Organizing NGO participation in OAS meeting
NGOs in Latin America used e-mail and the Internet to organize unprecedented non-governmental participation at the annual meetings of the Organizations of American States (OAS), a governmental association of countries in the Americas working on issues such as democracy, human rights and trade. Their presence at the meetings, as well as wider access to all information from the meetings on the Internet, played an important role in creating greater openness about the workings of this governmental body. In 1997, NGOs also used the Internet to develop and build support for a petition that was eventually supported by 180 NGOs and presented to governments from the Americas at the General Assembly of the OAS.
