the table next to their chief. Those whose rank we were not able to determine remained behind them in the second row. They appeared to be there to keep a close eye on what their superiors were doing.39
38 39

The author of this paper was an adviser to the Secretary General and accompanied him on this mission. Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 80.

The coup leader said a few almost inaudible words, in Baena Soares account, attempting to justify his actions on the basis of alleged human rights violations by President Aristide. From his words and his demeanor one could not tell what he intended to do about the OAS position. Throughout the day and without leaving the airport building, the Mission met with leaders of the political, economic, and social sectors of the country. The business community was, by and large, opposed to Aristide. On the other hand, his supporters in Parliament underscored the legitimacy of his popular mandate. The OAS Mission decided to continue these talks on the following day, and after spending the night in Kingston, Jamaica a short flight away resumed the conversations with Haitian leaders early in the morning of Saturday, October 5. Having confirmed the polarization made clear the day before, the Mission returned to Washington, where it met with Aristide on Sunday and briefed him on its visit. The deposed president later thanked the OAS in the course of a press conference and expressed his faith in the efforts of the Mission. In an exercise of shuttle diplomacy, the Mission decided to return to Haiti for a third visit on Monday, October 7, the day before the Ad Hoc Meeting was scheduled to reconvene in Washington, in order to meet again with General Cdras. It turned out to be a fateful day. A group of about 150 soldiers had surrounded the Legislative Palace, where both chambers of the National Assembly were in session, and entered it firing into the air and striking a number of parliamentarians. An hour later, a radio station controlled by the coup plotters announced that the National Assembly had appointed a member of the Supreme Court, Joseph Nerette, as acting president, in Aristides absence. Shortly afterwards, as the Mission was meeting with Cdras in the airport terminal building, some 70 soldiers and policemen entered the waiting hall violently. As Baena Soares recalls: While this was going on, about 25 heavily armed policemen came up to the first floor where we were, shouting threats. Members of Cdras escort went outside the room to confront their colleagues who were acting in such an undisciplined manner. After Cdras had given instructions over a portable radio, the policemen withdrew as rowdily as they had arrived, a short while later.40 The country was in anarchy. It was not clear from the outset whether Cdras was in complete charge of the situation. Although it was an obvious concern not far from the mind of the Mission participants, personal safety did not come first for them. Faced with very trying circumstances, the OAS diplomats had made another attempt to have reason prevail over force. This effort, like others to follow, had failed. The Mission returned to Washington before nightfall that same day, in order to report to the Foreign Ministers. President Aristide, by note of October 7 addressed to the Secretary General, requested that the OAS send without delay a civilian mission to Haiti to support constitutional democracy and
40

Ibid., p. 82.

guarantee the observance of human rights. The Ad Hoc Meeting of Foreign Ministers took up this request on October 8 and also the report of the Mission on its three visits to Haiti. On that basis it adopted Resolution 2 calling again for Aristides restoration and urging OAS Member States to freeze the assets of the State of Haiti. The resolution also called for a trade embargo, except for humanitarian aid, and authorized the Secretary General to organize OEA-DEMOC, as the civilian mission requested by Aristide became known. The Secretary General invited Augusto Ramrez Ocampo, former Foreign Minister of Colombia, to head OEA-DEMOC. He accepted and met with Aristide in Caracas. Meanwhile, the Secretary General, who had been requested by the Ad Hoc Meeting to keep open channels of communication with representatives of the democratically constituted institutions in Haiti, received a letter from the President of the Senate, Djean Blizaire, stating that both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies were prepared to continue the talks on the crisis that the Mission had begun on its first trips to Haiti. Baena Soares replied that he was willing to remain in contact, at the same time making it clear that the OAS would not recognize the provisional president named by the National Assembly. This exchange gave rise to the beginning of a dialogue at OAS headquarters in Washington. In a second letter, Blizaire announced that two senators and a deputy were traveling to Washington to continue the talks. The Secretary General met with them. He reiterated the OAS position and made certain that they understood fully the need to adhere strictly to the terms of the Ad Hoc Meeting resolutions. After completing the necessary arrangements, OEA-DEMOC arrived in Haiti on November 10. Ramrez Ocampo headed the group, selected by the Secretary General, of one national of each of the following OAS Member States: Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Venezuela. They were met at the airport by a hostile organized mob. The mob, some of whose members traveled in luxury automobiles and communicated among themselves by radio, followed OEA-DEMOC to the Parliament building, where a meeting had been scheduled. Despite the climate of intimidation, OEA-DEMOC met with the Supreme Court, with representatives of the political parties, and with business, labor, and religious groups. A peaceful solution was impossible if those holding power were ignored. Therefore, Ramrez Ocampo also met with Cdras and his General Staff, as well as with the de facto Prime Minister. A constitutional solution to the crisis was at hand. Haiti had a quasi-parliamentary system with the President of the Republic as Head of State and the Prime Minister as Head of Government. Under the Constitution, the President appoints the Prime Minister from among the members of the political party with the congressional majority. At the time of the coup dtat, there was no party with the majority, and in that case the President is to select a Prime Minister in consultation with the President of the Senate and the President of the Chamber of Deputies. The National Assembly (i.e., both chambers) shall ratify the appointment. These constitutional provisions afforded a way out. The Secretary General, who had carefully studied the Haitian Constitution, told Ramrez Ocampo that Aristide should exercise his constitutional prerogative, even from exile. Ramrez Ocampo reported that the de facto Prime

Minister, Jean-Jacques Honorat, would not oppose this solution and, further that he was prepared to resign. Baena Soares summed up the effect of the proposal thus: This proposal meant that those who had overthrown President Aristide would have to recognize his authority. It also opened the door to a national accord reflected in the consensus between the President of the Republic and Parliament, and the formation of a Cabinet representing the different sectors in society. With that political and constitutional solution, the new OAS civilian Mission would get off the ground, and try to strengthen institutions and provide economic and social assistance by deploying all over Haiti. Our presence would also serve to guarantee observance of human rights and the whole set of measures would pave the way for Aristides return, thereby completing the return to democracy.41 From the point of view of the OAS, the solution was ideal. In the first place, it would come from Haiti, and not as an imposition by the inter-American community. Secondly, all the parties to it the President of the Republic, the heads of both houses of Parliament, the members of the National Assembly were duly elected officials with whom the OAS maintained contact. The looming obstacle, clear to all concerned, was the armed forces. Would they accept the honorable way out of the crisis, or would they persist in taking over power illegally and in the face of solid opposition in the OAS? On November 13, OEA-DEMOC and the Parliamentary Commission, representing the National Assembly, signed a Joint Declaration by which the parties agreed to meet outside of Haiti, under OAS auspices, to find a solution to the crisis consonant with the Constitution of 1987. Baena Soares underscores the importance of point 10 of the Declaration, which said: In the course of the talks of the OAS Mission with the High Command of the Armed Forces of Haiti, the latter stated that the final decision on the crisis rested with the civilian powers established by the Constitution and it referred to itself as an organ of consultation.42 The Secretary General was not authorized to negotiate with the de facto authorities. Therefore, the head of the Army was not invited to sign the Declaration. However, as Baena Soares points out, the parties decided to include in the text the commitment by the military as stated above because all realized that without their participation, no agreement would be viable. The Secretary General summed up the first stage of OAS efforts thus: In the six weeks that had gone by since the military coup, the OAS had condemned what had occurred in Haiti and demanded the return of the overthrown President; communicated its decisions to the rebels by means of three visits of a Mission of Ministers of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary General and had started a dialogue; recommended and applied an embargo;
41 42

Ibid., p. 89. For the complete text of the Declaration see OEA/Ser.G CP/INF. 3195/91, of 15 November 1991.

listened to President Aristide and received and approved his formal request for help by means of a civilian Mission; organized and sent that Mission to the country, overcoming all manner of obstacles; and reached major agreements with the legitimate representatives of the Haitian people.43 It seems useful to pause in this account of OAS activities in the Haitian crisis in order to comment beyond Baena Soares properly diplomatic summary. In the first place, unanimous resolve was the hallmark of the Ad Hoc Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The coup dtat was the first challenge to the recently adopted Resolution 1080, and the OAS could not fail to pick up the gauntlet. Also, the challenge came from a weak military establishment in a small and poor country. The OAS Member States could impose an embargo on Haiti without serious disruption to their own economic and financial interests; trade relations with Haiti were, for the most part, negligible. These factors no doubt contributed in large measure to the unanimity which prevailed among the Foreign Ministers and which, unquestionably, strengthened the Secretary Generals hand. The second remarkable feature was the Secretary Generals steadfast personal participation in the negotiations. Clearly, he had the full confidence of the Ministers from the beginning, as evidenced by the fact that the Foreign Minister of Venezuela proposed that the Mission to Haiti be headed by the Secretary General, rather than by the President of the Ad Hoc Meeting. This proposal won wide support, as has been noted above. But as the negotiations faltered, many began to lose faith. It would have been easy at several points in the process for Baena Soares to denounce the intractability of the political forces in play, or the intransigence of the armed forces, or the lack of enthusiasm of certain non-Member States for OAS measures such as the embargo. These obstacles were sufficiently large to doom his best efforts. However, Baena Soares persisted in the quest for a peaceful solution that would restore Aristide to the presidency. That was the goal set by the Foreign Ministers, and the Secretary General fought to the last to achieve it. After the Charter reform adopted in Cartagena, the Secretary General of the OAS ceased to be a mere administrator. Baena Soares did not hesitate to step into the broader role assigned to him by the Member States. He fulfilled the political functions required of him, not only in Haiti but also, as has been seen, in Panama and Suriname. He followed the same path in the other three crises discussed in this paper. This took both personal courage and a willingness to assume the risk of misunderstanding by those who might not have quite reconciled themselves to the new profile of the Secretary General. The agreement brokered by the OAS led to a meeting of Aristide with the Parliamentary Commission in Cartagena on November 24. There it was agreed that the deposed president would submit to the National Assembly a list of candidates for Prime Minister. Before the end of the month, Aristide gave Ramrez Ocampo a list of 12 names which, as also agreed, he presented to the presidents of both chambers on December 5. The parliamentary heads did not accept any of the names proposed by Aristide, and suggested instead the names of Marc Bazin (the runnerup in the 1990 elections) or Ren Thodore, the General Secretary of the Unified Party of
43

Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 91.

Haitian Communists (who had obtained 2% of the vote in those elections.) Aristide rejected these and proposed Victor Benoit. He was in turn rejected by the National Assembly, and so Aristide in the end accepted Thodore, provided that the Assembly approved. After this back-and-forth, it was reasonable to hope that a Haitian solution within constitutional norms was at hand. On that note negotiations resumed in Caracas on 7 January 1992, with Thodore participating as Prime Minister designate. However, these broke down almost immediately. Aristide wanted to remove General Cdras, and Thodore opposed him on the grounds that since the appointment of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces required Senate confirmation, so would his removal. Once again, Baena Soares did not give up. He invited Aristide, Thodore and the parliamentary authorities to meet at the OAS in Washington on January 18. Only Aristide showed up, and the situation had again become an impasse. In an admirable demonstration of patience, the Secretary General persisted and on 23-25 February, Aristide, Thodore, and the presidents of the Senate, Djean Blizaire, and of the Chamber of Deputies, Alexandre Medard, met at OAS headquarters. The first day of talks produced the Protocol of Agreement between President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Parliamentary Negotiating Commission to Arrive at a Final Resolution of the Haitian Crisis. In sum, the agreement provided for the restoration of Aristide, who would govern on the basis of a national consensus. The way was clear for the return to constitutional order and for the consolidation of democracy in Haiti. On 25 February, Aristide and Thodore signed a second Protocol, witnessed by the Secretary General. Thodore committed himself to work, once ratified in his post, to create the conditions for Aristides return to Haiti. Also, one month after his ratification, Thodore was to meet with Aristide and Baena Soares to finalize the arrangements for the presidents return.44 The OAS and the international community received the Washington agreements with much satisfaction. However, in mid-March those who had engineered the coup dtat gave new evidence of their obstinacy. Members of the National Assembly were threatened, a quorum was prevented, and the Protocols of Washington were not ratified. Furthermore, on 27 March the Court of Cassation, most of whose members had been appointed by the de facto authorities, declared the agreements unconstitutional. The OAS Permanent Council on 1 April condemned the intimidation of the parliamentarians and rejected the declaration of unconstitutionality. The Council reiterated the OAS position and recommended that the OAS Ministers of Foreign Affairs meet again as soon as possible. A penchant for political maneuvers was characteristic of the times in Haiti (and may still be). In late April and early May, Cdras met with the de facto Prime Minister, Jean-Jacques Honorat, and with the presidents of both chambers of the National Assembly, who, as Baena Soares points out, had only two months before signed the Protocol with Aristide in Washington. They signed a new document, known for the meeting place in Port-au-Prince as the Villa dAccueil agreement, which purported to be a definitive solution to the crisis and was, in reality, one more ploy to derail the return of Aristide.
44

The text of both Protocols, in the original French, appear as Annexes in Baena Soares, op.cit.

This was the situation facing the OAS when the Ad Hoc Meeting of Foreign Ministers reconvened in Nassau on 17 May. The ministers adopted Resolution 3, reaffirming Resolutions 1 and 2; reiterated their full support for the Washington Protocols; rejected any document that disregarded them; and repudiated the dilatory and intimidating maneuvers of the sectors that had benefited from the disruption of democracy preventing ratification of the Protocol of Washington. The OAS also decided to coordinate the embargo on Haiti with members of the European Economic Community, and requested the cooperation of multilateral financial institutions and the United Nations in enforcing the measures provided for in Resolution 3.45 The de facto government and the OAS continued at cross-purposes. In June, Marc Bazin, who had been rejected by Aristide, was put forward for Prime Minister based on the Villa dAccueil agreement. The Secretary General immediately denounced this move in a public statement. Then, on 1 July, Ramrez Ocampo resigned for personal reasons. Baena Soares, encouraged by certain apparently favorable signals and, above all, by his unflagging determination, decided to send an exploratory mission to Haiti to prepare a possible visit by him. The preparatory work was carried out in Haiti by four OAS General Secretariat staff members in late July and, on that basis, the Secretary General traveled to Port-au-Prince on 18 August 1992. He invited the ambassadors to the OAS of Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the United States, and Venezuela to accompany him, as well as high-level representatives of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago. He also invited the President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a delegate of the UN Secretary General, and representatives of the Secretary General of CARICOM, the Council of Ministers of the European Community and of the Commission of the European Communities. All accepted and accompanied him. As Baena Soares points out, this Mission, reflecting in its makeup the unanimous opinion of the international community, constituted an innovation in the field of international cooperation.46 To this comment one should add that the Secretary General rose above the reserve with which, as a rule, the OAS and the UN view each others activities in the political arena. By inviting the UN Secretary-General to appoint a representative who would participate actively in the Mission, Baena Soares opened the door to much greater cooperation between the regional and the world organization, epitomized in a later stage by the appointment of a joint UN/OAS representative in Haiti. The OAS group met with representatives from various sectors of Haitian society, including a Presidential Commission set up by Aristide to resume negotiations in Haiti, and the armed forces. Human rights and humanitarian assistance were of particular concern, and in that regard there were discussions on the role that an OAS civilian mission could play. The August meetings opened up new possibilities for dialogue. Consequently, Baena Soares invited Aristide and the new Prime Minister to appoint representatives who would meet with him at OAS headquarters. The deposed President designated Father Antoine Adrien, who was the

45 46

For the complete text of Resolution 3, see OAS/Ser.F/V.1 MRE/RES.3/92 corr.1, of 17 May 1992. Baena Soares, op.cit., p.109.

head of the above-mentioned Presidential Commission, and Marc Bazin named Victor Benoit (who, it will be recalled, was Aristides counter-counterproposal choice for Prime Minister.) Both sides met in Washington September 1-4 in the Secretary Generals presence. The need to establish an OAS civilian mission in Haiti was discussed, and on September 10 the de facto authorities indicated that they were willing to receive an initial group of OAS observers. The Secretary General proposed to start with 18 members (two for each of Haitis nine departments), and the first ones arrived on 16 September. This group was the precursor of a much larger OAS contingent and a later UN presence. It can be said in all fairness that Baena Soares paved the way for what was to become a very large role for the United Nations in Haiti. The OAS Permanent Council formalized the request for UN participation in November 1992 by Resolution 594.47 In December, the OAS Foreign Ministers Ad Hoc Meeting reconvened in Washington. The Secretary General requested the expansion of the OAS Civilian Mission in Haiti from the original 18 members. The Foreign Ministers agreed and in Resolution 4 instructed the Secretary General to cooperate closely where appropriate with the UN. The Ad Hoc Meeting went further in operative paragraph 8: To mandate the Secretary General of the Organization of American States to take all measures within the framework of the Charter to seek a peaceful solution to the Haitian crisis and, in conjunction with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to explore the possibility and advisability of bringing the Haitian situation to the attention of the United Nations Security Council as a means of bringing about global application of the trade embargo recommended by the OAS.48 On this mandate, Baena Soares writes: A new stage in the international management of the crisis was beginning. I sent a note to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on December 21, 1992, conveying a few reflections derived from consultation of the United Nations Charter regarding the grounds and legal consequences of a possible action by the Security Council. I asked Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali whether it would be possible for the Security Council to decide upon global application of a trade embargo on Haiti outside the framework of Chapter VII of the Charter.49 Once again, one must go beyond Baena Soares diplomatic language. In his letter, the text of which appears as an appendix in his book, he raised a very serious juridical question. The OAS Secretary General had studied the matter carefully, with the excellent advice of his top legal expert, Dr. Hugo Caminos, Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs (quoted earlier in this paper), who himself had served at the UN years before. It falls outside the scope of this account to

47 48

For the text, see OEA/Ser.G CP/RES.594 (923/92), of 10 November 1992. Resolution 4 is found in OEA/Ser.F/V.1 MRE/RES.4/92, of 13 December 1992. 49 Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 114.

examine the question further. Suffice it to say that, as Baena Soares points out, Boutros-Ghali never replied to his formal request for an opinion on the powers of the Security Council. On 13 January 1993, the OAS Secretary General announced, almost simultaneously with his UN counterpart, that Dante Caputo, former Foreign Minister of Argentina, had been appointed their special envoy to Haiti. The appointment of a single joint representative was a first for both organizations. It was meant as an unequivocal signal to the de facto authorities that the international community, following upon the lead taken by the OAS from the outset, had one single purpose: the restoration of democratic rule in Haiti, which entailed the return of President Aristide to the office from which he had been forcibly expelled. Negotiations, now under Caputos leadership, resumed at once and did not let up during the entire year. After the usual maneuvering by the Haitian side, the OAS placed 40 additional observers in the country by mid-February. Three days later, serious acts of violence by a mob, which obviously did not act spontaneously, marred a Mass in Port-au-Prince Cathedral. The presence and vehement protests of OAS observers and their coordinator, Colin Granderson, allowed the worshippers to leave the church safely, and their efforts made it possible to rescue the presiding bishop from the ruffians who had accosted him. In mid-April Caputo announced another impasse in the negotiations. Nevertheless, in May the UN sent its first group of 30 observers, and at the end of the month the OAS increased its own number to 100. When the Ad Hoc Meeting on Haiti met again in June, this time in Managua, it reaffirmed its previous resolutions through Resolution 5 and reiterated its grave concern over the situation.50 On 7 June, Aristides representative at the UN asked the Security Council to take up the question of sanctions, and on 16 June the Council unanimously adopted Resolution 841, presented by the United States, Venezuela, and France. This had the effect of making the OAS embargo applicable to all UN Member States. On 21 June, Cdras offered to meet with Aristide. Accordingly, between June 27 and July 3 the parties met on Governors Island in New York. The ensuing Agreement of Governors Island was signed on two separate original texts, by Cdras on July 2 and by Aristide on July 3, because they both refused to sign on the same piece of paper. As Baena Soares says, this agreement was almost identical to the Protocol of Washington signed at the OAS in February 1992.51 This time, Cdras committed himself to early retirement, and the return of President Aristide was set for 30 October 1993. Under the new agreement, Aristide chose Robert Malval as Prime Minister. In August, both chambers of the National Assembly ratified the appointment. Once this process had been completed, the OAS Secretary General suggested suspending the measures adopted by the Ad Hoc Meeting. The following day, August 26, the UN Security Council considered lifting its own sanctions. Both organizations did so once Malval took up his functions.

50 51

For Resolution 5, see OEA/Ser.F/V.1 MRE/RES. 5/93, of 6 June 1993. Baena Soares, op. cit., at p. 119.

However, violence erupted in Haiti once again, and not coincidentally. Killings took place in September, one week after Malval and his Cabinet assumed office. Death threats were made against Caputo. The OAS and the UN condemned these events. On 23 September, the Security Council decided to send 567 policemen and 700 military advisers to Haiti, in keeping with the Governors Island agreement to modernize the armed forces and create a new police force. On October 11, the first contingent of US and Canadian military advisers was unable to land because a mob occupied the dock in Port-au-Prince. The OAS expressed its repudiation, and on October 13 the Security Council reestablished sanctions. The following day, October 14, the Minister of Justice and his bodyguards were assassinated in Port-au-Prince. Caputo then recommended evacuating the members of the OAS/UN International Civilian Mission, which was carried out. They later returned to Haiti. On October 16, Aristides government requested that the UN embargo become mandatory, and the Security Council, in Resolution 875, granted the request. Two days later, the OAS reimposed its own sanctions. This happened just as the first deadline set at Governors Island the retirement of General Cdras on 15 October went by without compliance. October 30 came, and President Aristide was not restored to office. Caputo returned to the United States on November 5. Efforts by Canada, the U.S., Venezuela, and France failed to obtain Cdras resignation. Malval appealed for a national dialogue in Haiti, while Aristide convoked his own dialogue in Miami. Finally, on 15 December 1993, Malval resigned as Prime Minister. The whole year had gone by, as we have seen, and Haiti was no closer to democracy than at the beginning of the crisis. The OAS General Assembly met in Beln do Par, Brazil, the hometown of Baena Soares, in June 1994. It was the Secretary Generals last appearance before the Foreign Ministers because his second five-year mandate was to expire on June 20. Aristide once again came before the Ad Hoc Meeting to remind it if indeed it was necessary that the situation in his country was still on the agenda. His cause, espoused by all and without respite by Baena Soares, was about to lose its champion. In the end, the OAS failed. So did the United Nations. There had been no lack of purpose or determination. Imaginative solutions had been put forward. Seasoned diplomats had worked unselfishly, even courageously, to achieve the clear objectives of the international community. All measures short of armed force were adopted. None achieved the desired result. Violence, total disregard for human rights, disdain for the suffering of the Haitian people, and unreason prevailed. It was left to the United States to intervene, and it did, with its armed forces in the forefront, alone among the major powers of the world. The U.S., it is true, acted with a so-called green light from the UN Security Council. The landing of U.S.forces was achieved without bloodshed because the de facto authorities decided to leave with their fortunes intact. Aristide was restored to office in the Presidential Palace surrounded by American soldiers. The President of Haiti went on to complete his term. Haiti is still in recovery. Its national ills extreme poverty, corruption, and weak institutions remain as yet unhealed. PERU

Alberto Fujimori had been elected President of Peru in 1990 with a strong popular mandate. His political movement, Cambio 90, had prevailed over the traditional parties in the midst of a national crisis caused by terrorists calling themselves Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Fujimori had won on the expectation that he would restore order after a decade of violence that according to government figures had cost 22,000 lives and more than 20 billion dollars in damage to the economy. On 5 April 1992, President Fujimori resorted to what he later described as drastic measures, such as the temporary suspension of Parliament, the Judicial branch, the Comptroller Generals office, and other fundamental institutions.52 The Secretary General of the OAS immediately called the Permanent Council into session because he considered that these measures amounted to a situation under Resolution 1080. He was, of course, referring to an interruption of the constitutional order, and not, as was the case in Haiti, to the overthrow of a democratically elected government. On 6 April the Permanent Council adopted Resolution 579 stating that the grave events in Peru constituted an interruption of the democratic institutional political process in that country under Resolution 1080. The Council deplored those events, urged the Peruvian authorities to immediately reinstate democratic institutions and full respect for human rights, and convoked an Ad Hoc Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The Ministers met in Washington on 13 April and adopted Resolution 1, also deploring the events and calling for the urgent reinstatement of democratic institutions. They further decided to request the President of the Meeting together with those ministers he designates and the Secretary General, to travel to Peru and take immediate measures to bring about a dialogue among the Peruvian authorities and the political forces represented in the legislature, with the participation of other democratic sectors, for the purpose of establishing the necessary conditions and securing the commitment of the parties concerned to reinstate the democratic institutional order, with full respect for the separation of powers, human rights, and the rule of law.53 Hctor Gros Espiell, the Foreign Minister of Uruguay, had been elected to preside over the Ad Hoc Meeting. He moved swiftly and on April 20 traveled to Lima with the Secretary General. The following day they met with Fujimori who assured them that the measures he had adopted were transitory, and to prove it he produced a timetable, which he called a chronogram, for the return to constitutional order. Fujimoris plan called for a referendum on June 30 so that the electorate could approve or disapprove those measures. After several other steps, elections would be held on 1 March 1993 for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The new Congress would be installed approximately on 1 April 1993.

52

For the text of the speech, see OEA/Ser.F/V.2 MRE/ACTA 4/92, of 18 May 1992. The translation of the quote from the Spanish original is by the author of this paper. 53 MRE/RES. 1/92, of 13 April 1992.

Gros Espiell and Baena Soares then proceeded to interview Cabinet officers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces, Parliamentary leaders, members of the Supreme Court, leaders of the political parties, media representatives, and a number of other personalities from the public and private sectors. This stage of the OAS Mission concluded on April 23, and on 1 May 1992 they presented their report to the Ad Hoc Meeting. The report pointed out the universal opinion among those interviewed that the measures adopted by Fujimori were transitory and that a way back to normalcy had to be found in order to return to constitutional order. It was also the generally held opinion that the OAS could be of assistance in this regard. Gros Espiell and Baena Soares had decided that a second visit was urgently needed, and to that end the Uruguayan Foreign Minister invited his colleagues from Argentina, Canada, Honduras, and Paraguay to accompany them. The second stage began in Lima on May 4 with a decision by the Foreign Ministers and the Secretary General to try to persuade the parties to enter into a dialogue with a view to restoring representative democracy by the end of 1992. This of course meant a considerable shortening of Fujimoris timetable. At a joint meeting of all the political parties, this and other proposals, such as holding a Constituent Assembly to study amendments to the 1979 Constitution, were put forward by the OAS Mission as ideas to facilitate a dialogue. Fujimoris Cambio 90 declined the OAS invitation, but all the other parties attended. On May 5 the OAS Mission visited Fujimori again and briefed the President. Gros Espiell pointed out that the Ad Hoc Foreign Ministers Meeting on Peru would reconvene in Nassau on May 17, and that he would have to report to it then. Fujimori replied that he could not shorten his timetable and that he had not contemplated a Constituent Assembly. He spoke of a gap between the legal Peru and the real Peru, a reference to the political parties and the Peruvian people.54 To a close observer of these exchanges, the Presidents reaction was discouraging.55 It appeared that the situation had reached an impasse because Fujimoris position seemed to be inflexible. However, with the OAS officials back in their own countries, on May 13 Gros Espiell received a telephone call in Barcelona from one of Fujimoris top ministers asking him to go to Lima urgently to discuss adjustments that the President was thinking of making to his original plan. Gros Espiell accepted and met with Fujimori three days later. Fujimori said that he was prepared to announce a democratization program consisting of a Democratic Constituent Congress freely and directly elected that would amend the Constitution. A referendum would then be held to ratify the amendments, and general and parliamentary elections would take place. Gros Espiell replied that the process was still too long; that the OAS should supervise it; and that a key element was full respect for human rights, including political rights. His reply was prescient because when Gros Espiell met later that day with the political parties their reaction was, in general, negative, although in varying degrees, as he later reported to the OAS Permanent Council.

54 55

For a full account of the mission to Peru, see Baena Soares, op. cit., pp. 39-53. The author was an adviser to the Secretary General on this mission.

On Sunday, May 17, the Ad Hoc Meeting of Foreign Ministers reconvened in Nassau, where the annual session of the OAS General Assembly was to begin on Monday. Earlier that day, President Fujimori, in a surprising move, sent a message through his Prime Minister, who was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that he would like to address the Ad Hoc Meeting. Therefore, when Gros Espiell called the meeting to order he began by announcing Fujimoris request and it was agreed that he would be heard the following day. After Gros Espiell had given a summary of the Missions report and read its conclusions, President Fujimori began his speech by underscoring that he was making use of the Ad Hoc Foreign Ministers forum in a manner unprecedented in OAS history. As Baena Soares highlights, although many Presidents and Heads of State from member countries and from countries outside the inter-American system come before the OAS on formal occasions, they do not as a rule intervene to defend their actions.56 Fujimori was right, therefore, in calling his own decision unprecedented. The President of Peru went on to say that his presence was meant as a guarantee of the firm commitment that he had entered into with the Peruvian people and with the Hemisphere in regard to the return to institutional order in his country.57 He gave at some length the reasons for the measures he had taken the destruction and loss of life caused by years of terrorism, and the peoples rejection of terrorism as evidenced by his victory in the 1990 elections. He stated that the April 5 measures had been needed to overcome a social and political catastrophe. In the end, Fujimori accepted the OAS position on a prompt return to democratic institutional order. He said that he would immediately call for the direct and free election of a Democratic Constituent Congress that would guarantee the separation of powers. The DCC would be empowered to pass laws and to supervise the Executive Branch. Finally, Fujimori invited the OAS to participate in the process and to supervise the return to full democracy as demanded by the Peruvian people. He specifically requested OAS assistance in electoral matters and the presence of OAS observers in the electoral process. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs, having heard a number of reports, including one from the President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, adopted Resolution 2 by which they again urged a rapid return to representative democracy. The Resolution recommended that the Secretary General provide such assistance as might be formally requested, including electoral observation, for the prompt restoration of representative democracy. It also requested the OAS Mission to continue its efforts, urged the Government of Peru to observe full respect for human rights, and decided that the Ad Hoc Meeting would remain open to receive information on developments in Peru. In keeping with its renewed mandate, the OAS Mission, on this occasion again made up of Gros Espiell and Baena Soares, returned to Lima for a last time on May 29. The Secretary General took along two experts on electoral matters in order to make a preliminary assessment of the prevailing conditions, in anticipation of the formal request that was certain to follow for OAS observers.
56 57

Baena Soares, op. cit., at p. 47. For the complete text of the speech, see OEA/Ser.F/V.2 MRE/ACTA 4/92, of 18 May 1992, pp. 11-21.

The Mission held another full round of talks and met with Fujimori on May 30. It was clear that the Government expected full OAS cooperation in the elections for members of the DCC. Later that Saturday, the OAS Mission held a working lunch for the main political opposition leaders. On that occasion it became clear that there was no consensus on the DCC elections, or on a dialogue between the opposition and the Government. This lack of agreement, while very unfortunate, could not prevent the OAS from accepting the request that came a few days later to the Secretary General in Washington for technical assistance for the DCC election. The Ad Hoc Meeting had already recommended that the Secretary General act upon a formal request of that nature, so Baena Soares proceeded to organize the electoral observation. By election day, 22 November 1992, the OAS had 228 observers distributed throughout the country, headed by the Foreign Minister of Uruguay, as President of the Ad Hoc Meeting, and the Secretary General. The OAS Foreign Ministers met for the last time on Peru at OAS headquarters on 30 December 1992. The Secretary General presented a detailed report on the electoral observation.58 In it he stated that in general, the electoral process had proceeded satisfactorily and that it constituted an important step on the road back to full democratic institutionality in Peru.59For his part, Gros Espiell, who was unable to chair this session because his wife died while he was en route to Washington, sent a message to his colleagues saying, inter alia: The November 22 elections, which in general terms were correct and acceptable, were not an a posteriori legitimization of a rupture of the institutional order that the Organization repudiated; they were, on the contrary, the initial foundation, the first step towards the restoration of democracy that needs to be perfected immediately with the installation of the Democratic Constituent Congress.60 The Foreign Ministers requested the Peruvian Government to keep the Member States informed through the OAS Permanent Council of developments in the process of restoring democracy. They also reaffirmed the OAS commitment to continue cooperating to strengthen democratic institutions and full respect for human rights, and resolved that the Ad Hoc Meeting would be closed as soon as the DCC was installed. Thus ended the OAS effort in the Peruvian situation of 1992. It had been a totally different exercise from the one undertaken in Haiti. In the case of Peru, the OAS was dealing with a legitimately elected government. There had been no overthrow of that government. The President of Peru was willing to modify his plan for the return to institutional order as recommended by the OAS Mission, and formally stated that decision in person before the Ad Hoc Meeting. Elections were held with the participation of OAS observers. Those elections were considered acceptable. The oppositions decision to abstain from participating in the DCC election, although erroneous in political terms, did not in and of itself invalidate the process.
58 59

For the text of the report, see OEA/Ser.F/V.1 MRE/INF.9/92, of 30 December 1992. Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 52. 60 As quoted by Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 52, with English translation on p. 133.

Finally, the OAS Foreign Ministers unanimously approved the actions taken by the Mission they had appointed. In March 2000, the OAS was preparing to observe another general election in Peru, set for April 9, with President Fujimori running for a third term in the midst of a debate on the constitutional merits of a second reelection. Some opposition leaders have publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the OAS presence, alleging that its impartiality was compromised by its actions in 1992 and subsequently. What the OAS now does and says in regard to these elections may be crucial for the credibility of future electoral observation missions by international agencies and institutions. In this regard, the head of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission, the former Foreign Minister of Guatemala Eduardo Stein, has according to press reports expressed his concern over what he termed growing deficiencies in the electoral process, including the lack of progress in the adoption of measures to guarantee fair and unconditional access to the media by all political parties.61 GUATEMALA The year 1993 began with continued and, indeed, increased OAS activity in the Haitian crisis. As we have seen, on January 13 the Secretary General had announced the designation of Dante Caputo as his special envoy to Haiti, and the former Foreign Minister of Argentina had thus become the first ever joint UN/OAS representative in a political mission. In May, the two organizations had signed an agreement for the deployment of the International Civilian Mission, the first group of 30 UN observers arrived in Haiti, and the OAS raised its own number to100. This month turned out to be particularly hectic for the OAS. Early in the morning of May 25, the OAS Secretary General learned that the President of Guatemala, Jorge Serrano Elas, had temporarily suspended by decree several articles in the Constitution, in the law on habeas corpus and in the electoral law. By the same decree the president had also dissolved the Congress, unseated the members of the Supreme Court and the Court on Constitutional matters, and removed the Attorney General. The Secretary General immediately requested a meeting of the Permanent Council that same day to consider the situation under Resolution 1080. The Council met that afternoon and adopted Resolution 605 deploring those events and urging the Guatemalan authorities immediately to reinstate democratic institutions and full respect for human rights. The Council also resolved to convoke an Ad Hoc Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. As Baena Soares points out, on this occasion the OAS Permanent Council took an additional step within its power to examine a situation falling under Resolution 1080.62 It asked the Secretary General to head a fact-finding mission that would report to the Foreign Ministers and thus facilitate the decisions they might wish to make. This was not intended to be the sort of mission that Henry Kissinger had in mind when he wrote:
61 62

Dispatch by EFE, Lima, Boletn Informativo de la OEA, 20 March 2000, p.2-3. Baena Soares, op. cit., at p. 53. For a full account of the crisis, see pp. 53-67.

Finally, a mechanism was devised for doing nothing at all. It took the form of a fact-finding mission the standard device for diplomats signaling that inaction is the desired outcome.63 On the contrary, the OAS Mission to Guatemala played a key role for the success that the Organization was to achieve in record time. The Secretary General invited three foreign ministers Maurice A. King (Barbados), Ernesto Leal (Nicaragua), and Sergio Abreu (Uruguay) to take part in the mission. Time was short. The annual OAS General Assembly was scheduled to open in Managua on Sunday, June 6, and the three ministers and the Secretary General had to be there. Leal was to preside over the Assembly, following the tradition that the foreign minister of the host country is elected by his peers to that function. Before the General Assembly met, the OAS Mission would have to report its findings to the Ad Hoc Meeting, which was convoked by the Secretary General for Thursday, June 3, at OAS headquarters in Washington. The Mission began its work in Guatemala on Saturday, May 29. The chiefs of mission of OAS Member State and Permanent Observer countries were invited to meet with the Mission. They spoke of what was termed a pre-climate of unrest in the days preceding Serranos decree. There was general agreement that Guatemala was in a very serious crisis. Several diplomats felt that a coup dtat was imminent. For its part, the OAS Mission left no doubt as to the Organizations position. Baena Soares puts it this way: It became very clear to our colleagues of the diplomatic corps that the OAS viewed the situation with the greatest concern and that it would very probably adopt measures with grave consequences for the country once the Ministers of Foreign Affairs had met. I would say that there was no doubt left in our interlocutors minds that we shared their sense of urgency concerning what had to be done to avoid those consequences.64 There was no time to waste. At 8 oclock that night, the Mission met with President Serrano at his official residence. Serrano tried to justify his actions on two grounds. First, he claimed that his country was on the brink of social collapse as a result of 33 years of armed conflict, plus serious problems of drug trafficking and corruption. Second, he said that the actions he had taken against the Congress and the Supreme Court were political and not juridical in nature. He claimed that the Constitution remained in force, attempting to bypass with this argument the egregious violations that he had just committed. The next day the Mission met with Ramiro de Len Carpio, who held the office of Prosecutor for Human Rights. He told the Mission that he had barely escaped arrest on May 25 and that his life had been threatened. He gave the OAS copy of a statement he had issued on May 26 repudiating Serranos actions. In it he had called upon the President to immediately restore constitutional order.

63 64

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon & Schuster, New York, N.Y., 1994, pp. 286-287. Baena Soares, op. cit., p. 56.

The Court on Constitutional matters had issued a decision on May 25 declaring the presidential decree unconstitutional. De Len Carpio alluded to this decision in his statement. Thus, two very important Guatemalan institutions had rejected without delay the measures taken by Serrano. On Sunday the OAS Mission held a total of 20 meetings with representative figures and sectors of Guatemalan society. These included the Minister of Defense; the President of the Legislative Assembly; the President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal; Rigoberta Mench, winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, who chaired a steering committee of civilian sectors; Supreme Court Justices; University professors; trade union leaders; members of the Bar; political party leaders; and members of the Association of Journalists. The following morning, three meetings capped this veritable marathon. The Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial and Financial Associations (CACIF) made an impressive presentation, complete with a chart mapping a possible route back to constitutional order.65 Then the President of the Constitutional Court and the President of the Episcopal Conference (i.e., the head of the Catholic bishops) came in turn to present their views on the crisis. This was, then, a true fact-finding mission. After two days of intense activity the conclusion was obvious: The duly elected president had violated the Constitution and his actions had encountered universal repudiation in Guatemala. Furthermore, At stake was the viability of democracy itself as a form of government; the corruption that existed in Guatemala was not confined to those State powers mentioned by the President as a justification for the measures adopted on May 25. In any event, nothing justified violating democratic institutions and the constitutional order, and the political solution to this crisis had to be achieved within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic, which contained provisions for the restoration of democratic institutions.66 The OAS Mission had not been empowered by the Permanent Council to negotiate a solution, as the Secretary General reminded all concerned. However, its presence in the country at such a critical juncture had become an important factor for setting in motion national mechanisms which in the end led to a constitutional solution.67 Once again, in this paper the author will venture beyond the Secretary Generals diplomatic wording based on the recollection of events in which he took part. It is noteworthy that the Secretary General of the OAS was the head of the mission created by the Permanent Council. In the normal course of events, foreign ministers outrank the Secretary General at every OAS meeting. They are always presided by one of their own. In this case, the Permanent Council, made up of Member State representatives with the rank of ambassador, all of whom also

65

For summaries of the interviews, see Report on the Mission of the Secretary General to Guatemala, OEA/Ser.F/V.3 MRE doc.2/93, of 3 June 1993. 66 Baena Soares, op. cit., pp. 59-60. 67 Ibid., p. 58.

consider themselves above the Secretary General, had decided that the highest Secretariat official should head a mission that he was given free rein to organize. Baena Soares was keenly aware of the implications and of the precedent that had been set. His choice of the foreign ministers he invited to join him followed the standard practice of geographic representation one from the Caribbean, one from Central America, and the third from South America. At the same time he took into consideration additional factors. As has been mentioned, the Foreign Minister of Nicaragua was slated to chair the General Assembly in very short order. There was a special rapport between Baena Soares and Sergio Abreu, the Foreign Minister of Uruguay, and a cordial relationship also prevailed with the Foreign Minister of Barbados. They all accepted the unusual situation of being under the Secretary Generals chairmanship with grace and good humor. It was therefore possible for Baena Soares to speak candidly with the members of the OAS Mission. There was no discernible rivalry among them, no jockeying for the leading position, no attempt to grab headlines. The OAS could speak through the Mission with one clear voice. It did so when it met with Serrano for the second time, at noon on Monday, May 31. During its exhaustive round of meetings, the OAS Mission had heard calls for Serranos resignation. In a much more subtle fashion, the military leaders with whom it met left the impression that they were not going to support the Presidents actions in the face of the strong opposition of the inter-American community and Guatemalan society at large. It fell to the OAS representatives to convey to Serrano that he was in dire straits. When the delicate subject of presidential resignation was broached, Serrano replied: I shall not resign, unless I am forced to do so by a coup, which will mean bloodshed.68 Trying to hold on to power despite the grim picture painted by the OAS Mission, he stated that he would send a letter to the Ad Hoc Meeting of Foreign Ministers in which he would undertake to recall the Congress, reinstate the Supreme Court and the Court on Constitutional matters, approve an amnesty law, and purge the Congress and the Supreme Court. On this less than encouraging note, the Secretary General and the three Foreign Ministers flew back to Washington that afternoon. The following day, June 1, brought encouraging news. The Minister of Defense issued a communiqu stating that the army had decided to publish and carry out the verdict of the Court on Constitutional matters of May 25. In that decision, the Court declared that the Presidents actions were null and void ipso jure because they had not only violated certain articles of the Constitution, but also represented a disruption of the constitutional order. Accordingly, the Court declared that those acts did not have the force of law and nullified them, thereby reestablishing the legal order that had been disrupted.69

68 69

Ibid.,p. 60 Report on the Mission of the Secretary General to Guatemala, OEA/Ser.F/V.3 MRE.doc.2/93, 3 June 1993, Appendix Q.

In the same communiqu, the Minister of Defense announced Serranos resignation. It further stated that the Vice President had temporarily assumed the presidency and that after doing so he too had resigned. Further press reports said that Serrano had left Guatemala. So far, so good. However, on Wednesday the Vice President held a press conference at home, denied his resignation and said that he was exercising the presidency. The Ad Hoc Meeting of Foreign Ministers convened on June 3 at OAS headquarters. By Resolution 1 it condemned the events in Guatemala and called for the reestablishment of constitutional order. The resolution also directed the Secretary General to return to Guatemala, again with the foreign ministers that he might choose to accompany him, in order to continue supporting the efforts of the Guatemalan people. The Secretary General was asked to report to the Foreign Ministers when their meeting held its next session in Managua on June 6. On this occasion, the foreign ministers who had taken part in the first visit of the OAS Mission were unable to travel again to Guatemala due to prior commitments. The Secretary General then invited the Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Diego Paredes, to accompany him. They flew to Guatemala the next day. Another hectic round of talks was carried out, non-stop, all day and evening Saturday. A new entity, the National Body for Consensus, had been created, and its representatives, coming from the business, labor, human rights, religious, academic, and political sectors, met with the OAS Mission and put forward what Baena Soares called major and original proposals.70 The problem posed by the Vice Presidents insistence that he was assuming the office of President was swiftly dealt with by the Court on Constitutional matters. The Court issued a verdict on June 4 declaring that Serrano had carried out, in effect, a coup dtat, and that according to Article 186 (a) of the Constitution, he could not stand for the presidency in future. The Court also decided that the Vice President had publicly taken part in illegitimate acts carried out by the President. Therefore, the Court said, he too had become ineligible for the post of President and unable to continue as Vice President, according to the same Constitutional provision. Consequently, Congress should proceed to designate the persons who should carry out those functions. The Court gave Congress 24 hours in which to comply with its verdict. Out of a total of 116 members of Congress, 115 met Saturday night and elected Ramiro de Len Carpio President of Guatemala by a vote of 106. The OAS Mission went to his home immediately after the election and congratulated him. The many Guatemalans who had gone to their new Presidents residence to celebrate the return to constitutional order greeted the members of the OAS Mission with applause. On June 5, the OAS had clearly achieved what it had set out to do on May 25. Two days later, the Secretary General, now in Managua for the annual OAS General Assembly (and for another session of the Ad Hoc Meeting on Haiti, which as has been mentioned earlier was attended by President Aristide), read a message from de Len Carpio in which he thanked

70

Baena Soares, op. cit., at p. 64.

the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and the OAS Mission for their undeniable contribution to the restoration of constitutionality and fundamental freedoms in his country.71 As Baena Soares says, 14 days after the crisis broke out, another chapter in the history of the strengthening of democracy in the Americas was brought to a successful conclusion.72The Ministers of Foreign Affairs commended the people of Guatemala for their civil and democratic vocation and declared the Ad Hoc Meeting on Guatemala closed. CONCLUSIONS There are successes and failures in the five case studies dealt with in this paper. The OAS failed in Panama in 1989 because it was unable to prevail upon the countrys strongman to restore democratic institutions. The efforts of the inter-American community were intense and sustained. Political, diplomatic, and economic pressure was applied. The mechanisms available to the Organization were put in play. All was to no avail. In the end, the United States acted alone, with military force, and achieved the result that had eluded the OAS. Beginning in 1991, the OAS met with success in Suriname. Here it made use of many of its tools. It observed elections, demobilized and disarmed guerrilla forces, coordinated mine removal operations, and facilitated the return of insurgents to civilian life. To this day, the OAS has a credible presence in Suriname. As has been pointed out, in this Member State the OAS acted at the request of its government, which appealed directly to the Secretary General for assistance. The OAS succeeded again in Peru in 1992. The mechanism of Resolution 1080 was set in motion on April 6. In June, President Fujimori voluntarily came before the Ad Hoc Meeting of Foreign Ministers and accepted the OAS timetable for the return to constitutional order. Before the end of the year, the OAS had observed the elections that paved the way for that achievement, and on December 30 the Ad Hoc Meeting was closed. The following year, in May, the OAS was able to promote a peaceful solution to the crisis in Guatemala in 14 days time, also under Resolution 1080. However, in Haiti a coup dtat ousted the legitimately elected President on 30 September 1991, and three years later, despite the best efforts of the OAS and the UN, Aristide was still in exile and his country was still under military rule. Here again, United States military action provided the solution that the inter-American and world communities had failed to achieve. To sum up: in the pre-Resolution 1080 cases, the OAS failed once and succeeded once; and in the applications of that resolution, it succeeded twice and failed once. It cannot be said that the fault for the failures lies in the juridical framework within which the OAS had to function in each case. What, then, explains this uneven record?

71 72

For the text of President de Len Carpios message, see OEA/Ser.F/V.3 MRE/ACTA 2/93, of 7 June 1993, pp.3Baena Soares, op.cit., p. 67.

4.

From the privileged perspective of having participated in all the OAS missions concerned, except Suriname, I believe that the Organization was successful in Peru because President Fujimori understood the value of international public opinion for the consolidation of his then fledgling presidency. He had won in 1990 running against the traditional political establishment. Two years later, he decided to put an end to a bloody terrorist movement that had caused great loss of life and economic turmoil for a number of years. He had felt that this required drastic measures and had not hesitated to put them into effect. It is likely that he did not anticipate the strong negative response that his actions would provoke on the part of the OAS. Faced with it, he was pragmatic in testing the Organizations resolve. When he saw that it did not falter, he made important concessions to the OAS and took an accelerated path back to constitutional order. The OAS success in Guatemala, on the other hand, was due to the strength of the countrys institutions. The Prosecutor for Human Rights risked his life to oppose the unconstitutional actions of the President of Guatemala while the situation caused by those actions was still in a state of flux. The Court on Constitutional matters immediately declared the Presidents decree to be null and void. The Electoral Court refused to validate a scheme by Serrano to hold on to power. The armed forces, having seen at first hand the OAS reaction, came out in favor of the Constitution. All sectors of society business councils, trade unions, religious leaders, professional associations, academia, political parties repudiated the presidential decisions. In the end, under considerable OAS pressure, Serrano decided to leave the country. The failure in Haiti lay in the obstinacy of the military plotters who had overthrown Aristide. They did not believe that diplomatic and economic pressure would be enough to restore democracy simply because they had decided to resist at all cost, knowing that the burden would fall on the Haitian people. The embargo did not hurt those in power. On the contrary, it made the long-standing practice of contraband even more lucrative for them. Instead of deriving their profits from illegally imported luxury automobiles and liquor, as before, they could now make even larger gains by smuggling the daily necessities of life, including gasoline and oil. The same reasoning must have been on the mind of General Noriega in Panama. He, too, was subjected to diplomatic, political, and economic pressure and was prepared to withstand it. Like his Haitian colleagues, he did not believe that military force would be employed as a last resort to remove him from power. In both countries the armed forces had been very much influenced by the United States, which had occupied Haiti in the early part of the 20th century and maintained a highly visible military presence in the Panama Canal Zone. Referring to his studies at the military academy at West Point, one of Noriegas officers had told us that he knew the monster from within. In looking for a common denominator in these two cases, one might say that overconfidence, born perhaps of actual or presumed knowledge of the enemy, was at the root of obstinacy. Today the OAS General Assembly has the power to suspend a Member State whose democratically constituted government has been overthrown by force, if OAS diplomatic initiatives for the restoration of democracy have been unsuccessful. Perhaps if this unprecedented faculty had been granted earlier, the negative results we have discussed could have been avoided.

IV.

PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES

The Charter of the Organization of American States proclaims that one of the essential purposes of the OAS is to prevent possible causes of difficulties and to ensure the pacific settlement of disputes that may arise among the Member States. The Charter also reaffirms the principle that controversies of an international character arising between two or more American States shall be settled by peaceful procedures. Chapter V of the Charter is devoted to the peaceful procedures to which international disputes between Member States shall be submitted. Article 26 determines that a special treaty will establish adequate means for the settlement of such disputes. The American Treaty on Pacific Settlement, Pact of Bogot, was signed on 30 April 1948 at the Ninth International American Conference. Mexico deposited its instrument of ratification in November of the same year, and Costa Rica did so in May 1949, whereupon the treaty came into force between them.