Rio Group
The Rio Group (Spanish: Grupo de Rio, Portuguese: Grupo do Rio ) is a established at a Foreign Ministers' Conference on 18 December 1986 in Rio de Janeiro consultation mechanism Latin American democracies, where today 24 States and the CARICOM participate.
The Rio Group has emerged from the Contadora Group (Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela ) and the Contadora Support Group (Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay), who pushed for peace in Central America. In addition to the founding members also Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Suriname are members of the Rio Group.
Since the year 1987, there are also regular meetings of representatives of the Rio Group and the European Union at ministerial level; the consultation was institutionalized in 1990 with the Treaty of Rome.
At the 21st meeting of the Rio Group in Cancún, Mexico, the formation of a new State Union was agreed (without participation of the U.S. and Canada ) by the name Estados Latinoamericanos y Comunidad de Caribeños ( CELAC ). The new community was founded in December 2011 in Caracas, Venezuela and is intended as a counterweight to the previously US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS ).