Commemorating a golden anniversary.

• Author: Bruce, Thomas W.
• Position: Association of American States celebrates 50th anniversary - Inter-American System

In 1998 the OAS celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Its commemoration is an opportunity to acknowledge a distinguished history as the prologue of a promising future. Thus, throughout the year, the OAS will undertake a number of projects especially designed to retrace the course of the Organization since its inception in 1948, draw attention to its institutional renewal to meet the challenges of the new century, build bridges to the broader community, and establish a collective sense of accomplishment.

To launch the commemorative year, the General Secretariat will host a Conference on the Americas March 6-7 in Washington. The agenda for this two-day meeting will focus on the issues that will dominate the second Summit of the Americas, which will take place one month later in Santiago, Chile. Organized around a series of panel discussions, the conference will draw eminent speakers from government, business, academia, and the think-tank community. The audience will include the Hemisphere's leading policymakers, including influential U.S. decisionmakers, members of Congress, and a broad section of private-sector and media representatives.

The Conference on the Americas will conclude with a special evening event, a "town hall meeting" devoted to the prospects for the peoples of the Americas in the twenty-first century. Five to eight distinguished thinkers reflecting the diversity and creativity of the entire Hemisphere will be invited to engage in a "debate" that will be moderated by a prominent public personality. The participants will be drawn from among the Nobel Laureates of the Americas.

These events will be followed by the second Summit of the Americas, April 14-17, in Santiago. On this occasion, the thirty-four American presidents and heads of state will assess the degree of their collective success in achieving-with the support of the chief organs of the inter-American system, the OAS, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Pan-American Health Organization--the goals set by the first Summit, held in Miami in December 1994.

The consolidation of democracy and the preparations for the negotiation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005, sustainable development, education, and the eradication of poverty and discrimination will persist as the principal preoccupations of the Hemisphere on the eve of the new millennium. Symbolically, the second Summit of the Americas opens on Pan American Day, April 14, exactly 108 years...