Pro-life, pro-choice, LGBT from the Americas demand OAS inclusion

Santo Domingo.- Feminist groups gathered in front of the ForeignMinistry Tuesday to demand the inclusion of the abortion issue in the agenda ofthe Organization of American States’ (OAS) 46th meeting being held in the Dominicancapital.

LGBT representatives also want to be heard and demand anend to discrimination and be allowed to enter the venues.

Also present was the Sex Workers Network in Latin America,which asked guaranteed protection and that their trade is recognized as work.

Others who marched around Congress and in front of wereseveral representatives of the Catholic and Protestant churches, who demandthat the OAS address the family.

Even from Chile

In the meetings in which 34 countries participate, the Redpor la Vida y la Familia de Chile (network for life and the family of Chile)complained that despite accreditation to participate and their long trip, the OASclosed the gates on them.

“34 countries were invited to participate in the OAS GeneralAssembly 2016 with their civil society in a democratic process, as expressed inits Founding Charter. Today in a unilateral way the OAS closed their gates tothe guests, and they are aware that they are making decisions behind civil society’sbacks,” said spokeswoman Nathie Freire.

“This is the way in which the OAS shows that in fact is reallyundemocratic and lacks an ideological spirit, taking away civil society’s rightto express and participate, because the OAS doesn’t really care that theresolution adopted in this Assembly will affect the people of all the Americas,”Freire said, as they carried posters that read “Excluded.”