Former deputy, Juan Guaidó (left), shaking hands with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro (right) in 2020. Photo: AFP.
The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that he asked his peers from Venezuela and Nicaragua to return to the Organization of American States (OAS).
On Wednesday, September 14, during the ceremony of appointment of several ambassadors, including the Colombian Ambassador to the OAS Luis Ernesto Vargas, Petro stressed that he asked the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, to “re-enter the Inter-American Human Rights System,” an agreement formed by the member states of the discredited regional body.
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Likewise, Petro raised the possibility of, “asking Nicaragua to re-enter as well,” although he clarified that, in any case, “these are their decisions, obviously, they are not ours. We cannot impose it on them.”
The call of the Colombian president, as he himself explained, is due to the fact that: “The democratic constitution of America must prevail, because in the end, whether the right wins or the left wins, for the protection of one or the other, it is important that fundamental rights are respected.” But the Colombian president seems to have forgotten how under the rule of Secretary General Luis Almagro, the regional body has become a tool exclusively used to serve the interests of the White House and uses human rights issues as a means to meddle in countries not aligned with Washington’s dictates.
All in all, Petro made it clear that, “the OAS, which has dedicated itself to excluding and dividing countries, must remake itself in two tasks: to become a diverse and plural center and that the Inter-American Human Rights System be strengthened.”
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Why did Venezuela and Nicaragua leave the OAS?
Venezuela formally left the OAS on April 27, 2019 because the hemispheric platform supported the US in its efforts to support the self-proclaimed interim Venezuelan president, Juan Guaidó, thus ignoring the legitimacy of President Maduro’s mandate.
In April of that year, Nicaragua announced its invariable decision to leave the OAS and to close the organization’s office in Managua (Nicaraguan capital), after branding the organization as an instrument of colonial domination.
In June, the Summit of the Americas—co-organized by the OAS—took place in Los Angeles, California, and the US, as host of the event, decided to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which caused questions and rejections of Washington’s narrow approach towards the political diversity in Latin America, within its tradition of considering it as it’s “back yard.”
(HispanTV) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/DD
