Annual conference promotes debate on Latin America’s challenges

(Caracas, September 5, 2011). The challenges posed by relations with the United States, the new agenda for sustainable and inclusive development, the new Asia-Latin America-United States triangle, the vision of new Latin American leaders, and the changing dynamic of hemispheric relations are some of the issues that will be debated at Fifteenth Annual CAF Conference organized by this Latin American financial institution jointly with Inter-American Dialog and the Organization of American States (OAS).

The event –to be held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., on September 7 and 8- will be opened by Enrique García, CAF’s president and CEO; Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the OAS; and Michael Shifter, the president of Inter-American Dialog.

“It is a cause of great satisfaction to CAF to see how this forum has become consolidated and how the expectations to which it gives rise grow year after year. We believe that it is fundamental to promote these open, plural spaces for reflection in order to foster hemispheric understanding and promote the international image of Latin America in the context of a changing world dynamic and one where the region plays a different role to the one it has been playing up until now,” said Enrique García.

The issues that the conference will be addressed by high-level panels where the main speakers will be Ibero-American Secretary General Enrique Iglesias, Vice-president of the Dominican Republic Rafael Alburquerque, and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon.

Other speakers will be IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno; UNASUR Secretary General María Emma Mejía; Uruguay’s Minister of the Economy Fernando Lorenzo; the chairman of Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies, Héctor Arce; the French Development Agency’s Deputy CEO Didier Mercier; the Asian Development Bank’s Director for North America Alessandro Pio; former presidents and ministers of state of the region; and well-known experts, analysts, and journalists from the three regions.

The conference will be the point of encounter for more than 400 political leaders, leaders of opinion, representatives of international bodies from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, distinguished businessmen and members of the world financial community, and academicians, political analysts, and journalists of renown.