Reform of the Rules of Procedure of the Permanent Council

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank Ambassador Carlos Alberto Játiva Naranjo, Permanent Representative of Ecuador, for presenting the report and for the leadership he has shown in steering the Working Group, as well as for the efforts made to build consensus so as to achieve the changes we see reflected today in the Working Group's proposal to reform the Rules of Procedure of the Permanent Council.

I must likewise recognize the commitment and effort of all the delegations that contributed to the conversation and made possible a rich debate on the points now reflected in the proposal. We believe that this Working Group was a good exercise in adopting changes needed for better performance in the functioning and procedures of this Permanent Council and its subsidiary bodies.

To a large extent, the challenges brought by the pandemic are responsible for what was achieved in the Working Group; but so too is the conviction of the majority that this Organization had, and still has, a major internal review pending. An important point for the Dominican Delegation is modernization through the use of information and communication technologies; their adoption has been vital for the Organization, since it has allowed continuity and the performance of functions despite recent challenges.

The proposal presented by the Dominican Delegation includes the use of electronic voting, which has been taken up in the recommendations presented today. The idea is to put in place a system of this kind in order to make the voting process more agile, save time and contribute to transparency and to the historical record of our States' positions.

Dear colleagues, the proposals contained in the report presented to us today are the product of hard work carried out over months by both the delegations and the Chair to improve the performance of this body and of our Organization. The Dominican Delegation considers valuable the progress made by the Working Group, as well as that achieved in the Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Affairs (CAAP), to make our work and that of the General Secretariat more effective.

Nevertheless, we reiterate what we said at the meeting of June 30: these must not be one-off discussions, nor discussions held once every certain number of years. No! We see this as an exercise sustained over time, one that must be broader and deeper. We hope that today's small impulse will continue and will set off further and more significant changes in the short term.

We reiterate our suggestion that consideration be given to forming a group that, going beyond the functioning of our Permanent Council and its committees, would drive an in-depth conversation on the future of the OAS, promoting debate on the Organization in all its aspects, rethinking its role and the conduct of its principal actors, and proposing mechanisms for defining priorities in today's far more fast-moving and agile multilateralism. We thus wish to reiterate the commitment of the Dominican Republic to cooperate actively in bringing about the changes we have agreed by consensus in the Working Group that presents its report today.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.