UNITED NATIONS

• Second World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments and related events. As part of the preparations, the Preparatory Committee held a working session at IPU Headquarters in Geneva in late May 2005 and a delegation of the Committee travelled to New York in early July 2005 to brief United Nations Member States and senior United Nations officials about the event;

• Also as part of preparations for that event, the IPU sent parliaments the report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, entitled A more secure world: Our shared responsibility as well as the United Nations Secretary-General's own report entitled In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all;

• Statement to the Summit of Heads of State and Government presenting the outcome of the Second World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments, and IPU consultations with parliaments on how best to organize parliamentary interaction with the United Nations in light of the recommendations of the Panel of Eminent Persons on the relationship between the United Nations and civil society, including parliaments and parliamentarians;

• Parliamentary panel discussion at the United Nations (June 10, 2005), organized in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs (DESA), on innovative forms of financing for development, with the participation of a group of prominent parliamentarians from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Gabon, Mexico, Thailand and the United Kingdom. The report of the meeting was presented later that month at the United Nations High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development;

• Statements during the sixtieth session of the United General Assembly on:
  • disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation;
  • child protection;
  • human rights;
  • the advancement of women;

• Consolidation of the practice of consultation by IPU co-Rapporteurs with key United Nations institutions. The co-Rapporteurs on international migration (Second Standing Committee) travelled to Geneva for consultations with the ILO, the GCIM, IOM, the ICRC and UNHCR. Later in the year, the co-Rapporteurs on small arms and light weapons (First Standing Committee), participated in the United Nations Biennial Meeting of States and conducted consultations with the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs, UNICEF and the ICRC.

The IPU contributed to the 2005 UNDP Human Development Report by providing statistics and data on women in parliament. UNIFEM

• In 2004, in cooperation with UNDP, the WBI and UNIFEM, the IPU finalized a handbook for parliamentarians on ways to develop a gender-sensitive national budget. In 2005, the handbook was translated into Spanish, with a contribution from UNIFEM, and a regional seminar was held in El Salvador for Latin American parliaments on Parliament and the budgetary process, including from a gender perspective.

UNESCO

• Statement at the UNESCO General Conference on cooperation between UNESCO and parliaments;

• Preparation of various language versions of the Guide to parliamentary practice;

• Work under way on a handbook on education for all.

UNAIDS

• The IPU, UNAIDS and UNDP jointly held a panel discussion in New York on 12 September 2005 on the role of parliaments in the fight against HIV/AIDS, as a side event of the High-Level Summit of Heads of State and Government.

UNHCR

• The handbook on refugee protection was translated into four more languages, bringing the total number of language editions to 30, thus making it the most widely distributed IPU publication of all time;

• Another handbook was prepared with UNHCR on nationality and statelessness, for launch at the 113th IPU Assembly, in Geneva. UNHCR and the IPU also prepared a panel discussion to be held during the 113th Assembly on the same subject.

UNITAR

• On the basis of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the IPU and UNITAR, an inaugural conference took place in Paris in April 2005 to mobilize international support for the two organizations' joint Global Capacity-Building Initiative for Parliaments in the field of sustainable development and environmental protection.

OHCHR

• The handbook on parliament and human rights, a joint IPU-OHCHR initiative, was finalized and readied for launch at the 113th IPU Assembly;

• The IPU delivered three statements at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, on freedom of expression, child protection and the functioning of the United Nations mechanisms for human rights protection;

• OHCHR and the IPU jointly organized a seminar at IPU Headquarters from 27 to 29 July 2005 on the impact of parliamentary action on indigenous peoples' rights;

• The IPU held a seminar for chairs and members of parliamentary human rights bodies on freedom of expression, parliaments and the promotion of tolerant societies from 25 to 27 May 2005 at IPU Headquarters. The seminar was organized in cooperation with Article 19, an NGO specializing in the subject matter, and received the support of OHCHR;

• The IPU assisted OHCHR in holding a seminar on the interdependence between democracy and human rights, in Geneva in February-March 2005;

• The IPU and OCHCR were jointly implementing a project designed to strengthen the human rights role of the parliament of Uruguay;

• Contribution to the OHCHR workshop, Strengthening the implementation of human rights treaty body recommendations at the national level, Geneva, 9 to 13 May 2005.

Office of the High Representative for LDCs

• The IPU participated in and contributed to inter-agency consultations for the comprehensive (mid-term) review of the Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries;

• The IPU is a member of the Expert Panel of Advisers on the State of Governance in LDCs.

UNICEF

• The IPU and UNICEF produced a handbook for parliamentarians entitled Combating Child Trafficking. The handbook was launched at the 112th Assembly, in Manila, in the presence of the Executive Director of UNICEF, Carol Bellamy;

• During the Manila Assembly, the IPU and UNICEF held a panel discussion for parliamentarians entitled Violence against women and children in situations of armed conflict.

UNDAW

• A one-day parliamentary meeting entitled Beyond Beijing: Towards gender equality in politics was held in cooperation with UNDAW in New York at the forty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which reviewed progress made 10 years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action;

• Two members of the IPU Executive Committee took part in a High-Level Round Table at the forty-ninth session of the CSW in February;

• The IPU delivered a statement at the forty-ninth session of the CSW;

• A map entitled Women in Politics: 2005 was jointly produced by the IPU and UNDAW for the forty-ninth session of the CSW;

• A one-day seminar was scheduled to take place just after the 113th Assembly, on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol. It was held by the IPU and UNDAW.

Millennium Development Goals

• The IPU was the data source for the Millennium Development Goal indicator on women in parliaments. It regularly provided the United Nations with data on women in parliament for the MDG database.

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Note: you can download a complete electronic version of the brochure "Results of the 113th Assembly and related meetings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union" in PDF format (file size approximately 653K). This version requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download free of charge.

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