SPEECH BY AMBASSADOR LUIS ALVARADO AT THE VIRTUAL SESSION
OF THE PERMANENT COUNCIL OF THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES ON MAY 14, 2020
ON SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC RESILIENCE IN THE AMERICAS: CHALLENGES AND BEST PRACTICES
Thank you very much Mr. President.
The Nicaraguan delegation greets the distinguished panelists invited to this session and takes note of their interventions. Likewise, it extends cordial greetings to all the Permanent and Alternate Representatives to the Organization and to the Permanent Observers who accompany us in this session.
When we speak of democratic resilience in the region, we find that the current crisis caused by the coronavirus comes to test the strength and quality of our democracies, despite the enormous efforts that we as states are making to face this pandemic with our resources and according to our own models based on the national reality that each country lives.
Today we are faced with the challenges of being the most unequal region in the world, in which poverty, citizen insecurity and social exclusion predominate, to which millions of citizens of the Americas are subjected, added to the effects that the Covid-19 crisis is causing in the region.
In its special report of May 12 this year on "The social challenge in the times of Covid-19”, ECLAC warns of the increase in poverty and indigence in the region as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which will cause greater inequality in the countries of the region, therefore encouraging "the reinforcement of the existing social protection measures", as well as "a basic income to satisfy needs and sustain consumption".
ECLAC warns that the populations of the region most affected by the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic will be “women, from low and lower-middle income strata, informal workers, paid domestic workers, children and adolescents."
In this framework, poverty in Latin America would increase at least 4.4 percentage points (28.7 million additional people) compared to the previous year, so it would reach a total of 214.7 million persons, as to say (the 34.7% of the region's population).
Among these people, extreme poverty would increase 2.6 percentage points (15.9 million additional persons) and would affect a total of 83.4 million people.
Mr. President
In order to be resilient, Democracy must have, as its ultimate objective and final purpose, the achievement of the well-being, peace and security of its people, as well as the enjoyment of the civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of its citizens.
The appearance of the Covid-19 calls into question the historical meaning, scope, and dimension of the schemes of representative democracies that are overflowed and exceeded by the current pandemic, and gives room and validity to the existence of participatory and direct democracies that exist in the region, where the population is directly involved in the decisions of their governments and are fundamental actors in the design of their public policies.
Regarding the support for democratic resilience in the Americas that international and regional organizations must provide, this involves full respect for the nature and purposes of their Charters and Constitutive Protocols, in which they must contribute to the promotion of solidarity and the collaboration among States, and therefore their officials must respect their sovereignty and not overreach their functions.
If there really is a genuine interest in supporting the democratic resilience of the countries of the region and the world, let the aggressions, incorrectly called sanctions, cease, let the economic and financial blockade against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and other countries, cease, cease the arms race and war, and the calls of the peoples of the world, and those of international personalities demanding the cessation of these practices and policies, be heeded.
It is imponderable and peremptory that universal sanity returns and we attend the signs that God is giving us, and that we reflect on how one day the prodigal son, who repented of the bad path he had taken, turned to God and decided to change his life and return to his Father's house in peace.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.