The Eighth Summit of the Americas —to be held in Lima (Peru) in April 2018— will have Democratic Governance against Corruption as its core theme, Foreign Affairs Minister Ricardo Luna affirmed.
The minister said that the
preparations for the coming summit were an opportunity "to reflect on democratic governance and how it is impacted by corruption," as well as "to evaluate concrete measures to combat impunity through regional cooperation."
The Peruvian Foreign Affairs minister proposed supplementing and bolstering existing mechanisms and instruments of the inter-American system, such as the Inter-American Convention against Corruption and its follow-up mechanism (MESICIC).
Peru announced that it would "pursue efforts in partnership with all the countries of the Hemisphere, so that the Lima Summit will help to strengthen existing mechanisms by making them more effective and, where appropriate, institute new ones needed to address this fundamental challenge."
OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, said that next year's summit offers an opportunity "for us to agree at the highest level on the measures that our region needs to guide it towards the consolidation on a day-to-day level of the values and principles that bind our countries together in democracy and human rights."
"The future of the region stands at a critical juncture because of the threats to democratic governance, whether from the corruption that is eating away at institutions from within in several countries, or because they have been turned into empty shells by an authoritarian regime that curtails the individual guarantees and freedoms of citizens, as is currently the case in
Venezuela," he added.
The venue of the next Summit of the Americas, a periodic gathering of the Heads of State and Government of the Hemisphere's countries, was determined at the Seventh Summit, held in Panama in 2015.