E.U. Funding for O.A.S. Office at Adjacency Zone Continues

Notwithstanding the protracted nature of the age-old dispute and the funding that has gone into keeping the O.A.S. office at the Adjacency Zone open, Secretary General Almagro and Prime Minister Briceño have pledged that the work at the western border will continue to be financed for at least another eighteen months, beginning in 2023.

Luis Almagro

Luis Almagro, Secretary General, O.A.S.

“I am not concerned, knowing that the work that the office is doing is extremely relevant and we are doing more work than before.  I mean, if you consider, for example, now we have three centers for capacity building.  We have more verifications to be done than ever before.  We have more actions related to social and environmental issues that are more and more needed every time.  So, we have more work to do and it would not be reasonable if we are facing more work with less resources.  That wouldn’t be so fair, you know.”

John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The good news is that when I was in Brussels, the EU officials informed me that they are going to provide funding for another eighteen months, starting next year.  And there are other friends that have already made some commitments but we need to continue to work with them to show them the importance of the work that the O.A.S. continues to do. As I mentioned to the Secretary General in the earlier meeting that we had this morning, is that Belize and Guatemala, the work that the O.A.S. has been doing in that border area, the Adjacency Zone, has been so successful that up to now we have had no serious crisis in the area. We know we continue to find the challenges of the incursions. We just had a brief report from F.C.D., Friends of Conservation and Development, to show us the challenges that we are facing. But certainly, when we are working or we’re doing our work on our side of the border, we also have to have some humanitarian aspect to it, that you don’t just go bulldozing people and we don’t want to create any major crisis because we also have to understand and appreciate that Guatemala is a much bigger country than us and has much more resources than us.”