Subregional Forum for Central America, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic

2. Subregional Forum for Central America, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic Civil Society Recommendations on the Draft Declaration Fifth Summit of the Americas December 8 and 9, 2008 San Salvador, El Salvador

3. Human Prosperity (1) • We recommend that the governments: • Involve civil society organizations in the work government agencies carry out on behalf of those sectors of the population that are at economic and social risk. • Explicitly recognize the contributions made by organizations of the social economy as players that significantly help in mitigating poverty and creating alternatives for employment, thereby furthering sustainable community development in the countries of the Americas.

4. Human Prosperity (2) We request an explicit commitment to: • Invest in inclusive, quality education to ensure the reduction of all kinds of poverty and to attain growth based on sustainable foundations, with distribution systems that are as equitable as possible. • Universal access to health in the Americas, covering attention, prevention, and treatment.

5. Energy Security (1) • We recommend continuing to: • Encourage participation by all sectors of society in decision making, raising the profile of the interests and needs of vulnerable sectors (the poor, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, women, children of both sexes, young people, persons with disabilities). • Guarantee universal access to energy services. • Latent concern over the production of agrifuels. • Assign priority to practices for ensuring energy efficiency and conservation.

6. Energy Security (2) • We urge the inclusion of the following: • One prerequisite for sustainable development is the rational and sustainable use of the potential to generate renewable energy in each of the countries. • Linkages between energy policies and other socioeconomic development policies in the countries and in the region, containing long-term, multigenerational commitments. • Support for research, development, and exchanges of leading-edge and autochthonous technologies.

7. Environmental Sustainability • We ask the governments: • In reiterating their commitment to sustainable development, to declare that this must take place with nondiscriminatory, inclusive citizen participation, under conditions of equality for all sectors of the population. • Commitment to ratifying and approving the Kyoto Protocol. • Commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.

8. Public Security • In addition to terrorism and organized crime, we urge the governments to commit to the prevention and combat of: • Stigmatization, discrimination, organ trafficking, and trafficking in human lives for sexual purposes and other forms of exploitation, which has become the new slavery of the 21st century. • We also call for a commitment toward protecting the victims in order to ensure the effective pursuit and prosecution of those who commit such crimes. All this, as stated in the Declaration,in accordance with international law (including human rights law, refugee law, and international humanitarian law).

9. Democratic Governance (1) • Two concepts were of concern to the civil society organizations that met in San Salvador, and they request that these be included in the Declaration: • The close relationship between democracy and equality, as the invisible underpinnings of governability.

10. Democratic Governance (2) • The development and implementation of participatory democracy, involving all sectors under equal conditions, as a complement to representative democracy; these are also among the foundations of governability. • These principles gave rise to specific proposals geared toward the establishment of civil society and its nondiscriminatory, inclusive participation in public policies.

11. Summit Follow-Up and Implementation Effectiveness (1) • We urge the governments to declare that: • Between May and August 2009, effective strategies for effective compliance with the Summits will be reviewed. • The Finance Ministries, in conjunction with the multilateral financial institutions, will call for a meeting to be held during the last four months of 2009.

12. Summit Follow-Up and Implementation Effectiveness (2) • We call for: • The contributions of civil society – which are the result of their monitoring of the agreements of the Summits of the Americas under the various initiatives developed to date – to be adopted. • An Ad Hoc Civil Society Consultative Council, attached to the Secretariat, to be created.

13. General Recommendations • Violence and gender awareness must be crosscutting elements within the Declaration. • The proposals set forth in the Declaration and to which the States commit must be measurable, feasible, and specific. • The OAS should include a gender-aware perspective throughout its documents, language, and policies. • We recommend that the States strengthen the inter-American human rights system and intervene to ensure gender awareness is incorporated into the actions it undertakes.

14. Gracias