August 2011

The Organization of American States in Haiti

Election Monitoring or Political Intervention?

On February 23, 2010, heads of state from Latin America and the Caribbean met and formed a new organization: the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). It has the same membership as the Organization of American States (OAS), but without the United States and Canada, and it includes Cuba. The author of this paper argues that an organization independent of Washington’s influence is both necessary and desirable, especially for the furtherance of democracy in the Western Hemisphere. To prove his point, he concentrates on the OAS reversing, without a recount, the first-round results of Haiti’s late-2010 elections.

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