The meeting of foreign ministers of the Andean Community, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 2022. File Photo by Orlando Barria/EPA
May 21 (UPI) -- Central America does not suffer from a lack of regional challenges. It suffers from a shortage of regional decisions.
That distinction matters. For decades, the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic have spoken the language of integration. They have created institutions, held summits, issued declarations and built a dense network of regional bodies. Yet the region's most urgent problems rarely wait for slow procedures, incomplete consensus or institutional fatigue.
These problems cross borders. They move faster than governments. Criminal networks exploit gaps between national systems. Migratory pressures flow through multiple countries. Climate shocks hit food security and public finance. No single country can manage any of this well on its own.
That is why the recent meeting of foreign ministers of the Central American Integration System, known by its Spanish acronym SICA, deserves more attention than it is likely to receive outside the region.
