WASHINGTON, DC – The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Alejandro Foxley, signed this morning a Memorandum of Understanding on Technical Cooperation for Caribbean Countries.
“This is a concrete step in horizontal cooperation between countries of the region which will allow the transfer of public policies on State modernization from the government of Chile to the Caribbean nations. With the support of the OAS, this will strengthen their practices in the areas of citizen registry, coastal security, and the fight against poverty among other initiatives,” said Insulza during a ceremony held at the OAS Gallery of Heroes.
“The OAS has great interest in supporting the development of Caribbean nations, both as individual countries and as a region. We will therefore seek to finance initiatives that respond to the countries’ specific needs, but that can subsequently be applied in other countries of the Caribbean community,” noted the Secretary General.
Insulza explained that the resources included in this program will serve as “seed money,” i.e. they will seek to attract additional resources based on the good quality of the initiatives to be financed. “We will try to multiply this seed money for the benefit of the Caribbean countries,” he explained.
Chilean Foreign Minister noted that his country is interested in sharing their own experiences and learn from what other nations do. “In this fashion, we will all help improve the quality of our democracies. If we have more cohesive societies, we will create better conditions to be seen as a region in an increasingly open, competitive and interdependent world,” he said.
“In the road towards integration, the Caribbean has made specific progress on institutional, political and social issues. In this regard, we have identified certain areas where we can work -within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals- such as overcoming poverty, applying the experiences of the Chile Solidarity Bridge program in some countries of this sub-region. It is a joint effort with the OAS and Canada, that we hope to extend next year to other countries,” said Foxley.
Chile Solidarity Bridge is a program of comprehensive participation, designed to provide psychosocial support to families that live under extreme poverty conditions. The methodology promotes the development of actions among families geared towards the improvement of their living standards and the integration to the network of benefits and social services available. The families that join the Solidarity Bridge set the goal of reaching 53 minimum conditions, aimed at raising the quality of life in the areas of identification, health, education, family dynamics, habitability, work and income.
The main objective of the Memorandum of Understanding between the OAS and Chile is to support the political and economic integration processes of the Caribbean nations, as a valid tool to promote an adequate insertion strategy in the globalized world.
In thanking the support of Chile, the OAS Secretary General qualified the initiative as “necessary and timely, because it promotes regional solidarity and the transfer of knowledge between countries of the region. We are honored to be able to support concrete and technical development initiatives to support the countries of the Caribbean,” he concluded.
At the signing ceremony, Secretary General José Miguel Insulza and Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley were accompanied by OAS Permanent Council Vice Chair, Peruvian Ambassador Ántero Flores-Aráoz, Permanent Representative of Chile to the OAS, Pedro Oyarce, and Ambassador of Chile to the United States, Mariano Fernández.
