One of IIRSA’s objectives in its origins was to create a Strategic Vision for the Physical Integration of South America shared by the twelve countries in order to agree on basic principles and on future actions aimed at ensuring the sustainable economic growth of the region, focusing on social equity and taking physical integration as a condition necessary for development.

Within this framework, the CCT institutions, which attended the Workshop on Strategic Vision for the Physical Integration of South America organized during the Fourth Meeting of the Executive Steering Committee (CDE, in Spanish) held in Caracas in 2003, submitted for the consideration of the countries a working tool to build this shared vision. Some years later, in 2005, the first round of VESA National Workshops were held pursuant to the mandate from the Sixth Meeting of the Executive Steering Committee held in Lima (2004), where the twelve countries agreed to further encourage dissemination activities and participation of the Initiative with the different civil society sectors.

The Technical Coordination Committee (CCT, in Spanish), with the support of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), jointly with IIRSA National Coordinators, helped in the organization of these workshops. As a result of these meetings, the different sectors of the civil society identified an important number of issues and topics of interest in relation to the development of South American physical infrastructure.  

The results were presented by the CCT to the National Coordinators at a Regional Workshop that took place on November 30, 2005, in the city of Asunción, and were considered a crucial and far-reaching goal to put forward at the Sixth Meeting of the CDE, held in the same city in December 2005.

These first twelve workshops were a first step in a series of tasks to be strengthened at the national level during the following years, as part of the agenda agreed by the National Coordinators. To this end, a series of national workshops were organized in the interior of Peru and Brazil, gathering different stakeholders and public, private, environmental, social, and academic sectors of the local communities, and building a relationship of interaction, which has contributed and strengthened the progress made so far.