Name in original language
Declaración de Cartagena de Indias para la Gobernanza, la Construcción de Ecosistemas de Inteligencia Artificial (IA) y el Fomento de la Educación en IA de manera Ética y Responsable en América Latina y el Caribe
Initiative overview
The Cartagena de Indias Declaration was adopted in August 2024 by ministers and high authorities from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Suriname and Uruguay. It forms part of a regional process initiated by the 2023 Ministerial Summit on the Ethics of AI in Santiago, Chile, and its associated regional AI Working Group, and is positioned ahead of a further summit in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 3-4 October 2024.
The declaration addresses the challenge of guiding AI development in the region "with full respect for human rights and dignity, sustainability and gender equity, avoiding any form of bias and discrimination," while harnessing AI's potential to strengthen democratic systems. It acknowledges support from the UN system, particularly UNESCO, as well as other multilateral organisations including the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). It also references existing regional processes such as the Digital Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean (eLAC), aiming to generate synergies rather than duplicate efforts.
Signatory countries commit to three main areas of action. On ecosystem-building, they agree to exchange knowledge, information and good practices on infrastructure, computing capacity, and AI development and deployment, and to use standardised diagnostic tools. They also commit to promoting AI development in Spanish and Portuguese that reflects the region's cultural, social and linguistic characteristics, and to sharing practices on AI use in the public sector. On education, countries commit to fostering digital skills training, AI certification programmes for professionals and students, and adaptive digital literacy that includes media and information literacy and critical, humanistic perspectives.
On governance, signatories reaffirm their commitment to promoting AI governance frameworks that respect human rights, including the right to personal data protection, while fostering innovation and sustainability. They commit to coordinating regional positions in international AI forums and to ensuring that international AI governance frameworks account for the region's specific characteristics, particularly regarding gaps in access, talent, data, infrastructure and regulatory capacity.
NB: Included under UNESCO because it forms part of the broader Latin American and Caribbean AI governance process developed in alignment with UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, although it was not itself a formal UNESCO summit declaration.
