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“This partnership is an important step in our business plan making renewable energy readily available and deliverable through our national operating companies and network of contractors.” added Jay Bricker, SVP for Sonepar USA.
This groundbreaking partnership is the first for CPF in the electrical distribution space, driving adoption in a critical area of growth for the solar industry. “Our belief is that engaging the existing base of US electrical contractors is an important part of taking solar mainstream,” said Joseph Brakohiapa, President and CEO of Clean Power Finance. “We’re looking forward to working with SonEnergy and Sonepar USA to deliver the advantages of our software platform to their customer base.”
About Essco and SonEnergy
Essco Wholesale Electric is one of the largest distributors in the Arizona and Southern California markets. Founded in 1973, Essco has matured to twelve branches located throughout Arizona and Southern California. To find out more, go to Essco’s website at.
SonEnergy, managed by Essco Wholesale Electric, is a total renewable energy solution providing a single source to develop and complete solar or wind energy generating projects. Based in Chandler, Arizona, SonEnergy offers national distribution of renewable energy products, design services, management, and project finance modeling via the Sonepar Operational Companies. The company has extensive expertise in residential, commercial, industrial and utility markets, and encompasses a national network of pre-qualified electrical contractors and industry leading electrical distributors to deliver on-time and on-budget energy projects.
About Sonepar USA
Sonepar USA is made up of 13 of the finest electrical supply distributors in the United States. They are a member of the Sonepar group – the world’s largest privately held electrical distributor. To find out more, go to.
About Clean Power Finance
Clean Power Finance is the leading provider of integrated software, services and financing solutions to the solar industry. Based in San Francisco, the company’s mission is to drive the adoption of renewable energy in the mass market. Clean Power Finance delivers an end-to-end solution that supports sales and marketing business processes for integrators, distributors and manufacturers. Since its introduction, the CPF Tools software platform has garnered enthusiastic reviews and currently supports over 30 percent of the solar installer community nationwide.
For more information, visit.Ever want to have an adventure? Have you ever seen the world through the eyes of your child? This book shows us what Autumn looks like through the eyes of a cat.
Kitten has an adventure in Autumn. Grandma does a wonderful job with looking for details throughout the book.On November 22nd 2019 the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees (Cartagena Declaration) turns 35. It is a paramount document on refugees’ protection in Latin America, setting both normative standards and the regional tone for policies and actions in this area, thus, being a cornerstone of Refugee Law in the region. This is especially relevant as the Latin America is facing contrasting scenarios in terms of migration governance: an increasing politicization of migration and refugees’ management and anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as disrespect for human rights and refugee law, coexisting with a regional tradition of granting asylum and the ascertaining of a human-rights based (Grandi, 2017) and avant-gard protection for refugees (Freier and Acosta 2015; Jubilut and Lopes 2018).
Assessing the role of the Cartagena Declaration and its relevance on its 35th anniversary is also important in light of current regional forced displacements, as Latin America is witnessing massive flows of refugees and other migrants, as (i) in the case of Venezuela with 4,5 million displaced persons (mainly since 2016) and a prediction of reaching 6,5 million next year, also (ii) soaring numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers from the North of Central America (estimated at over 350,000 in the end of 2018), (iii) new displacements from Nicaragua due to a crisis that began in April 2018, (iv) the endurance of Haitian migration, and (v) the continued displacement of Colombians even after the peace agreements, to add to an estimated of 7 million displaced persons during the conflict. This increasing mobility in the region might be joined by new displacements resulting from the social and political strives in Chile and Bolivia.
In this context, it is relevant to present the Cartagena Declaration to a larger audience, celebrate its 35th anniversary, and assess whether the framework of protection created by it since 1984 can be a relevant tool in dealing with these competing scenarios in refugee protection in Latin America, as a way to appraise its lasting and current impacts.
The Cartagena Declaration was created in an academic colloquium (Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America, Mexico, and Panama) held in Colombia in 1984, in light of the refugee situation in Central America[1], and adopted a regional approach to refugee protection.
The Cartagena Declaration set the basis for the evolution of a specific Latin-American framework of refugees’ protection, developing from the region’s long-established tradition of asylum (Fischel De Andrade, 2014, Acnur n/d). It dialogues, however, with larger frameworks (Jubilut and Lopes, 2018), such as the international refugee regime (a relation expressed both in the Document’s explicit mentions to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol[2] and in its support by the United Nations High Commissioner from the beginning[3], Human Rights and other regional schemes such as the Organization of American States (OAS) – which embraced the Declaration[4] and encompasses the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean States alongside Latin America countries. Due to its normative developments, has been listed together with the 1969 OUA Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa as examples of successful developments in regional refugee protection.
The Cartagena Declaration, initially adopted by 10 States as a soft law instrument, is divided into 3 content parts: the first one with a preamble aspect contextualizing the document and expressing its fundaments and principles; the second one linking the document to the Contadora Process for Peace and reproducing its normative result[5], and the third part with the substantive contributions of the Document, presented as conclusions.
There are 17 conclusions in the Cartagena Declaration encompassing suggestions specifically tailored to the Central America refugee situation, provisions on the betterment of refugee protection in the States of the region, and contributions to refugee protection at large in Latin America. In the latter, two aspects should be highlighted.
The first is the already mentioned dialogue between refugee protection and human rights. This is a prevalent topic in the Cartagena Declaration, and should be praised both as a pioneering effort in States’ practice in this area (in the early 1980s) and as a guideline aiming at guaranteeing integral protection for refugees, i.e. not only the rights they are entitled to due to their migratory status but also all their human rights (Jubilut, Apolinário, 2008). Furthermore, this connection opens up the possibility of refugee protection also benefiting from other institutional arrangements linked to human rights (such as the InterAmerican System of Human Rights from the OAS), and, therefore, being enlarged.
These criteria look into the objective situation of the country of origin of the refugee as the main cause for refugee status, not requiring the existence of individual persecution (Jubilut and Carneiro, 2011; 67, Reed-Hurtado, 2013) and closely links refugee status to International Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (Ibid; Burson and Cantor 2016).
Among the several criteria spelled out in the 3rd Conclusion, the one mentioning massive violation of human rights (or gross and generalized violation of human rights as more commonly used in the region[6]) is not only the more encompassing one[7], but also is perceived as the main conceptual contribution of the Cartagena Declaration. This is so due to the fact that albeit not applied in its entire possible width it allows for recognizing refugee status “when internationally recognized rights are subject to widespread or large scale violations—situations of ‘gross and systematic denial of civil, political, economic and social, and cultural rights” (Reed-Hurtado, 2013: 14), encompassing, for instance, situations such as dictatorships, internal strives, humanitarian crisis, and war. In this sense, and from a normative standpoint, it is a relevant increase in protection in the region.
The creation of a regional concept of refugee, and the inclusion of the possibility of refugee status due to gross and generalized violation of human rights in it, are the first two impacts of the Cartagena Declaration that need to be emphasized. They not only amplify protection in the region but also establish a Latin-American grammar in refugee protection, combining the international criteria for refugee status determination with a tailored regional definition. The latter also reinforces the dialogue between Refugee Law and Human Rights, present from the start in the regional regime as it is incorporated in the region’s refugee definition from 1984. The Cartagena Declaration concept of refugee and its peculiarities can be said to be a first pillar in the creation of a regional refugee regime in Latin America.
If one accepts regimes as the existence of rules, principles, and decision-making procedures (Krasner,1982) this perception is corroborated by the fact that the Cartagena Declaration set up a revision process, with meetings every 10 years to evaluate the region’s needs and developments in refugee protection and to adopt follow-up documents and plans of actions.
The first of these meetings was held in 1994, and resulted in the San Jose Declaration, which has as its main specific contribution the fact that, regional