Santo Domingo (EFE).- Fourteen heads of state or government and two vice presidents have confirmed their attendance at the Ibero-American Summit to be held this week in Santo Domingo, while the rest of the 22 member countries will be represented by their respective heads of delegation.
This was announced this Monday by the Dominican Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Álvarez, at a press conference in which he explained certain details of the meeting, although without providing a detailed list of attendees, for security reasons.
First face-to-face meeting in four years
The meeting, which will take place between next Friday and Saturday, will be preceded by a meeting of foreign ministers and a business forum that forms an integral part of the summit and will be attended by more than a thousand businessmen from the Ibero-American region, who will transfer their conclusions to the presidents.
Álvarez highlighted as an “essential aspect” that this “is the first face-to-face summit of the Ibero-American Conference since 2019” as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, so that “the leaders of the 22 countries have not met for four years” members of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (Segib).
In this sense, he stressed that the presence of the leaders at the event will allow for “personal contacts and bilateral meetings” that will give them the opportunity to directly address “urgent issues that concern two countries,” which he did not specify, an aspect that for the chancellor it is also essential.
Key points
A fundamental part of the work has been the thirteen preparatory meetings on Foreign Relations, Economy, Finance, Environment and Agriculture, among others, which have been held and whose results will be presented at the summit.
A declaration will come out of the meeting that mainly contains works to include a digital charter, an environmental charter and a critical path for food safety, explained the chancellor.
The minister pointed out as a “very important aspect” to be discussed at the summit “access to financing for middle-income countries, such as the Dominican Republic, which do not have access to funds on concessional terms. That is one of the critical aspects today, the interest rates that are strangling our countries”.
The Ibero-American environmental charter “consolidates the shared vision in the face of the challenges of climate change, the loss of biodiversity and pollution and establishes guidelines to guide public policies in this matter.
The charter of principles and rights in digital environments places the citizen at the center of the digital transformation in an inclusive manner, addresses existing gaps and seeks to avoid new gaps, in addition to pointing out the aspects that States must keep in mind to implement policies public.
The critical path for Ibero-American food security “proposes to increase intraregional trade and the development of more resilient supply chains”, as well as “to consolidate family farming, expand access to financing to transform agri-food systems and strengthen rural digital infrastructure.
The Vice Minister of Multilateral Foreign Policy, Rubén Arturo Silié Valdez, pointed out that one of the issues to be discussed at the summit will be migration, pointing out the strong migratory pressure that the Dominican Republic is suffering, mainly from Haiti.
The Dominican Republic has taken the issue of the situation of the neighboring country to all the organizations in which it is seeking the participation of the international community in resolving this crisis and it may be that Haiti “will appear in the declaration, but since we are the hosts of the We cannot impose this event on the agenda”, he pointed out.
The summit will also allow a private dialogue between all the leaders during a lunch at the National Palace, without there being a pre-established agenda, debates that will be led by the Dominican President, Luis Abinader, and that will allow the search for new paths in terms of collaboration, strengthening trade and South-South cooperation, among other aspects.