During the 50th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) held last month, member states decided on the policies and actions that will guide the work of the multilateral forum for the coming year.
As we at Amnesty International have been saying, this Assembly offered an opportunity for member states to focus their actions on human rights and, among other things, strongly condemn the repressive measures that some countries in the Americas have been employing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The use of repressive measures on our continent is nothing new. In our open letter to mark the occasion of this General Assembly, which was accompanied by a multimedia projection onto the facade of the main OAS building, we denounced how the repressive measures implemented during the pandemic were simply a continuation of measures seen previously on the continent. Countries such as Chile and Nicaragua witnessed repressive measures that resulted in serious human rights violations, and even crimes under international law, aimed at silencing those demonstrating for social change.
