What Will Come of Recent Gestures by Venezuela’s Maduro?
A Latin America Advisor Q&A featuring experts’ viewpoints of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s recent moves and U.S. policy under Biden.
Luis Almagro
Uruguay | Secretary General, Organization of American States
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Luis Almagro was re-elected for a second term as Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) on March 20, 2020. He was first elected as Secretary General of the OAS in 2015. As Secretary General, Almagro has prioritized defense of democracy and human rights, and has spoken out in the case of Venezuela, where he pressed for the enforcement of the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC). He is the first OAS Secretary General to have invoked Article 20 of the IADC.
Almagro has also played a role in the search for solutions to the crisis in Nicaragua; he has prioritized the struggle for democracy in Cuba; he has increased OAS support for the Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP) in Colombia; he drove the creation of the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), the first OAS mission of its kind; and he reinvigorated and expanded the OAS electoral observation missions, with first-time deployment of missions in such countries as the United States and Brazil. Almagro also played a key role in ensuring elections in Haiti, mediated in the migrant crisis between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and deepened diplomatic efforts in the territorial differendum between Belize and Guatemala in relation to the Adjacency Zone, among other initiatives.
A career diplomat, Almagro was Uruguay’s foreign minister from 2010 to 2015. He defined several landmark initiatives of President José Mujíca’s: Uruguay decided to take in former prisoners from Guantanamo, granted asylum to dozens of Syrian families who were victims of their country’s civil war, and secured the endorsement of Group of Latin America and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC) for its election to a seat on the United Nations Security Council in January 2016. Almagro was also ambassador to China for three years, after occupying senior diplomatic posts in his country’s foreign ministry and at its embassies in Germany and Iran. In addition, he was elected as a senator in Uruguay’s national elections in October 2014.
Almagro was an event speaker at the Dialogue.
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