ST. VINCENT – A Commission from the OAS Mechanism for Follow-Up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC) will conduct from April 22 to 24, 2014, an on-site visit to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with the consent of the host country, as part of the follow-up “inter pares” process carried out by the Mechanism in various countries of the region.
The Commission will be made up of representatives from Panama and Saint Kitts and Nevis to the MESICIC who, with the support from the Department of Legal Cooperation of the Secretariat for Legal Affairs of the OAS, in its capacity as the Technical Secretariat of the MESICIC, will meet with representatives from oversight bodies responsible for preventing, detecting and punishing corruption to review the manner in which the Inter-American Convention is being implemented. The purpose of the visit is to collect information in the field about how these organs perform their functions, which will serve as inputs for the preparation of the report to be drawn up by the MESICIC on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in its September 2014 meeting.
It is expected that the Commission will meet with representatives of civil society, the private sector, professional associations and academics in order to address topics related to the issues being analyzed in the Fourth Round of the MESICIC. Within the framework of the Fourth Round of evaluations, the OAS Anticorruption Mechanism is also expected to visit Belize, Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, and Suriname in April.
The MESICIC is a cooperation mechanism between states, with the participation of civil society organizations, established within the framework of the OAS, in which the legal/institutional framework of each country is reviewed for suitability with the Inter-American Convention against Corruption as well as the objective results achieved therein. The incorporation of on-site visits, with the consent of the countries, as a stage and integral part of the analysis represents an innovative and pioneering initiative of the OAS, which has further strengthened this reciprocal review process.
