The Union of South American Nations (Dutch: Unie van Zuid-Amerikaanse Naties ( pronunciation) - UZAN, Portuguese: União de Nações Sul-Americanas - UNASUL, Spanish: Unión de Naciones Suramericanas - UNASUR) is an intergovernmental union integrating two existing customs unions: Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), as part of a continuing process of South American integration. It is modeled on the European Union.
The UNASUR Constitutive Treaty was signed on May 23, 2008, at the Third Summit of Heads of State, held in Brasília, Brazil. According to the Constitutive Treaty, the Union's headquarters will be located in Quito, Ecuador. On 1 December 2010, Uruguay became the ninth state to ratify the UNASUR treaty, thus giving the union full legality. As the Constitutive Treaty entered into force on 11 March 2011, UNASUR became a legal entity during a meeting of Foreign Ministers in Mitad del Mundo, Ecuador, where they had laid the foundation stone for the Secretariat Headquarters. From July 2013 onwards, the Secretariat will be based in Paramaribo, Suriname. The South American Parliament will be located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, while the headquarters of its bank, the Bank of the South are located in Caracas, Venezuela.
On 4 May 2010, at an extraordinary heads of state summit held in Campana, 75 km (47 mi) north of Buenos Aires, former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner was unanimously elected the first Secretary General of UNASUR for a two-year term. This new office was conceived as a first step towards the establishment of a permanent bureaucratic body for the supranational union, eventually superseding Mercosur and CAN political bodies.
Read more about Union Of South American Nations: Overview, Name Change, Structure, Current Work in Progress, Participating Nation States, Summits
Famous quotes containing the words union, south, american and/or nations:
“She had brought love to the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (18911960)
“There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappearthe city of London and the South Seas.”
—Herman Melville (18191891)
“The goal for all blind skiers is more freedom. You dont have to see where youre going, as long as you go. In skiing, you ski with your legs and not with your eyes. In life, you experience things with your mind and your body. And if youre lacking one of the five senses, you adapt.”
—Lorita Bertraun, Blind American skier. As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 29 (January 1976)
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobodys image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)