Media concentration affects democracy says Atilio Boron

Bolivian Foreign Minister begins working tour of Europe

“The aim is to resume the agendas that have been slowed down by various factors in 2020 and obviously due to the Covid-19 problem. It is possible that an agreement will be signed with the Bambino Gesú Hospital in Rome,” Vice Chancellor Freddy Mamani told the press.

Mayta’s meeting with the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of that bloc’s Commission, Josep Borrell, is scheduled for Tuesday.

According to the Deputy Minister, both will analyze issues of bilateral interest related to investment and migration issues.

Likewise, the head of Bolivian diplomacy will meet with a group of MPs with whom he will discuss the possibility of scrapping the Schengen visa requirement, which Bolivians need to travel to Europe.

The Minister’s trip will continue in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 1, where he will hold talks with Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“There will also be a meeting with the President of the Human Rights Commission, this year we took over the Vice-Presidency (…) so there is quite a broad and complex human rights agenda,” Mamani said.

Mayta’s European tour ends on February 3 in Spain, where he will meet his counterpart José Manuel Albares to “continue to strengthen the bonds of collaboration, complementarity and fraternity”, according to the Deputy Minister.

The presence of Bolivia in the Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) and in the Human Rights Council of the United Nations shows the international role of its diplomacy, stressed Mamani in statements to Prensa Latina.

“Following the slowdown in our foreign policy between 2019 and 2020, after freezing our relations with several brother countries and leaving the international scene, these two years allowed us to rebuild this work with many difficulties,” he said.

However, the Deputy Minister added that the Plurinational State is proud to have unanimously adopted two important resolutions at the United Nations in 2022.

The first was the issue of the rights of indigenous peoples and the second was harmony with nature, opening the possibility of the General Assembly convening an Earth Summit from a vision that is not anthropocentric but biocentric.

“We consider the latter to be one of the most important achievements, fundamental to our diplomacy, to our foreign policy,” he stressed when asked by Prensa Latina.

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