Lecture by Sir Ronald Sanders Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States and the Organization of American States
Delivered at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies National Defense University, Washington DC Course: International Relations and the Inter-American System Date: October 7, 2025
By Sir Ronald Sanders
The mirage of a “system”
Let me begin with a frank statement: the Inter-American system exists as a concept, not as a living reality. 2 In practice, it is a constellation of unconnected dots — the OAS, PAHO, the IDB, IICA, and the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights — each with its own governing body, management, and purpose. In my ten years as ambassador to the OAS, there has never been a joint meeting of those leaders to agree on a shared vision, a common ambition, or a coordinated plan for this hemisphere’s challenges.
Elsewhere, Europe has the European Union; Asia has the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; and Africa has the African Union. Our hemisphere remains loosely tethered — more unfamiliar neighbours than a community of neighbouring states. We invoke the phrase “Inter-American system” as though it were whole; in truth, it is a patchwork. If dots do not connect, they cannot form a picture; and without a picture, policy becomes improvisation.
The OAS: Financial fiction and political evasion
The OAS: Financial Fiction and Political Evasion Nowhere is this illusion more damaging than within the Organization of American States. Members delay or dodge their modest quotas; some even demand incentives before paying. The OAS is the only organization in the international system where countries remain members, enjoying every privilege even if they do not pay their dues. For 2025, the OAS membership approved a budget of US$93.6 million, when at least US$120 million is required. The assessed contributions of 33 member states total US$93.2 million – Cuba is not included. Yet, by October 3rd, only US$39.7 million had been paid, leaving an outstanding balance of US$53.9 million with barely three months left in the year.
Three countries alone account for US$51.8 million of that non-payment. Worse still, Venezuela’s notional arrears now total roughly US$22.8 million – unpaid since 2012 when it ceased to pay its dues. Yet, each year – in the pretence of Venezuela’s continued membership —the OAS records a fictitious annual quota of US$1.7 million, from Venezuela, distorting both the budget and the books. 3 Chronic underfunding, late payments, and the political weaponisation of quotas strangle the Organization.
At the OAS General Assembly in Antigua and Barbuda in June this year, I proposed three steps:
Adopt a realistic budget that funds responsibilities; • Reform the quota system to ensure timely, full payments with penalties; and • Align governance with reality, basing calculations only on those members that are active and paying. Those were structural truths – yet they have not been advanced.
The OAS remains strangled by deliberate political inaction. A new legal development now sharpens the stakes. On August 26, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in a case brought by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, effectively ruled that Venezuela remains a member of the Inter-American system, including the OAS, even though the Maduro government withdrew Venezuela from the Organization, effective 2019, in accordance with the Organization’s rules. By affirming that the OAS Secretary General acted lawfully as depositary, the Court avoided the political question of who governed Venezuela and focused instead only on the legalism. Therefore, at this time, Venezuela is declared to remain within the Inter-American human-rights system, including the OAS—even if no representative sits in its chair and it pays no dues.
For the OAS, this means:
On quorum and majorities: voting thresholds must still be calculated as if 34 members exist—including Cuba and Venezuela—though only 32 are active. Thus, two absent states, neither attending nor contributing, exercise an unwitting veto over collective decision-making. On the budget: the assessed shares of Venezuela exist only on paper; the cash does not. The gap remains until arrears are paid or formally removed. The Court has spoken in law about theoretical membership. The OAS must now decide how to respond in practice—a profoundly difficult political conundrum.
Haiti — The test we are failing
Haiti has been – and remains – a test of hemispheric cooperation that we have failed for years and continue to fail. 4 On 30 September 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution authorising a new Gang Suppression Force (GSF) of about 5,500 personnel, supported by a UN Support Office in Haiti (UNSOH), to replace the faltering Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) previously led by Kenya. China and Russia – two permanent members – abstained, signalling either unease or a willingness to let a geopolitical challenge for their rival, the United States, fester.
Nonetheless, a majority approved the resolution for a twelve-month mandate. That was a decision, not yet a strategy. The resolution’s purpose is to neutralise and deter the gangs that now control much of Port-au-Prince, wreaking chaos, lawlessness, and fear. Yet essential questions remain unanswered: What exactly is the GSF’s mandate beyond suppression? Who commands the Force? To whom is it answerable? What rules of engagement will govern operations in dense urban terrain?
And what follows its departure — whatever its mission proves to be? I am sure that all of you, as military officers, would demand answers to those questions before joining such a force. The reality is that even as this resolution was adopted, Haiti’s fundamentals remain unchanged – an under-developed economy, mass poverty, corruption, staggering unemployment, totally inadequate health and education systems, and unchecked lawlessness.
Those are the root causes from which the gangs were born and from which they continue to draw both manpower and legitimacy. A tactical force can clear ground; only economic and social renewal can hold it. The Haitian National Police, even with foreign help, is exhausted. Gangs control roads, ports, and revenue streams. Politics is paralysed. The unelected Transitional Presidential Council has stalled. Elections due in November 2025 will not occur, and there is no credible plan for what happens after 7 February 2026, when the Council’s mandate expires. Each week of drift strengthens armed groups and erodes what remains of the state. Recovery is still possible, but only if we stop mistaking disconnected projects for strategy.
From my own work and observation, the path forward has six imperatives:
First, One integrated, budgeted plan. The UN, OAS, and CARICOM must operate from a single framework linking security, humanitarian access, justice, and the transition to governance. The OAS Secretary-General’s proposed Haitian-Led Roadmap provides the skeleton; the GSF can be its muscle—but only if mandate, money, and milestones align.
Second, Real financing, pooled and conditional. The voluntary trust-fund model has failed. A transparent, audited Haiti Fund is needed—financed particularly by the United States and France, joined by others whose prosperity has long drawn upon Haitian labour and markets.
Third, disbursement based on delivery. Money must flow only upon verified progress: open corridors, seized arms and cash, reopened schools and clinics, and tangible steps toward political transition.
Fourth, cut the illegal money and the guns. Suppression without interdiction is a revolving door. Unless the financiers and traffickers pay a price, the gangs will regenerate indefinitely.
Fifth, define command, accountability, and duration—now. A twelve-month mandate demands a named command structure, a public chain of reporting, clear rules of engagement, and an exit-with-handover plan tied to progress in policing and governance.
Sixth, responsibility on both sides. External partners must coordinate; And Haitian elites must stop manoeuvring for advantage while the state bleeds. Haiti needs a focused transitional government to restore security, stabilise services, prosecute criminal networks, and prepare elections once conditions allow.
If the GSF merely suppresses gangs for a year and departs, leaving the same vacuum, history will repeat itself. If it opens space for justice, service delivery, and employment—and if that space is filled rather than abandoned—then the long work of repair can begin.
Should the GSF succeed in securing the terrain, the OAS can finally play its proper role: rebuilding democratic institutions and addressing development as its Charter mandates.
That work must be joint: PAHO on public health systems; the IDB on financing and economic stabilization; and IICA on agricultural resilience—so that security translates into durable governance and growth.
Haiti will remain the hemisphere’s test of whether a genuine Inter-American system, with all its parts functioning in unison, can connect diplomacy, security, and development into a single design.
Law as the shield of the small
I turn now to the Guyana–Venezuela territorial controversy. More than any other issue, this one illustrates that for small states, survival depends not on might, but on law. Let us look at the recent history of this long-standing dispute — initiated by Venezuela in 1962, even after an 1899 international tribunal had declared a “full, final, and perfect” settlement of the borders between the two countries.
In May 2015, Venezuela issued a presidential decree claiming sovereignty over Guyana’s maritime space—territory extending eastward into part of Suriname’s waters. Had it stood, Guyana would have been landlocked, trapped behind a Venezuelan curtain in the Atlantic. The decree was illegal, violating an 1897 Treaty that bound Venezuela and Britain (now Guyana) to accept the 1899 Arbitral Award.
For sixty-three years, Venezuela honoured that award. Only in 1962, as British Guiana approached independence, did Caracas revive the myth – taught in schools – that it had been “robbed.” That myth hardened into domestic orthodoxy, feeding nationalist passion and military adventurism: expulsions of survey vessels, intimidation of oil companies, and more recently, threats against production platforms operating in Guyana’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
The logic is familiar: when a government faces economic collapse and political dissent amongst its population, it often looks outward for a cause to unite its citizens’ discontent. So, in 2015, President Maduro’s decree sought to reclaim lost pride. It could not survive legal scrutiny, so it survived on emotion.
Guyana chose another path — the path of law. It invoked Article 33 of the UN Charter, urging the Secretary-General to refer the controversy to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). A decade later, the Court has affirmed jurisdiction and issued provisional measures upholding Guyana’s administrative control over the disputed area — the Essequibo region. In December 2023, responding to Maduro’s national referendum – deemed illegitimate by much of the international community for calling for annexation of Essequibo – the ICJ ordered both sides to refrain from aggravating the dispute.
Yet, on 1 March 2025, a Venezuelan naval vessel confronted floating production platforms in Guyana’s waters, contravening the Court’s order. The response in Caracas was rhetorical theatre. President Ali was branded the “Zelensky of the Caribbean.” Such analogies trivialise law and invite conflict. They turn diplomacy into drama and substitute noise for norms. What matters is legality.
The ICJ is the instrument by which principle restrains power and law empowers justice. Small states cannot afford war. Their defence lies in the deliberate use of law, diplomacy, and collective principle. Guyana’s course – anchored in treaties, the UN Charter, and the ICJ’s process – is a model of lawful resistance in an unequal world.
The former Secretary-General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, spoke out repeatedly on Venezuela’s aggression but the Organs of the Inter-American system have not. When the ICJ delivers its final judgment, it will test the credibility of the hemisphere as much as the legitimacy of Venezuela’s claim. If Latin America and the Caribbean are truly a Zone of Peace, then every state— large or small – must abide by that ruling and stand up for it.
A blueprint for renewal
Clearly, the Inter-American System needs reform and renewal. That process must begin with honesty. 8 And the first honest recognition is this: few member states truly want reform. That is why the OAS Charter, which came into force in 1951, has been amended only four times in seventy-four years—and even then, only for administrative adjustments, not substantive transformation. Efforts to strengthen the Inter-American Democratic Charter—adopted twenty-four years ago, on September 11, 2001—have also failed. It remains unchanged, despite repeated appeals to update and operationalize its democratic guarantees.
Although the Democratic Charter affirms vital principles—representative democracy, rule of law, human rights, separation of powers, transparency, and social inclusion— it is not a treaty and does not, by itself, create new obligations under international law. It was adopted as a Resolution of the OAS General Assembly, serving as an authoritative interpretation of the Charter’s democratic provisions; but in the end, while it is politically and morally binding, it is not legally binding in the same way as a treaty.
Beyond these fundamental deficiencies lies the deeper problem: a fragmented InterAmerican architecture—a collection of unconnected organs operating separately across the Americas, each pursuing its mandate in isolation, without the coherence or coordination that a true system requires. Until political courage replaces procedural convenience, the Inter-American System will remain a framework of aspirations without the machinery of enforcement.
Closing reflection
Institutions endure only when people defend and strengthen them. If we keep pretending that a system exists when it does not, it will die of politeness—the habit of “going along to get along.” But if we connect the dots—finance what we authorise, coordinate what we promise, and speak truth even when inconvenient—then this hemisphere can still build a community worthy of its ideals. The Inter-American System will become real when our governments decide to make it so. The strength of our institutions ultimately depends on the courage of those who serve them and those who are served by them. And that courage begins with clarity.
The Inter-American dream is not dead; it can be enlivened by structured connectivity, joint planning, and implementation, grounded in the values and principles from which it was fashioned. When we choose to join the dots with courage and clarity, the picture will at last resemble the promise. I welcome your questions and your dialogue—because honest conversation is the first act of reform.
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