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HOME PAGE -> LATEST NEWS -> NEWS ARCHIVES (FEBRUARY - APRIL 2008)
News Archives
(February - April 2008)
Parliamentary Message to UNCTAD XII
21 April 2008. The Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana, the Hon. Ebenezer Sekyi Hughes, represented the IPU at the 12th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XII) that took place in Accra, Ghana, from 20 to 24 April. Speakers Hughes was also the purveyor of an official Parliamentary Message to UNCTAD XII that had been adopted a few days earlier by the 118th IPU Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa. Among other things, the parliamentary message stressed the need for more inclusive democratic institutions and processes as necessary conditions to ensure that globalization is fair and beneficial to all. [ Text of the Parliamentary Message to UNCTAD XII ... ]
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Parliamentary Conference on the WTO to meet in September
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4 April 2008. This year's plenary session of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO will take place in Geneva on 11 and 12 September 2008. The decision was taken by the Conference Steering Committee, which met at IPU Headquarters in Geneva on 3 and 4 April. The Conference is a joint undertaking of the IPU and the European Parliament. Its principal objective is to enhance the external transparency of the WTO and make it accountable to legislators as elected representatives of the people. This year's session comes at a crucial time for the Doha Round of trade negotiations, with the future of the entire multilateral trading system hanging in the balance. The Conference is intended primarily for parliamentarians who specialize in international trade in their respective parliaments. [ More on the Conference ... ]
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IPU exhibition at the Palais des Nations in Geneva: Women in politics
5 March 2008. IPU Secretary General, Mr. Anders B. Johnsson, inaugurated an exhibition entitled Women in Politics at the Palais des Nations on 4 March. The exhibition, divided into 12 panels, evokes issues such as the main hurdles women encounter in accessing parliament, parliaments with the highest and lowest numbers of women MPs, figures for women Speakers of Parliament, the democratic approach from the gender equality perspective, and women at IPU. Two panels on The House of Parliaments and on IPU in general complement this exhibition that is located in the passageway between the old and new buildings of UNOG. Copies of the new Map of Women in Politics: 2008 published in English, French and Spanish - with statistics on women in parliament and government throughout the world at 1 January 2008 - a joint IPU-UN project - as well as various IPU publications are also available to the large number of persons that go through the passageway everyday. [ Order the latest map Women in Politics ... ]
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IPU web site user survey
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5 March 2008. The IPU web site is undergoing a major redesign. As part of this process, we want to learn a little more about the current users of our web site and to better understand their needs. Please help us by answering a few questions in our online survey. The information you provide will never be made publicly available or shared with third parties. The survey should take about 1 minute to complete. |
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Launch of the first World e-Parliament Report
29 February 2008. The World e-Parliament Report 2008 represents a first effort to establish a baseline of how parliaments are using, or planning to use ICT to make themselves more transparent, more accessible to the public, more effective and thus more democratic. Based on data from 105 assemblies, the Report concludes that only ten percent of the chambers surveyed are making extensive use of ICT. It identifies many opportunities for inter-parliamentary cooperation to support parliaments with fewer resources. The Report is a joint product of the IPU, the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs and the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament. It was formally adopted when the high-level Board of the Global Centre met at United Nations headquarters in New York on 28 February. [ Download or order the World e-Parliament Report 2008 ... ]
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World Map of Women in Politics 2008
27 February 2008. The 2008 World Map of Women in Politics was released this week at the United Nations. The Map, a joint publication of the IPU and the United Nations, highlights in vivid colors the percentage of women in both legislative and executive branches of governments. It is based on a global survey conducted yearly by the IPU to track the progress of women in politics in a comparative manner both by country and region. The survey shows that women occupy only 17.7 percent of parliamentary seats. The Hon. Hilary Armstrong of the United Kingdom, and the Hon. Sharon Hay Webster of Jamaica, helped explain the survey's results at a well attended press conference at the closing of the week.
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MPs discuss financing for gender equality
27 February 2008. Some 120 MPs came together at the margin of this year's United Nations Commission on the Status of Women to review the extent to which women issues receive appropriate financing in countries around the world. Not enough, most people agreed; but the good news is that there are many concrete steps parliamentarians can take to support gender equality by allocating more resources to women issues. Significantly, many attendees were men. The meeting was chaired by Senator Monica Xavier of Uruguay, who also conveyed some of its main conclusions to the Commission's plenary meeting. The full report of the meeting will be available by the end of March. [ More on the Meeting ... ]
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Members of parliamentary defence and security committees from southern Africa discuss security challenges at a regional seminar
26 February 2008. The seminar was hosted by the National Assembly of Angola and co-organised by the IPU, the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum, the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and the Institute for Security Studies. Parliamentarians at the seminar, which took place from 20 to 22 February on the Assembly premises, stressed that gone are the days when civilians were not allowed to deal with security matters. Security has become a collective responsibility and parliamentarians, as
representatives of the people, must be involved in order to ensure transparency and accountability. In this regard, the IPU and the co-organisers received a strong mandate from the seminar to continue to work with parliaments in the region, in particular through parliamentary capacity-building. [ More on the Seminar ... ]
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The IPU and the UN to forge greater awareness by parliamentarians in respect of human trafficking
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13 February 2008. The IPU and the United Nations Office for Drug and Crime organized at the Austrian Parliament in Vienna on 12 February 2008 a Parliamentary Forum on Human Trafficking. The event took place in the context of the global Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking, a gather of state and non state actors to forge a coalition against human trafficking. The Parliamentary Forum was attended by some 125 members of parliament from 50 countries as well as observers from a host of international parliamentary and intergovernmental
organizations. It provided an opportunity to examine ways in which parliaments and parliamentarians can be more actively involved in the global drive against human trafficking. In this context, participants shared relevant experiences and best practice. In addition, the Forum was an opportunity for fruitful interaction between parliamentarians, experts, academics, prominent personalities and other anti-human trafficking activists. The report of the Parliamentary Forum was presented to a plenary session of the Vienna Forum.
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How to put an end to the practice of female genital mutilation?
6 February 2008. Over 150 representatives of international organizations, civil society and the cantonal authorities of Geneva gathered at The House of Parliaments for a panel discussion on female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice to which over 2 million girls fall victim each year in the name of tradition. In the words of Mr. Laurent Moutinot, President of the State Council of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, "... it is difficult to combat practices considered to be normal because we first have to show that they are not". Professor Abdoulaye Sow, an anthropologist and lecturer at the University of Nouakchott (Mauritania) called for "demystifying the myths" surrounding the practice, adding that FGM does not follow any religious, medical, social or esthetical imperative.
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IPU pledges to continue sensitizing political leaders to FGM
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6 February 2008. On the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), IPU Secretary General, Anders B. Johnsson, underscored the importance of creating a synergy among international organizations, political and religious leaders, the media, civil society and members of the medical profession so that the wish expressed at the African Parliamentary Conference on Violence against women, abandoning FGM: The role of parliaments held in Dakar in December 2005 - that this practice would no longer be considered "normal" - would become a reality within a generation. Mr. Johnsson reiterated IPU's commitment to continue sensitizing political leaders, men and women from Africa and elsewhere, on the need to continue working on this question. IOM, WHO, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices, the Geneva State Department of Institutions, the Swiss UNICEF Committee and representatives of civil society were present.
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