Judoca from Cuba, Photo: B. Hetet

The Americas Paralympic Committee (APC - Comité Paralímpico de Américas) is the regional organization, recognized as the sole regional representative of the Americas Region.  

As a consequence of the Atlanta 1996 Paralympic Games, the Americas Paralympic Committee (APC) was established in August 1997 when Xavier Gonzalez and Carol Mushett called for a summit of the Americas Region in Atlanta, USA, with the purpose of creating the Americas Region, not existent at that time.

From that meeting on, the Americas Region has been growing continuously with very clear purposes and goals to achieve.

In the beginning, most of the countries did not have a National Paralympic Committee (NPC), and the majority of the members of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) from the Americas Region were federations for visually impaired or wheelchair athletes, as well as as, sometimes the government. Therefore the process of education about the Paralympic Movement was a big challenge, and by 2005 all the countries from the Americas Region had their NPC constituted. Up to date, there are 26 countries members of APC and most of them had participated in the ATHENS 2004 Paralympic Games.

National Paralympic Committees of the Americas Region: Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermudas, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Porto Rico, Dominican Republic, Surinam, Uruguay, United States of America, Venezuela.