Spanish
Bogotá.- The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, handed over this Saturday in Bogotá to his Uruguayan counterpart, Yamandú Orsi, the pro tempore presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac).
Petro handed Orsi a gavel representing the authority and the flag of the regional body during a break at the High-Level Forum of Celac and Africa, which is also attended by the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Burundi, Evariste Ndayishimiye.
"Our region made a profound political decision a while ago, to choose peace, not as an empty slogan, but as a living way of building freedoms", stated President Orsi upon receiving the pro tempore presidency of Celac for the period 2026-2027.
Orsi assured that Uruguay will assume the presidency with the commitment to strengthen dialogue and regional cooperation, and to advance in priority areas such as food security, energy transition, regional interconnection, and productive development.
He also warned about the high levels of internal violence in the region and noted that, although there are no armed conflicts between states, Latin America and the Caribbean concentrate a high proportion of homicides globally.
You can also read:
In that sense, he called for strengthening cooperation to confront transnational organized crime, in particular drug trafficking and the illicit trafficking of weapons, and stressed that these phenomena require coordinated responses among countries. The Uruguayan president also called for supporting countries facing complex situations, "especially Haiti, whose path towards political, economic, and social stability deserves the support of the entire region," and advocated for greater regional articulation in multilateral scenarios. Colombia received the presidency of Celac from Honduras on April 9, 2025, at the Tegucigalpa summit and during its management promoted the international projection of the bloc with events such as the Celac-China forum and the summit with the European Union, to which it added today the Celac-Africa High-Level Forum, attended by authorities from 19 countries on that continent."With only 8% of the world's population, Latin America and the Caribbean account for more than 30% of the world's homicides," warned the Uruguayan president.
