In mid-June, the Government of Argentina and UN OCHA convened the “Third Regional Meeting on Enhancing International Humanitarian Partnerships” in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This event gathered representatives from 19 governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as sub-regional disaster risk management organizations and humanitarian organizations to discuss how to improve collaboration in disaster preparedness and response in the region.
One of key topics addressed by the meeting was the regulatory approach required for successful disaster cooperation. In this context, the Buenos Aires Declaration, adopted by the government representatives on 18 June 2010, expressed “[t]he need to encourage relevant authorities in the countries, consistent with their national structures, to stimulate the development or implementation of tools analysed in this Meeting”, and made “[a] request for the follow up group to collaborate, together with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in sketching a Regional Compendium of Regulatory Instruments, which model was analyzed during this meeting on the basis of guidelines approved in the 30th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in 2007 . . . with a view to presenting progress made in the elaboration of Country Profiles in the next regional meeting.”
The Buenos Aires Declaration also emphasized the efforts of international organizations that, “like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies … support countries and sub-regions in their advancement to humanitarian assistance coordination and disaster risk management”.
The Buenos Aires Declaration follows on the previous commitments of the Organization of the American States (OAS) to strengthening humanitarian assistance coordination, as stated in its General Assembly Resolutions AG/RES 2372, AG/RES 2492 and AG/RES 2610, and reflected in the appointment of a “Working Group on Existing Mechanisms for Disaster Prevention and Response and Humanitarian Assistance among the Member States”. The next meeting of this Working Group will take place on 3 and 4 November, in Washington, United States.