The Vice President of Costa Rica, Epsy Campbell, claimed, last Monday in Uruguay, power as a “tool to transform” societies, during the inauguration of an international meeting on Afro-descendants organized in the South American country.
“We have to do the job and that is why power has to serve,” said Campbell, who added that it should serve “to transform” and promote the rights of people, during the opening of the Meeting of Parliamentarians of African Descent of America, Latin America and the Caribbean, which has as one of its documentary bases the Montevideo Consensus (2013).
Campbell intervened in this event as part of her agenda in Uruguay, which will also include a meeting with the president and foreign minister of the South American country, Luis Lacalle Pou and Francisco Bustillo, respectively, as she confirmed to the press.
The Costa Rican vice president recalled that “it is time” to correct inequalities in “this very unequal region”, such as Latin America and the Caribbean, and she advocated working towards “an inclusive democracy”.
“We are here to reaffirm our commitment to an agenda that is greater. The agenda we are talking about is that of the human rights of Afro-descendant peoples and it does not make sense if we do not talk about those of women, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, people with different sexual identities, those who live in rural areas”, he said.
In an idea that he also outlined in his speech, he commented to the press that the Constitutions “promise equality and non-discrimination”, but “when there are sectors of the population that do not have the rights, then we realize that it is a network of sectors social issues to work on”.
Campbell participated in the opening event of this meeting together with the Vice President of Uruguay and President of the General Assembly, Beatriz Argimón; the Uruguayan Foreign Minister, Francisco Bustillo; Senator Gloria Rodríguez; and the regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund, Harold Robinson.
Argimón stressed that “we must continue to raise our voices not only in the complaint, but in action” and recalled that “we must work every day to improve the quality of democracy”.
The Uruguayan vice president ratified the “commitment to continue working hard when this meeting closes” and that the agenda coming out of the event “is a new platform for action in our continent”.
The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development was signed in 2013 and includes more than 120 measures for an action plan based on a human rights framework with a gender, race, age, and intercultural perspective.
