The Parliamentary Conference of the Americas, or COPA, was created in 1997 under the auspices of the United States'

Council of State Governments The Council of State Governments (CSG) is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization in the United States that serves all three branches of state government. Founded in 1933 by Colorado state Sen. Henry W. Toll, CSG is a region-based forum that ...

and

National Conference of State Legislatures The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), established in 1975, is a "nonpartisan public officials’ association composed of sitting state legislators" from the states, territories and commonwealths of the United States. Background ...

, the

Quebec National Assembly The National Assembly of Quebec (officially in french: link=no, Assemblée nationale du Québec) is the Legislature, legislative body of the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec in Canada. Legislators are called MNAs (Members ...

and a Brazilian legislative organization. The first Conference was held in

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...

Province of Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirteen p ...

, in Canada, at which

Jean Pierre Charboneau Jean may refer to: People * Jean (female given name) * Jean (male given name) * Jean (surname) Fictional characters * Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character * Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations * Jean ...

, the President of the Quebec National Assembly, was elected COPA's first President. The second Conference was held in

Río Grande, Puerto Rico Río Grande () is a town and municipality of Puerto Rico located on the eastern edge of the Northern Coastal Valley, north of Las Piedras, Naguabo and Ceiba; east of Loíza and Canóvanas and west of Luquillo. Río Grande is spread over eigh ...

in the United States under the presidency of Puerto Rico Senator

Kenneth McClintock Kenneth Davison McClintock-Hernández (born January 19, 1957) is a politician who served as the twenty-second Secretary of State of Puerto Rico, one of the four longest serving in that post. McClintock served as co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s Na ...

, COPA's second President. The necessity to create a hemispheric parliamentary organization became apparent at the first

Summit of the Americas The Summit of the Americas (SOA) is an international summit meeting that brings together the leaders of countries in the Organization of American States (OAS). Cuba was expelled from the OAS under pressure from the United States after the Cuban Re ...

, held in Miami, Florida, US, in December 1994. The Summit brought together the Chief Executives of every country in the Americas except for Cuba, with no input from the parliamentary/legislative branches of those countries. Since its creation, COPA has been an observer and participant at every subsequent Summit of the Americas: Santiago, Chile; Quebec City, Canada; and Mar del Plata, Argentina. COPA's membership includes all national and sub-national (provincial, state and territorial) parliamentarians or legislators from every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba. Among the organization's affiliates is the Women's Parliamentarian Network. COPA operates in four languages, Spanish, English, French and Portuguese. For the first time since the II Conference in 2000, COPA's Executive Committee is scheduled to meet in the United States in late June (Los Angeles, California).{{when?, date=November 2022

Sources

*http://www.parl.gc.ca/Infoparl/english/issue.htm?param=63&art=56 *http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=sosig969551395-19384 *http://www.copa.qc.ca *http://csg.org *http://ncsl.org International organizations based in the Americas