Grenada Assumes the Presidency of the Permanent Council

WASHINGTON, DC, April 1, 2011 - The Permanent Representative of Grenada to the Organization of American States (OAS), Ambassador Gillian Bristol, received today from the outgoing president, Carmen Lomellin of the United States, the mallet that represents the authority of the Permanent Council, the body that gathers the 33 active Member States of the hemispheric Organization. 

During the ceremony, that took place at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC, Ambassador Lomellin highlighted the progress that the Council was able to achieve in the past few months and thanked the support received from all the countries “to move forward in a very positive way the agenda we have established”. She also alluded to the importance of counting with the support of all of the Member States in the upcoming months, the period during which the preparations for the OAS 41st General Assembly will take place.

Ambassador Bristol, for her part, thanked the confidence placed in her Government and made reference to the relation between development and security asserting that “it is a happy coincidence that El Salvador has chosen the topic of citizens security for this year’s General Assembly because as we all know, in the Small Island States of the Caribbean we are very concerned about the multifaceted nature of the threats that are posed to the security for the integrity and stability of our nations”.

The representative of Grenada restated her country’s commitment to the issue of security, its multidimensional nature and the impact that this issue has for the development of the countries of the region. “We must remember that it was the small Caribbean States that championed and brought this perspective to the OAS in the late 1990s and eventually it was embraced by the 34 Member States as being indeed the more realistic and accurate definition of security”.

The representative of the Caribbean country announced that she will work closely with the vice-presidency of the Council, assumed by the Permanent Representative of Costa Rica, Embajador Enrique Castillo.

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin, and representatives of various Member Countries of the Organization were all present at the ceremony.

The Statute of the Permanent Council establishes that the Chairmanship of the Permanent Council is exercised successively by the head representatives of Member States, in alphabetical order of the Member States’ names in Spanish; the Vice Chair is exercised in the same way, though following reverse alphabetical order. Both positions are held for a period of three months.

From left to right:
Gillian Bristol, Chair of the OAS Permanent Council and Permanent Representative of the Grenada to the OAS
Carmen Lomellin, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the United States to the OAS
José Miguel Insulza, OAS Secretary General 
Albert R. Ramdin, OAS Assistant Secretary General

Date: April 01, 2011        
Place: Washington, DC
Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS