News and Events
Four Icelanders at ATA assembly in Ottawa
The Icelandic delegation was comprised by Jón Hákon Magnússon, President of the Atlantic Treaty Association in Iceland, Jens Sigurdsson, Chairman of the Young Political Leaders' Atlantic Association in Iceland, Árni Tómasson, intern at the Atlantic Treaty Association in Washington DC and Markús Örn Antonsson, Ambassador of Iceland to Canada.
The Atlantic Treaty Association acts as a network facilitator in the Euro-Atlantic and beyond. The ATA draws together political leaders, academics, and diplomats in an effort to further the values set forth in the North Atlantic Treaty: Democracy, Freedom, Liberty, Peace, Security, and the Rule of law.
For fifty-three years the ATA has served as the leading transatlantic non-governmental organisation promoting public support for the institutions that bring together people of the North Atlantic Alliance. It is the umbrella organisation for the 40 Atlantic councils, which work in each of NATO’s member states and most of the Partnership for Peace countries.
Iceland was one of the founding members of NATO in 1949. It has had a very active council from the early beginning and a separate young politicians organization.
In the past few years, the challenges facing the Alliance and ATA have changed and grown as the allies have sought to create a “Europe whole and free“ and as new threats and opportunities have arisen from beyond the North Atlantic area. Promoting public debate, public understanding, and public support is critical at a time when the purposes and promise of NATO, other institutions like the EU, and transatlantic relations overall are more complex and less well understood among our people.
At the same time, there is a vital need to engage a younger generation of leaders—present and future—on both sides of the Atlantic. We do this through the activities of the Youth Atlantic Treaty Association, YATA.
ATA is now embarking on its 2007 program with a number of activities, organised by the members as well as by the ATA secretariat. Student conferences, simulations, workshops, summer seminars, young researcher’s forums and national educational conferences are all part of the agenda of the YATA and its members as well of the ATA.