Georgetown: The anti-corruption Mechanism of the Organisation of American States (OAS) will hold on-site visits in April to Belize, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname, in the framework of the fourth round of review of the mechanism.
The process of on-site visits to the six Caribbean countries, which are carried out with their consent, began last December, when the governments of these nations sent their replies to the questionnaire sent by Mechanism for Follow-Up on the Implementation of Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC) delegates as a prior step to the visit of the delegations. Each subgroup is composed of representatives of two member countries, with the support of officials from the OAS Department of Legal Cooperation.
Upon completion of these visits, the MESICIC will have carried out on-site reviews in 25 countries. A further five visits will take place for the following countries sometime between September 22, 2013 and October 17, 2014: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, St Kitts and Nevis, the United States and Venezuela.
In addition, OAS Department of Legal Cooperation, as technical secretariat of the MESICIC, has prepared the draft preliminary reports for Canada, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana and Nicaragua, which are to be considered this March by anti-corruption experts of the 31 countries that participate in the mechanism. The semi-annual MESICIC meeting will be held at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC, from March 17-21.
The MESICIC is a cooperation mechanism between states, with the participation of civil society organisations, established within the framework of the OAS, in which the legal/institutional framework of each country is reviewed for suitability with the Inter-American Convention against Corruption as well as the objective results achieved therein.
The incorporation of on-site visits as a stage and integral part of the MESICIC represents an innovative and pioneering initiative of the OAS, which, with the support of the technical secretariat, has further strengthened this review process.
The MESICIC is composed of 31 OAS member states, and each round of assessments includes visits to all countries participating in the mechanism. The fourth round will conclude on March 2015.
