President Obama’s administration is undermining the sovereignty of Latin American nations by subsidizing the efforts of an international organization, according to foreign leaders and a pair of Republican senators.
Central and South American leaders have complained to the Senate that the Organization of American States — a group that includes 35 countries in the Western Hemisphere, of whom the United States is the largest donor — and various international courts have engaged in a form of “cultural imperialism” by meddling in laws pertaining to abortion and gay marriage. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, made that complaint in a letter asking for a State Department briefing on the group’s activities.
The senators noted that the Inter-American Commission of Women, for instance, “has characterized pro-life legislation of member nations as a form of state violence,” and accused another international court of granting itself the authority to overturn a Costa Rican ban on in vitro fertilization.
“The United States, through its sizable contribution to the general funds of the OAS, is directly responsible for these attacks on national sovereignty and the rule of law,” the senators wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry in a September 30 letter that was released on Monday. “U.S. democracy aid and foreign assistance should not be utilized to compromise the laws enacted by a nation’s democratically elected leaders. Those actions are in themselves undemocratic and should not be tolerated in our country.”
The lawmakers said these complaints originate with foreign leaders who protest “that their own national sovereignty is threatened by what they view as ‘cultural imperialism’ imposed by an organization that is seemingly more concerned with pushing an ideological agenda than respecting the local rule of law.”
Although the letter called for OAS reforms, Lee and Rubio weren’t entirely critical of the group. They complimented the Organization of American States for its work in Venezuela, which is suffering from food riots and the corruption of political leaders.
“Ultimately, we believe the relationship between countries within our own hemisphere — which share many important cultural, religious, an historical characteristics — is of utmost importance and must be carefully sustained,” they wrote.
