Luis Almagro is a Uruguayan lawyer, diplomat, and politician who served as the 10th Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) from 2015 to 2025. Since June 2025, he has been the Director of the Observatory for Democracy of the CASLA Institute.
Almagro served as Uruguay’s Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2005 to 2010. He had previously held different positions at the Ministry of Foreign Relations. Almagro served as Minister of Foreign Relations of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015 under President José Mujica. After leaving government service, Almagro was elected Senator of the Republic in 2014 for the 48th Legislature and assumed his seat in March 2015.
Almagro was elected Secretary General of the Organization of American States on March 18, 2015, earning the support of 33 of the 34 Member States, including one abstention. He officially took office on May 26, 2015. On March 20, 2020, the OAS General Assembly re-elected him to office for a second term until May 2025.
As Secretary General, Almagro has prioritized defense of democracy and human rights in his daily work and has not hesitated to speak out when democracy and human rights are being trampled, as in the case of Venezuela, where he pressed for the enforcement of the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC).
As Secretary General, Almagro has also played an instrumental role in the search for solutions to the crisis in Nicaragua; he has put the struggle to restore democracy in Cuba at the very top of the regional agenda; he has increased OAS support for the Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP) in Colombia; he drove the creation of the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), the first OAS mission of its kind; and he reinvigorated and expanded the OAS electoral observation missions, with the first-time deployment of missions in such countries as the USA and Brazil. Almagro also played a key role in ensuring elections in Haiti, mediated the migrant crisis between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and deepened diplomatic efforts in the territorial differendum between Belize and Guatemala in relation to the Adjacency Zone, among other initiatives.
