Thank you, Ambassador Watson, for your kind introduction.

As Vice Chairman of the Pan American Development Foundation, I am pleased to join you at this working lunch. I indeed feel honoured to open the forty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the PADF.

The fact that so many of you are here today, as PADF Trustees from throughout the Hemisphere, to support the Foundation and the OAS is a real testament to what this organization has become, thanks to all of you and the dedicated PADF management team and staff led by John Sanbrailo and Deputy Director, Amy Coughenour. I am very happy to be among so many friends from different parts of the Americas.

We can say many good things about the Pan-American Development Foundation. Allow me to mention four aspects of importance:

Firstly, we should all be proud of the history of the PADF and how the OAS and the private sector gave birth to it and have helped to sustain it. For forty-five years the Foundation has been a key OAS mechanism for mobilizing corporate and other donor support and for strengthening civil society. It is an example of an OAS success story that is not always fully known outside of our Inter-American family.

Secondly, the Foundation has become an invaluable support mechanism for the Secretary General and me in pursuing the three key strategic priorities of the OAS agenda - integral development, strengthening democracy and enhancing security in the Western Hemisphere. PADF has, among other things, provided disaster relief in the Caribbean, promoted job creation and the democratic transition in Haiti, aided displaced persons in Colombia, strengthened civil society, and supported the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

Thirdly, PADF is an incubator of innovative development approaches. In particular, I commend you for your work on remittances and disaster relief, in addition to your work with micro-enterprises and your medical-dental equipment donations and tools for training.

Fourthly, as we all saw in April, PADF, working in partnership with the OAS in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, pioneered a highly successful cross-border programme that is a model for other countries. Now, I would like to urge you to study the Dominican Republic-Haiti model with a view to applying it to countries like Belize and Guatemala.

In my dual capacity as OAS Assistant Secretary General and as your Vice Chairman, I wish to place on record our sincere thanks to USAID for its support, as well as to private donors such as the Stanford Financial Group and Citigroup.

Now, John Sanbrailo has asked me to speak on the wide-ranging subject of sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In my view, realizing sustainable development and structural prosperity is a responsibility of all in society. Governments alone cannot be held accountable for balanced growth and progress. Of equal importance, as part of modern governance, is the responsible engagement of civil society-at-large; that is the business community, trade unions, religious organizations, etc. In short: sustainable development is a collective responsibility!

While sustainable development demands a long-term and strategic perspective on creating growth and wealth in an economy, the reality we face in many Latin American and Caribbean countries is a remarkable absence of vision and strategy. Instead often the main focus in governance is towards the next election, creating an environment of short-term goals and ad-hoc actions.

I firmly believe that sustainable development requires a more holistic approach, an integral and integrated approach to development that combines governance, economic, cultural, social and environmental issues. The interdependence of democracy, integral development and multidimensional security is clearly stated in the Charter of the OAS and in the Inter-American Democratic Charter and Secretary General Insulza and I have stated many times that each is equally important and mutually reinforcing.

I firmly believe in the principle “prevention is better than reparation”. Whether in preventing political crises by early engagement through quiet diplomacy, or avoiding social and economic problems through sound policies, promoting investment, and so on, in my view it pays to be proactive! The challenge for organizations like ours is to be able to determine when and where timely engagement is required to guarantee and enhance constitutionality, democratic governability, financial stability, economic prosperity and social cohesion.

I also believe in the need to advance a hemispheric development agenda that pays special attention to the unique needs of the smaller and more disadvantaged countries of the Americas. While we advocate stronger corporate social responsibility, we also should urge increased financial and technical assistance from the richer countries in the OAS to those less fortunate and vulnerable countries and sub-regions. To be successful in our integration efforts, these countries and sub-regions should be supported, not only by embedding them in a hemispheric free trade market that takes account of their special needs and constraints, but also by strengthening their democratic institutions, education systems, institutional capacity, law enforcement agencies, and social environment. In the end, achieving sustained stability and security will be in the interest of all in the Americas.

I would like to reiterate the importance of institutional linkages between the OAS and other regional and sub-regional institutions to add value to development initiatives, in support of economic progress and a better quality of life for all. In developing these strategic partnerships, we at the OAS are fully aware that development that focuses only on economics is by definition deficient. For growth without equity is unsustainable and will ultimately undermine democracy and governability.

In the 34 Member States of the OAS, we see an ongoing process of change as countries go through processes of political evolution and economic transformation. We see change, as civil society in many countries feels more empowered to participate actively in public discourse. We see change as long-marginalized groups, including indigenous communities, youth and women, have assumed more prominent roles, challenged traditional notions of leadership and brought attention to a range of new human development and capacity building issues.

Clearly, the political agenda of the OAS cannot and should not be divorced from the reality of these changes in attending to the social and economic needs of the peoples of the Americas. There is an undeniable relationship between political stability and democratic governability on the one hand, and our ability on the other hand, to provide opportunities for prosperity, for concrete action to fight poverty, inequality, social exclusion, illegal drug trafficking, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the impact of natural disasters, and trans-national crime, just to mention some of the problems OAS Member States face in their quest for social and economic progress. And if these myriad challenges are daunting enough for the bigger countries of the region, imagine what it must be like for the more vulnerable countries of the Caribbean and Central America, for whom having to cope annually with devastating hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, is an unsustainable burden.

The PADF, in collaboration with the OAS, can make a massive difference. We do not need to envisage grandiose projects with huge budgets. We do not need to re-invent the PADF wheel. The Foundation already helps to bring together private and public resources in impoverished and vulnerable areas to maximize the impact of all donors, providing much needed funds and technical resources to create economic opportunities, promote social progress, strengthen communities and civil society, and respond to natural disasters and humanitarian crises. By providing tools and skills training, health services and medical equipment, by working with NGOs among the marginalized sectors of society, we are empowering people, we are helping to create jobs, we are helping to safeguard livelihoods and we are helping to generate wealth. By so doing we are having a positive effect on the lives of thousands and are helping to build equity into development.

The OAS, as the premier hemispheric multilateral vehicle to discuss political and economic challenges and opportunities and to reach consensus on collective action, is in a unique position to institutionalize the development agenda in the political objectives of the member states. It is only in the political debate that a sound understanding of the underlying causes of poverty, inequality and social exclusion can be gained. In other words, the OAS can provide political weight and momentum for concerted action to address the developmental challenges faced by the countries of the Western Hemisphere.

I believe therefore that the OAS and the PADF, in continued partnership, can address simultaneously political and developmental priorities, by focusing on promoting a mutually enforcing agenda. We need to provide consistent, stable, enforced and transparent rules for the private sector to invest and generate productive employment. We need a healthy and well-educated work force that can live in peace and achieve prosperity. We need a social safely net to care for the neediest in our societies. To achieve these goals requires functioning political and policy institutions that can translate the values and requirements of the population into the reality of everyday life.

No government or organization has a quick and easy answer to the challenge of improving democracy and delivering the development gains that citizens expect. Neither can any government address all these challenges effectively in isolation. I believe that an integrated approach which brings together the resources, capacities and convening powers of governments and hemispheric organizations, reaches out to the private sector as full partners in development, and welcomes the input of civil society, is essential.

So, it is in this spirit that I close my remarks by urging us all to establish a new paradigm for development in the Americas, one that is based on the interdependence of establishing viable democracies and comfortable levels of security, one that takes into account the diversity in size and levels of development in our Hemisphere, one that is based on collective responsibility and sharing of the burden within states and in the Americas, one that is aimed at achieving peace, solidarity and justice in the Americas.

I thank you for your attention.