Fostering a New Global Conversation

This essay highlights the importance of fostering a more inclusive global conversation by encouraging both intra‑ and inter‑regional relations. Although one focus will be on fostering more communication between Mexico and the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region with Azerbaijan and the other countries that make up the core Silk Road region, various other regions and mechanisms operating within the contemporary global context will also be discussed.

The dimensions of future governance may be examined from the perspective of different world regions’ capacity to communicate, collaborate, and generate a new conversation. A more inclusive approach can result in a more holistic review of different angles and thus bring out more original approaches for prospective geopolitical analysis efforts, policy design, and decisionmaking in their local, regional, and global expressions. 

The dimensions of future governance may be examined from the perspective of different world regions’ capacity to communicate, collaborate, and generate a new conversation.

Communication, knowledge, and culture strengthen their capacity to influence the conversation if key elements of the global governance agenda are taken as a common ground for analysis when decisionmaking depends on the incorporation of broader views. While distant, the location and geographical presence of LAC and the Silk Road regions allow for the possibility to analyze commonalities between these two large and complex communities whilst exploring new pathways for dialogue and international policymaking.

LAC and Beyond LAC

When trying to understand a region, language and culture considerations are factors to be considered when looking at maps, names of countries, islands, territories, literature, and media content. With this in mind, we can offer the following definition: 

LAC covers all the countries of the American hemisphere below Canada and the United States of America. It encompasses a broad continental territory as well as all the Caribbean islands, the sum of which looks west to the Pacific Ocean, east to the Atlantic Ocean, north to the U.S., and south to Antarctica.

Admittedly, the LAC countries are sometimes more associated with one or another region, depending on who makes the classification and for what purpose they try to approach regional studies or subdivisions in the American continent. But rectifying this geopolitical condition in and of itself should be seen as an exercise in overcoming standard developed world geopolitical and diplomatic narratives. 

An important aspect of moving beyond standard narratives and barriers to knowledge and analysis is the opportunity to look at the relationship between LAC and the East Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Silk Road regions. 

The first question may be the following: from which concept or map to begin? On which dimensions and spaces do debates and deliberations foster agreements and considerations for foreign affairs and policies for decisions to be taken? In other words, where does a LAC or a Silk Road worldview begin?

Looking simultaneously at both dimensions can ease the search for a new analytic structure in the global context. This has become easier when geographical barriers started being removed, around the end of the twentieth century—and it has gained more currency after the COVID‑19 pandemic and due to recent global flows and corridors acquiring new relevance.

Mesoamerican Uniqueness

Regional integration and politics are of interest to other regions. Analyzing other regions’ agreements and debates can reinforce future processes, as they evidence alternative ways to solve issues.

Within LAC, Mesoamerica deserves greater recognition: after all, it lies at the heart of the region, covering Mexico as a whole, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and all the Central America countries. Not only has it been identified for a long time as a unique geographical area by experts in biodiversity, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, geography, and political studies, but history and current events confirm the importance of looking at the region with a particular view in the context of global, regional, and inter‑regional studies.

Mesoamerica plays an essential role in global communications, economies, and international political affairs. 

Belize, Columbia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Mexico see themselves as part of both the Mesoamerican and Caribbean sub‑regions of LAC. Together, they interconnect the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans and North and South America. Not only for reasons of merely geographical coincidence, but also for those having to do with historical and regional integration processes, shared cultural and multicultural identities, and political developments, Mesoamerica plays an essential role in global communications, economies, and international political affairs. 

A good reference is the Mesoamerica Integration Project adopted after the Tuxtla Dialogue and Concertation Mechanism—a political dialogue started in 2001 to foster integration and development through complementarity and cooperation related to infrastructure, interconnectivity and social development, biosphere protection, and other issues of strategic value. Mexico holds the Permanent Presidency of the Mechanism, while Colombia holds the pro tempore Presidency during the second semester of 2023.

Significant Conversations

In recent years, different regions of the world, including LAC, have strengthened ties with other regions and shifted many of their traditional international routes. 

In the twenty‑first century, but particularly after the COVID‑19 pandemic, traditional patterns of relations were affected, especially on issues such as mobility, migration, trade corridors, global finance, peace, international security, and environmental contexts. Yet all sought refreshing outreaching efforts to confront tensions, barriers, and difficulties to reach out to many of their traditional friends and partners. This has been observed in both LAC and the Silk Roads region. In essence, greater emphasis was placed on building regional networks instead of regional blocs.

Non‑traditional networks and mechanisms constructed or reinforced began to weave new international and global relations, illustrating that inter‑regional cooperation with concrete and positive results is possible when other regions are closed to external exchanges.

The priorities and results of Azerbaijan’s chairmanship can serve as an important impetus for deepening region‑to‑region dialogue.

An obvious way forward is for the LAC and Silk Road region states to engage more seriously through the Non‑Aligned Movement. The priorities and results of Azerbaijan’s chairmanship can serve as an important impetus for deepening region‑to‑region dialogue.

Sharing expertise, resources, means, tools, and solutions to confront the recent pandemic and its impact provided the ground upon which new approaches to the relationships between regions could be built—irrespective of distance. Brief accounts of several of these will constitute the remainder of this essay. 

MIKTA—Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Türkiye, and Australia—is a good example of the foregoing. It was established in 2013 as a cross‑regional grouping of G20 countries, emerging as a response to the urgent need for cooperation between the keystone countries of five of the world’s regions when confronting common affairs in global forums. 

MIKTA is an informal dialogue space based on mutual interests, values, common challenges, and collaboration in the multilateral system. Mexico will hold the pro tempore presidency in 2024. Country representatives and leaders meet annually at G20 meetings and occasionally at UN Headquarters and elsewhere. MIKTA is already evidence of region‑to‑region dialogue with the presence of the Americas, Eurasia, East Asia, and Oceania.

Another example is the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), which was established in 2005 thanks to the initial efforts of Spain and Türkiye as a consequence of the UN General Assembly having declared 2001 as the UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations.

Today, UNAOC is led by Spain’s former Foreign Minister, Miguel Moratinos, and maintains a broad global multisectoral network of partners from international and regional organizations and society experts and organizations to improve cross‑cultural relations between diverse nations and communities with a global perspective on key issues that impede dialogue and communications between civilization centers, with all the support of UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres, Portugal, and other key factors of the UN System.

For LAC representatives, access to international mechanisms like the Global Baku Forum in Azerbaijan or the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Türkiye has had both an impact on and provided a meaningful contribution to global dialogues. Such and similar events provide access to knowledge networks and academic and think tank that allows participants to position themselves to better participate in future region‑to‑region conversations.

These developments further highlight instances that identify past and future possibilities for shaping a new pattern of networks supporting international relations and global governance. They deal with aspects of mutual interest, such as strengthening multilateralism solutions for global problems requiring more than what international organizations have already identified.

The Pacific Alliance

The Pacific Alliance was established by Chile, Columbia, Peru, and Mexico in 2011. It has had a remarkable growing presence not only for the founding countries but also for the Great Pacific basin. Representing a population of nearly 225 million people, the Pacific Alliance is the world’s eighth economic power and export force.

The Pacific Alliance integration mechanism started with some LAC countries but has now expanded into other regions through partner and observer states status. On 26 January 2022, Singapore signed a free trade agreement with the Pacific Alliance, which will make Singapore the first Partner Member (Estado Asociado) of the Alliance. South Korea and Ecuador have also initiated their respective processes for future full membership. 

As of 2023, 63 countries have observer status in the Pacific Alliance: 14 from the Americas, two from Oceania, two from Africa, 13 from Asia and the Middle East, and 32 from Europe—with others from all over the world waiting in the wings. 

Of particular interest is that Azerbaijan has been an Observer State of the Pacific Alliance since 2019. This illustrates the genuine commitment by Baku’s and other observer countries from different regions to region‑to‑region dialogue. In that same year, Kazakhstan also received the same status, highlighting the interest in engaging with the Pacific Alliance of two of the Silk Road region’s most important countries. 

The Pacific Alliance has recognizable experience and owns a multi‑layered network that does its works on the basis of three dimensions (i.e., diplomatic, intergovernmental, and intersocietal). It works on a political base with a participatory and consensual approach when difficulties arise. 

The Pacific Alliance also operates a number of technical groups, committees, subcommittees, and working groups to develop cooperation programs, projects, and activities in accordance with the interests of the organization to progressively increase the mobility of goods, services, resources, and people within its areas of competence. 

The Pacific Alliance includes dynamic drivers like a scientific research network on climate change, academic and student exchanges, cultural promotion, integration of securities markets, the opening of joint commercial offices, participation in international exhibitions, tourism, and support for the improvement of competitiveness and innovation for micro, small, and medium enterprises. The Pacific Alliance has plans to develop a region‑to‑region dialogue, which surely could involve the Silk Road region. 

LAC and Inter‑Regional Fora

Inter‑regional fora are generally founded on the presumption that a region sees advantage in look for alternative future organization, planning, and policymaking and how they may interact with one’s country and region. But also, partly due to regional diversity, region‑to‑region relations can be seen as adding value to analyses and alternative proposals delivered with practical views in mind.

Solidarity and cooperation for and from all LAC countries was crucial to its member states’ surviving the tumultuous period that became more acute in 2020. Disaster relief and pandemic assistance capacities were enhanced due to the successes of previous joint efforts facing hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, desertification, political and military tensions, and humanitarian crises. 

Furthermore, the governance of global affairs is a common concern for various regions as economic and social development keeps pressing all countries. It may seem complicated for LAC to extend geographical links beyond their traditional relations with the North American, European, and Ibero‑American regions—including Portugal, Spain, Andorra, and major players in the Asia Pacific framework. 

Nonetheless, inter‑regional development for the regions and their participation in global common needs are persistent. Water management, priorities of financing for development, and access to medicines are key for future development.

There are various examples of issues of peace, disarmament, arms control, decolonization, conflict and international tensions, advancement in economic and social needs, international law, and global justice problems finding solutions thanks to region‑to‑region cooperation, despite difficult geopolitical and geoeconomics contexts. 

This explains why LAC is searching for ways to acquire or enhance relations with different countries of the Great Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Silk Road region, the Middle East, and South Asia—practically all the world except the Americas, Western Europe, and some parts of the Asia Pacific region. 

It is with the foregoing in mind that we can highlight some examples that point to common threads between LAC and the Silk Road region. The 1978 Alma Ata Declaration on primary health care, for example, set the path for the 2018 Global Conference on Primary Health Care in Astana. 

The events that produced those documents, held in the same country albeit decades apart, recognized a more holistic approach to healthcare, encompassing complete physical, mental, and social well‑being for everyone. This is a common area of concern for the Silk Road region and LAC. Another is the UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

New collaboration on developing and distributing vaccines and other healthcare resources, with the support of regional airlines and favorable solutions within the WHO and the UN systems, is another piece of evidence that new paths of cooperation are possible if sustained not by just one country or region. The arrival of vaccines and products to attend to the sort of health needs associated with enhanced regional cooperation are clearly visible for communities and people in other regions and pave the way for rapprochement between them.

The March 2022 International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, was yet another important reference point—as are other women, culture, and environment conferences held in Mexico and other parts of LAC.

The global agenda on peace and international security is a further instance of issues of interest for the two geographically‑distant regions. The establishment of nuclear weapons free zones (NWFZs) in Tlatelolco in Mexico, Central Asia’s Nuclear Weapon Free Zone, and Mongolia’s Nuclear Weapon Free Status demonstrate that preventing arms escalations in regional environments of large territories add to peace and stability factors for global governance. They are also tools for deepening region‑to‑region dialogue. 

These issues, along with the treaties on outer space, Antarctica, the seabed, and the treaties of Pelindaba, Bangkok, and Rarotonga, are agreements that set out prohibitions whereby participants commit to international verification, control, and compliance systems. They are yet another cluster of examples of region‑to‑region dialogue.

The same can be said with regards to climate, biodiversity, water solutions, and desertification. These and others are integral to advancing the global development agenda and represent common challenges that can be addressed in various region‑to‑region dialogue formats.

Fresh Approaches 

Fostering new cross‑regional connections can result in multiple benefits for policy design and decisionmaking. Region‑to‑region conversations that share best practices and expertise have so far always proven useful. 

Being geographically distant is not necessarily a bad thing: it is an enticement to refresh approaches to commonly shared problems. Strengthening inter‑regional relations helps not only the regions involved directly in the process, but can also contribute to the improvement of global governance. In this regard, the recent food emergency and global grain trade crisis signals the priority that combating hunger and ensuring food security should have now.

Inter‑regional governance initiatives, mechanisms, and bodies are vital to the future of global governance. Although there are different fora within which LAC and Silk Road region states participate on a country‑to‑country basis, initiatives to establish spaces of dialogue between both regions may arrive and endure if systematically cultivated. To be effective, inter‑regional dialogues—especially if it is new—should be aligned with global goals and trends.

For instance, know‑how and expertise in managing gulfs, isthmus, canals, rivers, seas, and lakes may also significantly contribute to region‑to‑region governance initiatives. 

Moving People and Goods

The restrictions on mobility during the COVID‑19 pandemic forced each region to redefine the way in which it ensured sustainable access to health provisions and logistics arrangements. Thankfully, the multiplication of regional connectivity projects means that LAC and the Silk Road region both have better infrastructure than ever. 

New ports, air routes, road development, and digital interconnectivity help in this direction. Mexican and other LAC ports are part of the new global interconnection system. New airports, roads, and connecting hubs make solutions to global connections possible, particularly if the planning and operation adheres to the sustainable development principle.

Air hubs like Mexico City, Cancún, Panama City, Bogotá, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Istanbul, Baku, and Almaty are shortening times for both passengers and cargo, with further plans to further improve connectivity in this sector. Ports in both regions are also seeing plans for growth and expansion taking shape and being executed. 

Thus, agri‑food and health chains can benefit and help peace and stability with corridors that benefit food systems. Recently, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published its report highlighting the need to maximize sustainable agri‑food supply chain opportunities as integral to the effort to redress the impact and effects of COVID‑19 on developing countries.

Stability, border governance, and peaceful solutions to problems that arise between communities and global mobility represent grounds for exchange and mutual learning, especially in post‑conflict and rebuilding stages in a high mobility environment.

The sustainable development of local and regional infrastructure networks is paramount. Sharing knowledge and best practices may save effort for other regions and cooperation in building communications and transportation infrastructure is strategic for every region and inter‑regional connections. 

The New Urban Agenda

In recent years, the redefinition and transformation of urbanization has become a welcome addition to a future common agenda of habitat affairs. The International Habitat Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean (CIHALC) brings a new kind of regional conversation for policymaking in the region based on networking and knowledge‑sharing between local communities and urban and regional planners. 

CIHALC was established through a sequence of intersectoral and intergovernmental fora for dialogue promotion in an annual space that gathers regional networks to follow and develop advancements of the New Urban Agenda.

The New Urban Agenda provides interlinkages between global agendas on the basis that a range of interdependency recognitions optimize resources and leverage for development. UN Habitat is mandated to create a coherence of global agendas at the urban level enhancing policy coherence, driving progress toward integrated approaches, and establishing incremental and inclusive reporting systems on the status of different habitats worldwide.

Concepts like biodiverse cities, new aspects of smart cities, and habitats formed in land and water territories have been agreed upon by CIHALC and are now dealt with in the regional agenda and taken to international forums like the UN Habitat forum and conferences with the support and participation of universities of the region, including Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico. 

This has become a growing multilateral, regional mechanism with very interesting and worthy expertise. CIHALC regional LAC forums in 2022 and 2023 worked towards the implementing the outcomes of the UN Habitat III Conference and the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. Additionally, on 18‑19 September 2023, the Ecuadorian capital Quito hosted the first UN global summit after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

All this speaks to the importance of the arising strategic issues for designing and implementing the New Urban Agenda. The latest consensus on the agenda documents has already been translated into twenty‑seven languages in addition to the official UN languages, providing promising terrain for region‑to‑region conversation. CIHALC is evidently an important forum for LAC to exchange experiences and develop region‑to‑region dialogue.

Another good space for region‑to‑region dialogue in global approaches to responding to global crises and governance challenges is the Second Session of the UN Habitat Assembly (UNHA2), which noted the importance of a sustainable urban future. 

This inclusive and effective multilateral event, held in Nairobi, in 2023, focused on universal access to affordable housing, urban climate action, urban crises recovery, localization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the prosperity that can come with the promotion of local finance solutions.

Culture and Communication

Changing the basis of narratives—and perceptions—is necessary. Knowledge and information networks are imperatives, more so than traveling and hospitality practices and diplomatic and political forums. Interculturality, nodes of communications, changing the historical political, social, and cultural panorama, and integrating the views and recognition of other regions are all necessary.

Sharing views of life on a region‑to‑region and country‑to‑country basis will add value to the acquisition of people‑to‑people knowledge. New communications and digital networks are already helping in this regard.

Knowledge and cultural international policies must develop in parallel to diplomatic and political dialogues.

Knowledge and cultural international policies must develop in parallel to diplomatic and political dialogues. Global narratives and conversations on governance and multilateral networks provide space for reflection, debate, deliberation, policymaking design, and new narratives. The states belonging to LAC and the Silk Road region can play greater roles in accelerating this global trend. 

International media networks are important global agenda setters, but they should not monopolize the space. Establishing media networks between LAC and Silk Road regions outlets should be understood as being key for the equitable advancement of global governance and inter‑regional understanding.

Sharing knowledge spaces are essential to fostering meaningful knowledge networks. Efforts made by think tanks and universities are fruitful and easier to accomplish with digitality and air transportation patterns that help to overcome language, distance, and cost barriers.

Media and information literacy and policies are necessary to build a firm effort against current challenges like disinformation, prejudice, hate, discrimination, and racism in inter‑regional and cultural narratives and conversations in global communications environments at different levels.

It is important to highlight how entertainment, festivals, tournaments, and international exhibitions help dissipate those impediments for better people‑to‑people and society‑to‑society approaches—and not only when disasters or conflicts bring attention to other regions or when international diplomatic or political summits occur. Internet governance forums and the follow‑up consultations arising from the 2022 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) are more important than ever.

The Mondiacult conference held in Mexico in September 2022 offered a new approach towards global culture and its relation to cultural and historical patrimony. It was the largest world conference devoted to culture in the last 40 years. 

The conference declaration adopted by consensus provides a new platform for culture, patrimony, and the economy of culture and could be a new global common interest for conversations between regions. 

150 countries participated in Mondiacult 2022, with 135 at the ministerial level, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan from the Silk Road region. Culture is a common interest; thus, humanity’s heritage and the origin of ancestral communications and languages should be protected in the new digital and information environment.

Books, carpets, food and culinary practices, games, arts, and mathematics are all examples of cultural historical heritage with patterns of mobility and cultural integrations through LAC and the Silk Road region. Ideally, language barriers will no longer block or impede the conversation, thanks to global communications and exchanges. 

Learning other languages, accessing media networks, travel, and exchanges are necessary. In the past, this was the only way to learn about other regions. Culture, mathematics, sports, and other disciplines, but also the traditional arts and sciences, have travelled through these roads.

As have the more modern arts, more recently through cinematography, such as television series, dizi, new media, and creative productions in new multi‑language streaming and entertainment platforms. In a digital global communications environment, it undoubtedly helps each region to recognize itself and become better known by other regions without the filters that existed before.

A notable example can be seen from the contribution and variety of regional and inter‑regional trade practices. Tianguis and other traditional trading sites in towns located throughout Mesoamerica and other parts of LAC have ancestral origins. Tianguis are ambulant markets in open spaces. The word originates from the Nahuatl culture and indigenous people based in Mesoamerica—and the trade practice is still preserved in the region.

This is also the case for the bazaars and caravanserais located throughout the Silk Road region, as different trading practices, routes, and corridors have endured and evolved while connecting people, goods, and territories.

More and more, art, crafts, goods, food, industrial, and agricultural products are offered along routes from one region to another. One clear example is gastronomy and hospitality. How did this happen? How is it possible that those pieces of knowledge have been integrated in such distant regions?

Historical and cultural evidence illustrates those aspects that deserve a relevant space in the knowledge of inter‑regional agendas. With digitality and new information networks, artificial intelligence could facilitate practical access, the use of research, and the creation of new knowledge for communities to concentrate on.

Could cultural patterns like roads have intertwined and arrived at LAC through the Pacific or the southern part of Africa connecting the Antarctica region through the South Atlantic and connecting the Pacific? Maritime records, local, regional, and national archives, in essence, history and culture, are valuable assets in every port on migration, routes, and experiences. 

Are there other routes and directions for cultural and intercultural exchanges between the Silk Road and other countries or regions? Who travelled by foot, ships, or cars between regions in the middle of different geopolitical contexts for centuries?

Global Governance

Responding to global breaches and governance issues may be the greatest challenge for inter‑regional relations. Global peace developments and solutions to conflicts that prevent sustainable and strategic development in new conditions must be avoided. 

LAC and the Silk Road region are important to each other, particularly when governance is at stake. Regional governance, when related to global governance, is an inter‑regional governance mechanism, a thought that is shared throughout the region.

In 2010, the UN General Assembly opened discussions on global governance with a high‑level debate. The theme of the Sixty‑fifth session was “Reaffirming the Central Role of the United Nations in Global Governance.” Since then, there has been an open and ongoing discussion on different dimensions of governance in regional and inter‑regional spaces.

For example, dialogue on how to share good and bad experiences in mediation, facilitation, conflict solutions, and diplomatic prevention has been considered, as has how to avoid those conflicts and problems that impede global and regional, sometimes regional conversations or with interconnected regions solutions.

The quest to reform international bodies could benefit from a greater focus on inter‑regional approaches.

The quest to reform international bodies could benefit from a greater focus on inter‑regional approaches. The question of how to connect in the post‑pandemic world is a crucial matter for the future of everyone and region‑to‑region dialogue is very important for global and inter‑regional governance.

The incorporation of successful region‑to‑region experiences into future strategies of dialogue, conversation, information communications, and political solutions is necessary. Policymaking based on knowledge networks and new forms of communication without losing the person‑to‑person approach are needed. Experts, specialists, and think tank networks are also key for strengthening the capacity to respond to current challenges.

Preventive diplomacy and new structures for solving mechanisms, mediation, and negotiations are vital for the future. Regional and global peace and security regimes are interdependent and interconnected all around the planet.

Peace and international security worldwide depend on regional solutions. Problem and conflict solutions based on principled policies from universal agreements by the UN Charter and other international law‑based commitments are necessary to strengthen global governance and regional and inter‑regional relations. 

Diplomatic Interventions

Goodwill efforts for solving crises, problems, and conflicts in LAC show that they always had both internal and external support from other regions, a mechanism that can assist in solving tensions in one’s own region.

In the past, the Panama Canal crisis ended with Panama’s sovereignty over the canal. Efforts to find political solutions to tensions and conflicts in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s have been added to global peace efforts in the last decades, with the support of the international community.

Mexico has hosted the talks is supporting Colombia’s efforts to consolidate peace, and there is regional support for the current Colombian integral peace effort, along with Norway Chile, and other countries from other regions. 

Mexico is also supporting various UN efforts, including helping to meet Haiti’s humanitarian needs and Norwegian facilitation and mediation efforts. These, as well as Turkish and related efforts to advance the political talks between Venezuela’s different political parties, are being welcomed in the region.

Before the pandemic, the image of other regions and the sense that they were geographically far and rather unreachable and inaccessible for practically any economic, political, military, cultural, and religious factors, as well as philosophical or ideological reasons, may have also contributed to such conceptions. 

Nonetheless, they gave way to flexible societal networks that are currently widely recognized and applied. Such perceived distances were enhanced by language barriers and an adversarial vision in global competition. However, most of the time, they simply did not know or were unaware of the existence of other regions, except by name. These were additional difficulties for regions to relate with one another.

Noteworthy is that in the UN General Assembly, generally speaking, resolutions that support peace and stability efforts in LAC have received the support of Türkiye and the countries that make up the Silk Road region—and vice versa.

For Latin America and the Caribbean, the United Nations System—particularly the General Assembly and the Security Council—is the most privileged space for agreement and collaboration between regions. In this regard, it is important to underline that LAC and Silk Road region countries are bound closely together by their advocacy of strict adherence to the cornerstone principles of respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all UN member states. 

Final Considerations

Reasons and ways to collaborate, cooperate, and foster mutual understanding are available for region‑to‑region approaches. There is already a growing interest for doing so both in LAC and the Silk Road region. 

It is imperative to develop much deeper modalities of inter‑regional communication, for without the more active participation of states from these two regions, reform efforts can hardly be expected to take full account of their interests. 

It is imperative to develop much deeper modalities of inter‑regional communication, for without the more active participation of states from these two regions, reform efforts can hardly be expected to take full account of their interests. This would mean that, again, as in the past, other regions will remain as dominant as they have been in the context of global governance. This, it seems to me, should not be allowed to come to pass.