Nicaragua

Appendix: Document Of Objectives Of The Contadora Group (September 1983)

Envío team

1) To reduce tensions and resolve regional conflicts, refraining from any act that might jeopardize political trust or tend to stand in the way of the objective of achieving peace, security, and stability in the region.

2) To ensure strict compliance with the previously stated principles of international law, the violation of which may entail liabilities.

3) To respect and guarantee the practice of human, political, civil, economic, social religious, and cultural rights.

4) To adopt measures conducive to the establishment and, if applicable, to the improvement of democratic, representative, and pluralistic systems that guarantee true participation by the people in decision making and that ensure the different sectors of opinion free access to fair and periodic electoral processes based on the full observance of citizens’ rights.

5) To promote acts of national reconciliation in cases of profound divisions in society so as to allow for participation, in accordance with the law, in democratic political processes.

6) To create political conditions designed to guarantee international security and the integrity and sovereignty of the states of the region.

7) To stop the arms race in all its forms and to begin negotiations regarding the control and reduction of the present stocks of weapons and concerning the number of troops in arms.

8) To ban the installation of foreign military bases on each country’s territory, as well as any other form of foreign military intervention.

9) To reach agreements intended to reduce and eventually eliminate the presence of foreign military advisers and other foreign elements that participate in military and security-related activities.

10) To establish internal control mechanisms in order to prevent arms trafficking from any country in the region to another.

11) To eliminate the traffic of arms, within the region or from without, to people, organizations, or groups that attempt to destabilize the governments of the Central American countries.

12) To prevent the use of each nation’s own national territory by people, organizations, of groups that attempt to destabilize the governments of the Central American countries, and to refrain from providing support or permitting support to be provided to such people, organizations, or groups.

13) To refrain from fostering or supporting terrorist acts, subversion, or sabotage in the countries of the region.

14) To develop mechanisms and coordinate direct communication systems with the intention of preventing or, if need be, resolving incidents between the states of the region.

15) To continue furnishing humanitarian aid to the Central American refugees who were forced to leave their native countries; to create adequate conditions so that these refugees may return to their countries, if they so wish; this should be done with the cooperation of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other international organizations whose help may be considered relevant.

16) To undertake economic and social development programs in order to achieve greater well-being and an equitable distribution of wealth.

17) To revitalize and normalize the mechanisms of economic integration in order to attain prolonged development based on solidarity and mutual benefit.

18) To negotiate in view of obtaining external monetary resources in order to finance the reactivation of intraregional commerce, overcome serious problems related to the balance of payments, obtain funds for working capital, support programs intended to broaden and restructure productive systems, and promote medium- and long-term investment projects.

19) To take steps toward attaining better and broader access to international markets in order to expand trade between the Central American nations and the rest of the world, especially the industrialized countries, through the revision of trade practices, the elimination of tariff or non-tariff barriers, and a guarantee of remunerative and fair prices for Central American exports.

20) To set up technical-cooperation mechanisms for the planning, programming, and execution of multi-sector investment and commerce-promotion projects.

N.B.: Although official statements have always referred to 21 points, the only text at our disposal contains just 20 points.

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