How Successful Was U.S. VP Harris’ Latin America Trip?
A Latin America Advisor Q&A about Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Guatemala and Mexico and the Biden administration’s migration policy.
Eduardo Stein
Guatemala | Former Vice President of Guatemala,
Coordinator, Honduran Truth Commission
Eduardo Stein served as vice president of Guatemala from 2004 to 2008 and was coordinator of the Honduran Truth Commission. In 2018, he was named the UN Special Representative for Venezuelan Migrants and Refugees. From 1996 to 2000, Stein served as minister of foreign relations of Guatemala. As such, he participated actively in the country’s peace process during the final negotiating phases and in the promotion of international support for the implementation phases. Additionally, he contributed to revamping Guatemala’s foreign relations agenda in several fields including human rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, foreign aid, regional development, environmental issues, trade, and tourism.
Since leaving government, Stein has served as a consultant for the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Development Program. He has also been president of the Foundation of the Americas and the head of various OAS Electoral Observation Missions. Stein has ample experience in the coordination and promotion of international cooperation between Latin American, European Community, and Nordic governments with Central America, as a result of his decade-long involvement with CADESCA (Action Committee for the Support of the Social and Economic Development of Central America), where he promoted foreign aid for and helped implement development projects in the areas of food security, indigenous peoples’ and peasants’ productive organizations, micro and small enterprises, agro-industry, and environmental issues. Among his present international collaborations and duties, he is one of the twelve members of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that reports to the secretary general of the UN. He is also one of the two Latin American members of the International Crisis Group in Brussels, for the prevention and handling of political crises worldwide.
Stein is an accomplished academic in political science and mass communications, having held teaching positions at the Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala, Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador, and Florida State University at its Panama campus. Stein obtained his master’s and doctorate degrees in communications sciences from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s in philosophy from the University of St. Louis.
Stein joined the Dialogue as a Member in 2001.
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Member in the News: Eduardo Stein
On September 12, 2018, Eduardo Stein was named by the Secretary General of the United Nations as the Special Representative for Venezuelan Migrants and Refugees.
Video
Is Guatemalan Democracy under Threat?
Inter-American Dialogue Board Member Eduardo Stein and Senior Fellow Kevin Casas-Zamora recently participated in an interview with TRT World on corruption in Guatemala. In the interview, Stein discussed how the perception of Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales has changed and the role that the United Nations and the International Commission against Impunity have played thus far in the corruption investigation. Casas highlighted the similarities and differences between the present investigation of President Morales and the corruption scandal which led to the ousting of Guatemala’s former president, Otto Pérez Molina, in 2015.
