Los Angeles will play host to the Ninth Summit of the Americas from June 6-10, as President Biden welcomes leaders from North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean. They will come together to confront our region’s most pressing challenges. Improving access to healthcare, combatting climate change, protecting the environment, expanding broadband access, and creating good paying jobs. Leaders arriving in Los Angeles, a city with enduring cultural, historic, and economic ties to Latin America and the Caribbean, can count on the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to working with them to ensure that this summit helps nations deliver for their citizens.
Since its inception in 1994, the Summit of the Americas has improved the lives of citizens throughout our Hemisphere. Prior Summit commitments contributed to a 68 percent improvement in infant mortality; increased access to education, electricity, and clean water; and helped double the GDP of the region’s economies. Last year, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a product of the 2001 Summit and a reflection of our hemisphere’s embrace of democratic norms, even as some authoritarians pressure our democratic systems. The Summit of the Americas’ theme of a Sustainable, Resilient and Equitable Future truly represents the shared values of our region and is one of the most important venues for addressing the aspirations of our citizens.
California’s vibrant technology, clean energy, and creative arts industries coupled with its incredible diversity will help power positive change from the Chilean archipelagos to the Canadian Arctic Circle. We can connect the remaining 54.5 percent of citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean without Internet to broadband, spurring equitable economic growth. Heads of government will agree to promote the development of infrastructure that enables the deployment of interoperable, resilient, secure, and reliable telecommunications networks and drive digital innovation and access to public information. Working together on our region’s efforts to combat climate change, leaders will join the Global Methane Pledge, establish 2030 emission reduction targets, and work with the private sector to identify opportunities for manufacture or trade in clean energy goods and services, and facilitate reverse supply chains including recovery, recycling, and remanufacturing of post-consumer use clean energy goods.
The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately harmed the Western Hemisphere, inflicting the highest mortality rate in the world and driving economies into recession. With some of the world’s best medical research facilities, teaching hospitals, and medical schools, Southern California sets a great example for how to improve healthcare security and delivery and prepare for the next pandemic. Just as has been done in California, heads of government will return home reinvigorated to expand equitable access to comprehensive, quality people-and-community-centered health services of quality. To that end, they will promote sharing of experiences and best practices regarding policies, regulations, and standards for the benefit of their peoples.
To defend our indispensable democracies, participants will address how governments can combat corruption and restore trust with citizens by building transparency mechanisms into our summit commitments. Leaders will implement measures that protect the integrity of the electoral process and promote its accountability to citizenry, transparency, and impartiality in domestic electoral institutions and oversight mechanisms, as well as transparency in the funding of political parties, electoral campaigns and candidates for public office. By making our institutions more transparent, strengthening the rule of law, defending human rights, combatting corruption, and countering disinformation, we send a strong message to autocrats everywhere that their empty promises hold little sway here in the Western Hemisphere.
Policy matters, and the course we set in Los Angeles will help us reinvigorate our democracies — but successful implementation of these commitments depends on us all. For that reason, citizens from diverse backgrounds will have a seat at the Summit table through the Civil Society Forum and Young Americas Forum, helping shape our shared future. This includes civil society, activists, and youth leaders from across the hemisphere, such as the brave individuals who fight for democracy, human rights, and freedom despite efforts to suppress them.
The Summit’s mandate of inclusion also applies at home. For generations, immigrants from across the Western Hemisphere have strengthened our nation, particularly in Los Angeles and Southern California, where diaspora groups have built the social, economic, and cultural foundations of everyday life. I have met with diaspora leaders from Miami, Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, and elsewhere, and heard their concerns: The challenges we face at home mirror those that others face in the region.
The Summit of the Americas offers an exceptional opportunity to ensure that democracies deliver an equitable, prosperous, and sustainable future for the people of our hemisphere; we will make it count.
Brian A. Nichols is U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
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