Livewire - Amnesty International blogging for human rights

Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International’s section in Canada (English) is in Port of Spain, Trinidad

Enrique Daza from the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) welcomes participants to the IV People's Summit ©Amnesty International

Thursday marked the final day of the 2-day official civil society summit and the first day of the alternative People’s Summit. Ivahanna Larossa, Director of Amnesty International’s section in Uruguay, gave a strong presentation at the civil society summit, laying out the key issues in the briefing paper we had prepared in advance of the Summit.

That was part of a rich set of workshops in the morning, giving participants a chance to engage with each other and explore a wide range of key concerns – something that had been so lacking yesterday.

The afternoon, though, became fractious. The combined effects, perhaps, of life on the cruise ship, ongoing lack of access to a current version of the Summit Declaration and very poor information flow about decision-making and plans for a 30-minute dialogue session with the hemisphere’s Foreign Ministers tomorrow morning boiled over.

We were initially told that only 10 delegates could attend the meeting with the Ministers; that only four of the ten would be able to speak and that they would be given no more than three minutes each for their presentation. Many groups, in Trinidad and elsewhere in the Americas, have been preparing for the Summit for close to two years, with numerous community, national and regional consultation meetings. To hear that it would all come down to something so fleeting as to be nearly meaningless was a cruel blow.

Even worse, news soon spread that some of the delegations from the other parallel pre-summits being held (in addition to the civil society meeting there have been summits dealing with Indigenous peoples, youth, labour and the private sector) would be allowed 20 delegates for their respective 30 minutes with the ministers. It did not help that no one seemed to be able to give clear information as to how the meeting was being organized and who was empowered to make decisions.

There were pointed differences about how to choose the delegates, what issues we should raise, and more. In the end, after several hours of emotional debate, we did find resolution. The Trinidadian government agreed that we would be able to send 40 delegates rather than the original 10 (the subsequent process of deciding who the 40 would be was again difficult).

We are still, however, limited to four speakers who will have combined air time of 12 minutes. Twelve minutes to capture the richness and breadth of civil society hopes and concerns about the Americas! Hardly adequate to say the least.

I will be joining the group of 40 and have been working with the Director of the Center for Justice and International Law who will have 3 minutes to lay out our key human rights recommendations for the hemisphere. Needless to say, no one is going into this anticipating meaningful and constructive dialogue.

Reports of day one at the Peoples Summit from Stacy Shapiro from Amnesty International’s International Secretariat fortunately did not involve any of this discord. We will be delivering our own workshop there on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, we are watching a range of policing related concerns, including detentions of at least six “foreign protestors” when they arrived at the airport and the continuing refusal of the police to approve a parade route for an intended demonstration on Saturday.