Jimmy Carter urges shoring up of democracy.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle
• Position: OAS

SPEAKING AT THE OAS, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter cautioned that the "lofty ideas" enshrined in the Inter-American Democratic Charter are not always honored and that extreme poverty continues to afflict parts of the hemisphere.

"When people live in grinding poverty, see no hope of improvement for their children, and are not receiving the rights and benefits of citizenship, they will eventually make their grievances known, and it may be in radical and destructive ways," Carter told a standing-room-only crowd in the Hall of the Americas.

The January 25 presentation on "The Promise and Peril of Democracy" inaugurated the Lecture Series of the Americas, a monthly forum on major inter-American issues.

Carter called on the nations of the Americas to "shore up our fragile democracies, protect and defend our human rights system, and tackle the problems of desperation and destitution."

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate also urged the OAS member states to strengthen the Democratic Charter and make it "a living document," not just "empty pieces of paper."

Carter said the region has made considerable democratic progress in the last twenty-five years, noting that when he signed the Panama Canal Treaties in the same Hall of the Americas in 1977, many nonelected or military leaders were on the dais. Since those days, he said, citizens throughout Latin America and the Caribbean have become involved in every aspect of governance and the hemisphere has developed a strong commitment to human rights.

But Carter warned that many citizens are dissatisfied with the performance of their elected governments and that such dissatisfaction could "transform itself into disillusionment with democracy itself."

Democratic elections have improved in the hemisphere, Carter said, but further reform is necessary. "I include my own country in saying that we all need to create fair elections procedures, to regulate campaign finance, and...