Region - Measuring what matters at the Summit of the Americas

The region is worse off now than it was during the Summit of the Americas four years ago. Summit organizers and regional leaders should own it.

The hemisphere is worse off since the last Summit of the Americas in 2018. Poverty is up. Democracy has declined in a number of countries. Security is generally worse. Migration has increased  as people flee political persecution, economic despair and climate change. 

Given the pandemic, it may not be a fair four year period to measure progress. But we should still measure those indicators. And even looking at a longer time horizon, can the hemisphere honestly say things are better today than they were around the time of the 2012 or 2005 Summits? 

Nearly every Summit produces a signed statement by leaders as well as a document that is supposed to track commitments and promises. Here is a 2021 document tracking certain Summit initiatives. 

I’m sure it’s possible to massage some metrics to make them look like they’ve improved. However, any honest observer can look at the hemisphere and see that most situations have worsened. Protests and political populism are symptoms of challenges that include inflation, food insecurity and corruption. Public opinion polls in nearly every country show populations feel their country is on the wrong track moving forward.

This isn’t about assigning blame. I’m not blaming the Summit of the Americas or the OAS or the United States or China or organized crime or Hugo Chavez for whatever has gone wrong.

But the Summit shouldn’t be a cheerleading exercise pretending that everything is going great. Regional bureaucrats shouldn’t point to a few random initiatives and suggest their implementation shows progress when the overall trend lines are clearly down on the major areas of concern. Leaders meeting is better than them not meeting, but holding conversations and signing statements are not measures of effectiveness in themselves.

The region’s populations are disappointed and angry at the situation in the hemisphere as well as their political leaderships’ inability to solve collective challenges. If the political leadership doesn’t acknowledge that disappointment and anger, if they don’t empathize, and if they don’t reflect their populations’ anger in their statements and in their actions, then they are doing a disservice and not serving as representatives of their publics.

In searching for solutions to the region’s problems, one of the first things regional leaders should do is measure what matters and be honest about progress or lack thereof. No president wants to stand in front of their peers and say, “we didn’t get it right,” but we didn’t. The people and institutions who organize the Summit want to show that it’s an effective tool for regional integration promoting democracy and economic progress, but that’s not telling an honest story from the past decade.

The region can’t make progress until it’s transparent about where it has fallen short. The statistics discussing the millions dead from the pandemic, the millions fleeing their countries, the millions of children who have missed two years of school, and the millions going hungry every night need to be placed front and center, not covered up by implementation documents highlighting initiatives that haven’t improved lives. That may make for a more gloomy statement than the organizers of this year’s Summit want, but it reflects the mood of the region and it is the only path to an effective Summit process in the future.