Press release of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
Brussels, 10 April 1999
N° 3

"Men and women from democratically elected parliaments are meeting today in Brussels. We are examining topics which are universal and we hope in this way to promote democracy, respect for human rights, and peace and security at the world level", declared Mrs An Hermans, Chairperson of the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians, held today in Brussels within the framework of the 101st Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

The Meeting of Women Parliamentarians discussed in particular the situation in Kosovo. "We cannot leave this meeting without bringing up the situation in Kosovo and in Yugoslavia", said Mr Miguel Angel Martínez, President of the Inter-Parliamentary Council, at the Inaugural Ceremony of the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians which met for the first time in Brussels as a statutory body of the IPU. "We are faced with the terrible realisation that, once again, it is women and children who are the primary victims of conflicts...Today, the international community can no longer tolerate a situation where, in the name of national sovereignty, those responsible for crimes such as ethnic purification enjoy impunity. Admittedly, the solution is not for a given country or group of countries to decide on its own to intervene, but we cannot continue to allow one State or another to assume the right to block the action taken by the international community to prevent such terrible crimes as those which we are seeing".

According to Mrs Francesca Scopelliti of the Italian Group, women MPs could send a delegation "to meet Kosovar women. We can help Serbian women to open their eyes to the violence and genocide taking place", adding that "NATO is bombing", but few Serbs are aware of "the rapes, the massacres of the innocents, the thousands of refugees and the children killed gratuitously". Mrs Radmila Sekerinska, from The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, stressed the problem of refugees. "Having 130,000 refugees for a country of 2 million is approximately like having 5.2 million refugees in Germany, 24 million in the EU as a whole or 13 million in the US...The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania, two countries from the region, themselves undergoing difficult economic transition and worst hit by the crises - have endured and will probably still have to endure the biggest wave of refugees".

Six hundred and twenty-two MPs, including 139 women, were registered for this meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, held for the first time in the European Parliament (from 10 to 16 April) at the invitation of the Belgian Parliament. "The figure of 22% women is the highest in the history of IPU Conferences", added Mrs Hermans, a Member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives. "Violence affecting women within the family, at work and in war-time, is another aspect of the policy of equal opportunity which, unfortunately, continues to make headlines", explained the Chairperson of the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians as she referred to the specific problems of women in large cities, an item on the agenda of the 101st Conference.

Mrs Paula Ivãnescu, Vice-President of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, recalled that in the case of women living in large cities, "job-market discrimination is accompanied by personal insecurity, which represents one of the most difficult challenges which society, the State and the world's parliaments are called to take up, by finding ways and means of limiting, marginalising and perhaps even eradicating it".

Mexican Senator Laura Pavón Jaramillo underscored that "women continue to occupy posts at the bottom of the ladder and to do unpaid work. Moreover, the number of households with women heads of families has risen, together with the number of single mothers and pregnant teenagers, both of which aspects marginalise women even more".

One of the goals of the Inter-Parliamentary Union is promoting partnership between men and women, for there can be no democracy in a world where the views of 50% of the population are not taken into consideration. Mrs Faiza Kéfi, a Tunisian MP and President of the Co-ordinating Committee of the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians, recalled that delegations to IPU Conferences should "include at least one women".

IPU Conferences offer a unique opportunity for private contacts and exchanges of views between MPs - prominent men and women politicians, some of whom come from conflict-beset regions - on thorny bilateral issues.

Contacts: Mrs Luisa Ballin, IPU Information Officer in Brussels: Tel. (322) 28-44351, fax (322) 28-41579, e-mail: ipac773@skypro.be; Mr Patrick Peremans, Press attaché of the Belgian Senate. Tel: (322) 501 73 37 or 0477 797901, e-mail pp@senate.be