Organization of American States

The Organization of American States (OAS) is an international organization established on April 30, 1948 at the 9th Inter—American Conference in Bogota (Colombia) on the basis of the Pan-American Union that existed since 1889. It is the oldest organization in the world. The OAS unites all the countries of North and South America. Organization promotes the development of democracy, the protection of human rights and the strengthening the security of the region.

The headquarter is located in Washington. The working languages are Spanish, English, French and Portuguese. The OAS consists of 35 (currently 33) member countries. Also, 72 countries are observers in the OAS.

Most of the countries in organization joined the OAS immediately after independence. The exceptions were Canada (1990) and Guyana (1991). Guyana became the last country that joined OAS. In 1962, Cuba was excluded from the OAS. Only in 2009, the OAS allowed Cuba to return to the organization, but Cuba refused. In 2017, Venezuela also announced its withdrawal from the organization.

The structure of the OAS differs from other regional organizations. The supreme decision-making body of OAS is General Assembly, which includes all OAS member countries. The organization includes many departments and committees dealing with individual issues.

The goals of the organization are as follows:

• Strengthening peace and security on both American continents;
• The inviolability of the principle of non-interference, the strengthening of representative democratic power in the participating countries;
• Promoting the peaceful resolution of disputes between members of the organization, as well as preventing possible conflicts
• Joint efforts in the field of security and defense in case of external aggression;
• Assistance in solving a number of problems of the participating countries;
• Promoting general social, cultural and economic development;
• Assistance in limiting the number of weapons, giving priority to social and economic development.

For the effective realization of its main goal, based on its basic principles, the organization develops in four directions: democracy, human rights, security and development.

In the XXI century, the OAS began to play a much smaller role on the continents due to the emergence of new regional organizations uniting Latin American states without the participation of the United States