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From: Teresa Infante, ONN [mailto:tinfante@ncnorma.cu]
Sent: Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:13
To: fao.who.psaforum
Subject: Comments for e-forum

Comments to the document "2.b: Ensuring the transparency of the process of providing scientific advice to Codex and member countries"

Our reflections are the following ones:

There are not doubts that the transparency is a vital process in the taking of decisions. We would dare now to outline our own definition on the term; transparency is a process of expression of ideas, projects, etc. with absolute clarity, sincerity and impartiality, lacking all intention of masking its essential aspects; We always conceive it associated to a product. The transparency is applied, or it is evidenced, through a product, but itself is a process.

The point 4b of the document refers to efforts for promoting the diversity of experts and it is sought that a geographical and gender´s balance exists, where different thought forms, focuses and practical experience converge; this causes analysis and discussions that will enrich the own premier ideas, generating other more potent ones, being achieved the advance toward higher development forms. We don't lean to think that there has always been a real impartiality as for the geographical balance, although this doesn't mean that it is due to an premeditated interest itself, but the fact of existing cultural and economical differences among the developed and not developed regions of the planet, it causes on one hand, limitations in the participation (sometimes self-limitations), on the other hand the lack of systematic popularization doesn't favor the presentation of the expert ones and therefore its knowledge inside the scientific community, or its discovery and finally its recognition if it demonstrates a certain competition.

We believe that it is necessary to help the breaking of that inertia acting as a control or stop, there is also genius and intelligence in those countries and wishes of helping in the excellent projects of FAO, WHO and Codex, that also represent countries where those projects are really very necessary in the most of cases. The other face of the coin is not less important, the community of experts of the developed countries should be very sensitive to this intention and discriminatory thoughts of any nature should not prevail; there is something that must to be pointed and it should be very clearly established, the necessity of experience´s demonstration, of the acquired knowledge and of the transparency in the transmitted ideas of any origin it proceeds.

The point 6.2.c outlines the liability to look for the evidences or opinions of the minorities. We estimate that the previous sentence reinforces what we have outlined before in the sense that the selection of experts through consultations should arrive to all the regions with the same intensity and in a comprehensible way, if it is possible those documents should always be edited in the three official languages of Codex, arriving to a greater population and to carry out its catcher function of potentially hidden knowledge.

Finally, we believe it is unquestionable the resources associated to the Secretary should be in correspondence with these interests (6.7.a), because otherwise it is not possible to execute those good intentions and they would only be captured in paper. When those resources really increase and the Secretary may dispose them, then it is imposed an administration with supreme efficiency using them only for the foreseen ends.

Sincerely yours,