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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
The
member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) determined
that the next Assistant Secretary General will be elected on the same
day as the election of the next Secretary General –
March 18, 2015 – as was decided today by the Permanent Council
in a regular meeting at the headquarters of the hemispheric institution in Washington DC.
The vote will be held in a Special General Assembly at
16:00 EST (
21:00 GMT), following the election of the
next Secretary General at
10:00 EST (
15:00 GMT). Previously, the two elections took place on separate dates.
During the meeting, the Council also heard a presentation on the launch
of the Inter-American Rapid Alerts System (SIAR), which the Vice Chair
of the Council and Permanent Representative of Suriname to the OAS,
Niermala Badrising, who presided over today´s
meeting, described as “the first hemispheric integrated system for the
generation, management, and rapid and safe exchange of information on
consumer safety alerts.”
The presentation was delivered by the National Secretary for the
Consumer of the Ministry of Justice of Brazil, Juliana Pereira da Silva,
whose country holds the Chair of the Management Committee of the
Consumer Safety and Health Network (CSHN), in which the
SIAR had its origins. Secretary Pereira da Silva announced that,
beginning today, the new portal is active at
www.oas.org/rcss.
In addition, she explained that, “since its first mandate in 2009 and
its creation in 2010, the CSHN has become consolidated as the only
hemispheric mechanism of oversight of the security of the products that
circulate in the markets of the region, as a key
element of trade, fundamental to economic and social development.”
Moreover, she said the SIAR responds to the need “to ensure a timely
exchange of information between member states to facilitate the measures
necessary to prevent, restrict or impose specific
conditions on the commercialization of consumer products that pose a
serious risk to the health and security of consumers, with criteria
shared through hemispheric alerts.”
The Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, thanked Brazil
for the role it has played on this issue and called the launching of the
SIAR an important achievement that will contribute to protecting
consumers in the region. Likewise, he highlighted
the work of the officials of the Organization who have been focused on
the area, and that of several member countries in addition to Brazil,
among them Argentina, Colombia, Peru, the United States and Canada.
The Council also received a report on the results of the 24th Ibero-American Summit in Veracruz, Mexico, in which
Secretary General Insulza participated,
and to which the Heads of State and Government of the Americas and the
Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Europe were invited.
The Permanent Representative of Mexico to the OAS, Emilio Rabasa, who
presented the report, highlighted that “the challenge of our nations for
this Summit in addition to the preservation and promotion of the
cultural patrimony, was to associate this enormous
cultural heritage with social well-being.”
The Permanent Representative of Mexico said that during the event
“progress was made in the composition of a digital cultural agenda for
Ibero-America that will contribute to the consolidation of an
Ibero-American cultural space, and its insertion into global
information networks,” among other results.
During the meeting, the Vice Chair of the Council and several
representatives joined in the commemoration today of Human Rights Day,
and congratulated
Uruguay and
Dominica on the successful elections held in their countries this week.
During the meeting, the representatives of Brazil, Canada, Paraguay,
Barbados, Uruguay, the United States, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico,
Guyana, Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, The Bahamas, Ecuador, Bolivia,
Venezuela, Chile, Dominica and the Permanent Observers
of Portugal and Spain took the floor.
© Copyright 2014 by thebahamasweekly.com
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