By Robert A Emmanuel
The country’s representative to the Organization of American States (OAS) Sir Ronald Sanders has cited addressing guns and crime – as well as addressing political challenges in Haiti and Guatemala – as top priorities as he leads a historic third term of the body’s Permanent Council.
Antigua and Barbuda’s third term chairing the OAS Permanent Council commenced on October 1 and will end on December 31 this year.
Observer media spoke to Sir Ronald about some of his plans for the months ahead.
“Right now, we face several crises – we got Haiti, which is ongoing…also on the agenda is the evolving situation in Guatemala, where the new President has been elected, and yet the Attorney General’s Office and the Special Prosecutor’s Office have been trying to ban his party and him from existence to disqualify him from becoming the President which is really unheard of and is creating a serious problem,” he said.
Sir Ronald added that he has already held a Council meeting on this issue.
According to Reuters, Guatemala has restarted its presidential transition with representatives of President-elect Bernardo Arevalo, at the urging of the OAS and other international agencies.
The OAS said that the actions of Guatemala’s Attorney General, after prosecutors moved to suspend his party, Semilla, alleging registration flaws and conducting raids on the party’s headquarters and the country’s electoral authority office, were an “intolerable violation” of the country’s constitution.
Meanwhile, Antigua and Barbuda, along with Barbados, the Bahamas, Suriname and Jamaica, are set to join a Kenya-led multinational force to help Haitian law enforcement restore law and order to the stricken nation.
Sir Ronald’s third term will be unprecedented for the OAS, going back to 1962 when the body’s membership began to expand from its then 21 members.
There are now 35 independent states that make up the OAS general body with 70 permanent observers including the European Union.
According to Sir Ronald, this latest term was based on an extraordinary circumstance at the OAS which required him to serve in 2021.
“Well, normally I would only have served two terms but what happened is that we had a crisis during the term I served the second time, where they [other member states] asked me to be the Chair,” he said.
Meanwhile, the organisation will also review the issue of the proliferation of guns and the rise of gangs and violence in the region, which Sir Ronald called a “sinister problem” pervasive throughout the Americas, as well as climate change ahead of COP28 in Dubai.
“I would like to see if we can’t align a Latin American and Caribbean position with the United States and Canada before that meeting starts in Dubai.
“Even if we simply have an opportunity to discuss and try to find common areas, that would be an achievement,” Sir Ronald explained.
The discussions will focus on drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and their underlying causes, as well as current and proposed solutions for these issues, including autonomous weapons.
“We have got to have a discussion on [guns, gangs and violence], as I am going to bring in some experts and we are going to see if we can find some solutions that could be recommended to governments as to how we cooperate to try to address this problem,” he added.
Another issue on the agenda is irregular migration and refugees, which has been of particular concern to the United States as the destination of choice for many migrants, while Venezuela has seen a large number of its people emigrate through the Darien Gap and other illegal routes.