PANEL “REGIONAL SECURITY PERSPECTIVES”- Hon. Elías Castillo

Thank you to all three of you, and I don't know if we have any questions from the audience, either for Mr. Piat, from Jose, from Honduras, from the Customs Organization, or for our dear friend Giovanni, the General Manager of the Cologne Free Zone. If not, then we will move on to our next panel. Thank you so much for participating in this forum today. In order to close this forum, we will have our last closing panel. We are doing very well here on our schedule, if you're following us online, and so we'll be having a few final comments and final ideas and perspectives on security issues. We wanted to invite three different people to the stage. One of those is Mr. Michael Chin, Vice President of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Mauricio Vieira, Chief of the Fight Against Illicit Commerce and Preventing Transnational Organized Crime from the University of Peace for the Nations, and we also have Honorable Elias Castillo, General Secretary of Parlatino. Please come forward. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the regional perspective on security, the regional perspective on security issues from the perspective of Cologne, a place which is always showing up in our newspapers in Panama and often in the region. From the Parlatino, in the executive area, we hear a lot of information about what happens in the different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and there's also an academic perspective here from the UN. So we would like to first offer some words to Mr. Castillo. The General Secretary of the Parlatino. With these flags from Latin America and the Caribbean behind me and lit by the 23 lights above which represent the three countries that make up the Parlatino, I greet all of the panelists, all of those who have joined us here in person and virtually. I would like to say hello to Mr. Robert Pittenger, Chairman of the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum, as well as Mr. Alejo Campos, the Regional Director of Crime Stoppers. I have heard already from speakers, including Mr. Senator Pizarro, Senator Silvia from Argentina, as well as Representative Karine Nino, representative as well from Parlatino. So it is such a pleasure to have shared these two days with this magnificent forum, where we have heard excellent speakers talking on very important topics. It's so valuable to look at all of these topics as though we understand that here there are diagnostics issues we're looking at and there are other issues that we're looking at here, but there will be other institutions that will need to really execute these analyses. The analysis has been done and now it must be put into practice. Yesterday in a panel, Senator Jorge Pizarro of Parlatino referred to the regional security perspectives, which are very relevant to our panel. So I would like to reiterate what Mr. Pizarro said and give a few additional perspectives, which reflect our institutional policy. It is institutional policy to consider all of the issues brought forth in a transversal, cross-cutting way in order to understand the regional reality in all of its aspects. The Citizen Security Committee fights against drug trafficking and organized crime, and in all cases these are shared many times in joint meetings with other commissions. One aspect that is so relevant for every issue we've talked about today, and especially in the promotion and continuing protection of national securities in our region, is the democracy in our areas. I would like to highlight this issue once again. We have been in other meetings of the Parlatino and many times decisions that are ratified by the parliaments have come into traditional diplomacy through ambassadors, through diplomatic representatives, through bilateral and multilateral conversations, internal and external conversations, and other similar situations, many times with the executive branch. In our countries, the members of parliament are representatives of civil society, and they must form part of these important conversations which affect the lives of our citizens. The legislative function is not just to ratify decisions made by the executive. It is essentially to audit, and these auctions cannot be done without the intense participation in every phase of the process and a walking alongside in the processes of the government. Sub-regional and regional parliaments are important conversational forums and areas for analysis to understand what is happening in our region. They offer dialogue spaces inter-regionally and regionally, not just with similar organizations, but broadly speaking with all relevant stakeholders. At this time, we must take on new modalities of dialogue with civil society in parliaments, in governments, and generally as political leaders. Dialogue, as it says, requires reciprocal flows of information. All parts must act as receivers and as sharers of information. Civil society has often been a passive listener. Civil society has often been limited in only receiving information about the activities that the state enacts once decisions have already been made, even when they are already being implemented or have already been implemented. Because of this, we must improve spaces, mechanisms, and informal procedures established so that this dialogue can happen properly and so that we can create new conversations, so that civil societies in all their different aspects can express their will, so that they can be heard and they can be taken into account in all environments. In terms of security and fighting crime and delinquency, this important aspect of the common man is something that promotes, and the connection with the common man and the citizenship is something that Crimestoppers promotes. This is why the parliament members must create spaces to work with and monitor the fulfillment of the commitments and resolutions that are adopted in the parliament. All of these elements are indispensable for the parliamentary work to be effective in promoting regional security, which implies the strengthening of inter-parliamentary partnerships and sub-regional and regional partnerships like ParLatino. It is important to move towards legislative harmonization for regional security. This includes many different topics and ParLatino has available two basic documents, which are basically methodological guidelines for harmonizing legislation and procedures in order to develop and discuss different bills and legal projects. This information can be found on the ParLatino website. The Commission for Citizen Security fights against drug trafficking, terrorism, and organized crime with the support of internal organizations with which the ParLatino has important partnerships. 18 model laws have been produced by ParLatino, which can be found on our website, parlatino.org. While I've been nearly the last person to speak at this forum, it is not my job to summarize what we have spoken about. That will be our next activity. Regardless, I would like to mention a few very important topics that we have talked about. Mr. de la Cuesta from the embassy from the United States in Panama mentioned the importance of money laundering for financing organized crime and how it supports corruption. Mr. Manuel from the Fund for the Defense of Democracy mentioned how organized crime is transnational and has multiple networks, which can be family networks and many other types of associations. Sometimes it is connected to legal or formal commerce and can include many or complex transactions, which include many different countries. There is a toxic nexus between organized crime and terrorism. There are close links between organized crime and practically all kinds of crime. All of this is facilitated by corruption, which draws resources away from the state and prevents holistic development of our countries. Another important point mentioned by several speakers when they spoke about illicit financing and the issue of adversarial investments and other issues, as well as asset forfeiture, were very interesting. The effects of those laws on different crimes was important to hear. These crimes require joint work to overcome them. It is evident that avoiding impunity and sanctioning those guilty of corruption in a strict way, as well as developing a strict transparency in all state organizations, is one way, not the only way, but a highly effective way of fighting organized crime. This allows us to redirect resources to the development of society, to overcoming inequality, to fighting poverty and hunger, defending our environment and strengthening democracy, all of which is damaged by the negative effects of crime. When I speak about democracy, I want to mention that democracy is not just about voting. Democracy is much more than that. In Latin America now, we are having a series of elections in our country, but that does not necessarily legalize democracy. It is about separation of powers. It is about institutionality. At this time, parlamento has an important role. We always mention that there is no democracy without parliamentary standards. It is important to have cooperation between different states to fight organized crime and crime in all of its forms. However, it can damage that effort when one or more countries chooses to play with the rights of other countries for whatever reason. There is no organization or forum where countries have been allowed to do that, and these situations have happened. They have happened unilaterally based on economic superiority or military superiority of those countries. They have responsibilities related to crime and delinquency. The UN Charter establishes actions related to threats to peace, the breaking of the peace, and those actions, but this is a different situation when we look at these causes of threats to peace and the breaking of peace and aggression and the decisions of the Security Council. This charter establishes that the Security Council will include 15 members, 10 non-permanent, 5 permanent, and that decisions that are not procedural will be made based on votes by 9 members, including all of the permanent members. The international and national environment shows that the issues that our societies are facing are not always being dealt with the way that this charter suggests in order to preserve peace and protect future generations from the scourge of war. Which many times has inflicted suffering on our communities. We must remember the inalienable rights of the humans, of men and women, and of nations large and small in order to create conditions where justice and respect can be maintained following the treaties and international law that have been established and elevating the level, the quality of life, I'm sorry, I'm wrapping up, in all countries. Here, as we speak about cyber security, our panelists, including Marco and others, were very emphatic about the importance of cyber security and its sensitivity in impacting crime and delinquency and improving the general well-being of our population. As I mentioned, Parlatino considers this is an important cross-cutting topic which affects all its subcommissions and we have dealt with it in many different areas, including the citizen security subcommission, the fight against terrorism and organized crime and drug trafficking in their meeting in July of 2020. This subcommittee worked with an institute from Mexico and based on their concerns, a model law about technological crime was created and they are working on a cyber security law with the support of the different cooperation mechanisms that are included in our strategic partnerships. There is a lot that can be said about regional security. Some important aspects have been included in the conferences and panels that we have talked in, that we have spoken in and heard from today. Due to the limits on time to talk about these kinds of issues, I have chosen to focus on the fundamental legislative issues and those topics related to our forum. I would like to add that Parlatino has 18 model laws which are available. Some have been used to create legislation in countries in our region, members of the Latin American parliament. Severino Mejia, a great speaker on the topic and minister of security, spoke on this and mentioned Panama and as a Panamanian, if you would allow me to take one moment and talk about this issue of drugs. Panama does not have cocaine plantations. Panama does not have laboratories and cocaine is not produced or processed in Panama. Panama does not transit cocaine. As we said yesterday, Panama fights with the numbers that mentioned yesterday to capture tons and tons of drugs, thousands of tons of drugs. So we are collaborating in this battle. The question is, what are the other routes where things are getting through? Where are these products being sold? To whom is it being sold? How much capital is being developed, is being produced? And what happens to that money? These drugs often go north, they go towards Europe, they go towards Asia, but we don't hear about the struggles in those countries where that scourge is arriving, this deadly scourge of these illegal drugs. That is why I would like to emphatically say that Panama does not tolerate and does not participate in any way in drug trafficking and fights against it in all of its facets. Thank you very much for your attention.