NewsLatin America'Our region can do more': seven former presidents and 11 foreign ministers urge to rebuild Unasur

‘Our region can do more’: seven former presidents and 11 foreign ministers urge to rebuild Unasur

Seven former Latin American presidents accompanied by former foreign ministers, former ministers, former parliamentarians, sitting congressmen, teachers, directors of international organizations and former ambassadors have sent a letter to 12 presidents of the region this Monday to push them to the formation of a new UNASUR, the Union of Nations Suramericanas that was formed in 2008 and that, a decade later, stopped working as it had been conceived, with which it was consecutively losing influence. The text received this Monday by Alberto Fernandez (Argentina), Luis Arce (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (president-elect of Brazil), Guillermo Lasso (Ecuador), Gabriel Boric (Chile), Gustavo Petro (Colombia), Irfaan Ali ( Guyana), Mario Abdo Benitez (Paraguay), Pedro Castillo (Peru), Luis Lacalle Pou (Uruguay), Chan Santokhi (Suriname) and Nicolas Maduro (Venezuela) analyze that “integration is more necessary today than ever.”

“A significant effort in this direction would feed a virtuous circle that would strengthen multilateral bodies and contribute to a greater good today in danger: peace,” adds the text that is lifted, precisely, when the world space, in full reconfiguration, seems marked by fragmentation.

The text signed by former presidents Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Eduardo Duhalde (Argentina), Ricardo Lagos (Chile), Jose Mujica (Uruguay), Dilma Rouseff (Brazil) and Ernesto Samper (Colombia) begins with the description of the new international scenario: a pandemic that has plagued the world for almost three years, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the sharpening of the dispute between China and the United States.

“Globalization as it has been organized until today is in question,” says the letter. But he adds that although “the new world that is emerging brings threats”, it also represents “opportunities that cannot be wasted again”. He speaks of “a climate crisis that continues to worsen” and “an anomie in terms of respect for international law” that “generates a kind of global chaos in which the risk of a tragedy caused by nuclear weapons looms.” The conclusion, for the signatories of the letter, seems obvious: “An urgent intervention is required from multilateral organizations, which today are unfortunately weakened and often powerless.”

The former presidents are supported by a group of former foreign ministers: Celso Amorin (Brazil), Rafael Bielsa (Argentina), Belela Herrera (Uruguay), Jose Miguel Insulza (Chile), Jorge Lara (Paraguay), Guillaume Long (Ecuador), Heraldo Munoz ( Chile), Rodolfo Nin (Uruguay), Aloizio Nunez (Brazil), Felipe Sola (Argentina) and Jorge Taiana, current Argentine Defense Minister. The letter analyzes the world space that tends to reorganize itself around large regional blocs that, “to the extent that they are closing, they can become true fortresses.”

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“US hegemony is being challenged by the emergence of China, a centrally governed thousand-year-old nation. For its part, the European Union seeks to defend its model of social cohesion and open up, without succeeding so far, spaces that allow it to achieve its strategic autonomy. At the same time, the so-called Global South with new emerging powers, seeks to break through and influence the design of a new governance of the planet, “says the text. “In this framework, notions such as health, food or energy sovereignty take on a new relevance” and “in this world of regional blocs, our Latin America appears as a marginal and irrelevant region.” For the signatories, “it is by far the hardest hit by the pandemic and the economic and social crisis that followed it” and the region “experienced a recession twice as deep as that of the world economy and saw the number of of people living in poverty.

When in the recent Summit of the Americas the absence of a common position of our governments was shown with total crudeness, to the point that the center of the discussion was occupied by exclusions and absences —the text continues—, there is a bleak picture that , however, “is not inexorable”: “Our region can do more”, analyzes the letter, “because little by little the integration process is reviving”. It exemplifies with the initiative of the Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that allowed the reactivation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) created in 2010 and paralyzed since 2017. “An integrated, non-aligned and peaceful Latin America will recover international prestige and will be able to overcome the irrelevance in which we find ourselves”, with which it would be possible to remain in “better conditions to face the four greatest threats that lie in wait for the region: climate change, pandemics, social inequalities and authoritarian regression”.

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When the recent electoral processes have allowed the victory of governments and political coalitions favorable to the re-launch of regional integration —the text analyzes— “an opportunity that cannot be missed” has been configured because “together we can make our voices heard”. Remember that while in the EU interregional trade represents more than 70% of the total, in Latin America, after successive falls, it currently does not reach more than 13%. “Consequently, the reconstruction of an effective space for South American coordination is urgent,” says the text. “Unasur still exists and is the best platform to reconstitute an integration space in South America.”

For the signatories of the letter, “it is not a purely nostalgic reconstitution of a past that no longer exists”, but rather “a new Unasur must self-critically take charge of the deficiencies of the previous process”, such as “guaranteeing pluralism and its projection beyond the ideological and political affinities of the governments in power”.

In its priority agenda, it continues, a health self-sufficiency plan should be included, especially aimed at the joint production and purchase of vaccines and essential health supplies; agreements to facilitate orderly migration; an integrated program to attack climate change in compliance with the Paris Agreements; priority road, rail and energy connectivity works; the recovery for the region of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the empowerment of the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF); measures that favor cooperation between companies in the region and joint policies to regulate the action of large technological monopolies, among other measures.

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