Ecuadors president Rafael Correa will make an appearance at an Organization of American States (OAS) ministers meeting today to make a case for a new understanding of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The  foreign ministers of the countries signed on to the human rights Pact of San José gather today in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Todays meeting is crucial for Ecuadors interest in gaining support to reform the  Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an autonomous organ of the OAS.

Correa has accused the inter-american system embodied by the OAS of serving United States foreign policy interests first and foremost.

Correas strongest criticism is reserved for the IACHR, an organism that serves and the anteroom for the Inter-American Human Rights Court. Ecuador’s foreign policy minister calls the IACHR “a force of inquisition.”

Correa criticizes that the commission is headquartered in Washington D.C.--even though the U.S. is not a signatory of the commissions founding document, the Pact of San José.

Correas position has led to his condemnation by international NGOs and in editorials published in papers as influential as the Washington Post. NGOs such as Human Rights Watch have sustained that Correa wants to undermine the IACHR after they failed to support his defamation lawsuit in Ecuador against the national newspaper El Universo.

The working paper on the reforms proposed principally by Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil proposes:

The IACHR revise its criteria for reports on country´s human rights records.

Forbidding donations from countries outside of the continent and from NGOs.

Equalizing budgets so the (autonomous) freedom of speech oversight body doesn’t have more resources than all of the others a new location for the OAS headquarters (potentially Argentina)

The reforms proposal that is agreed on today will go to the next OAS meeting March 22, 2014 in Washington D.C.. Canada, the United States and Panama are expected to oppose the reforms proposed by Ecuador, and have their own counterproposal.

BACKGROUND

In June 2012, Correa participated in the OAS general assembly in Bolivia to offer an extended critique of the organization, in particular the operations of the IACHR.

At that meeting, a working group’s draft paper on reforming the Interamerican System was received. But the debate was postponed until the first ministers meeting of 2013.

Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patiño went on a Latin American tour on March 4 to promote Ecuador´s position about reforming the human rights system in place.