Some 600 parliamentarians from 118 countries, among them 170 women, attending the 114th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Nairobi today adopted four resolutions. In one of them, they made an urgent appeal for increased supplies of emergency food assistance to be made available to drought-affected nations in Africa.
In a resolution entitled The need for urgent food relief in order to combat drought-induced famine and poverty in Africa, for the world’s most industrialized nations to speed up aid to the continent and for particular efforts to be made to reach desperate and poor populations, they urged "the governments concerned to take every appropriate measure to facilitate access to the affected areas for the speedy delivery of food supplies and to provide security".
The legislators meeting in Nairobi also called on all parties to ensure that food relief programmes are not used for political ends and that food is distributed to those in need without political interference.
The elected representatives of the peoples recommended that parliaments in the affected countries monitor the delivery of food relief programmes and invited them to report on their findings to the IPU. They called upon the governments of the countries concerned to make every effort to implement the Millennium Development Goals, "in particular those relating to the reduction of poverty, and to this end, to pursue sustainable development strategies". Those strategies "must aim to promote good governance and respect for human rights, eradication of corruption, sustainable food production, development of infrastructure to provide access to communities, and, most importantly, security for the population".
Control in trafficking in small arms and light weapons (SALW)
The parliamentarians also adopted a resolution entitled The role of parliaments in strengthening the control of trafficking in small arms and light weapons and their ammunition, in which they urged parliaments to combat SALW proliferation and misuse as a key element in national strategies on conflict prevention, peace-building, sustainable development, protection of human rights, and public health and safety.
They urged parliaments not only to promote and ensure the adoption at the national level of legislation and regulations required to control SALW and to combat its proliferation and misuse, but also to promote the development of an international arms trade treaty (ATT) to strictly regulate arms transfers on the basis of State obligations under international law and internationally accepted norms and human rights standards.
Parliaments should promote greater international regional efforts to develop common standards to control the activities of those brokering or otherwise facilitating arms transfers between third countries and to ensure the existence of strong legal sanctions for those who provide SALW to children, or who recruit and use children in conflicts or armed operations. Legislators also urged parliaments "to ensure the existence of legal sanctions at the national level for those who commit crimes/atrocities against vulnerable sections of society such as the elderly, women and children". Special attention should also be given to capacity-building, with a view to overcoming some of the barriers in the implementation of SALW commitments.
Finance, Trade and Sustainable Development
On The Role of Parliaments in Environmental Management and in Combating Global Degradation of the Environment, legislators recommended that parliaments "include in their budgets clear indicators of the financial and non-financial costs related to environmental degradation", and "promote the development of new and broader tools and methods of measuring GDP and other standardized economic concepts".
They paid tribute to the special role of women in environmental protection and called for the mainstreaming of women in environmental decision-making processes, from which they have traditionally been excluded, and that women be given more equitable access to land ownership. Looking to society at large, and in the spirit of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD), the resolution underscores the need for "governments and parliaments to advocate environmental awareness and educate the public about coordinated action against environmental degradation".
On energy, conservation and other aspects of natural resources management, the resolution adopted today expresses reservations on the use of nuclear power as part of the energy mix and calls for more research on the problems posed by the decommissioning of power plants, storage of nuclear waste and accidental leakage of radioactive materials. In contrast, unconditional support is given to the implementation of 3R (Reuse, Recycle, Reduce) approaches in conjunction with "the development of environmentally-friendly products […] and of a sound material-cycle society." Finally, legislators called upon parliaments to work towards limiting to 2°C the rise in mean global temperatures compared with pre-industrial levels.
Combating violence against women in all fields
The parliamentarians meeting in Nairobi also adopted a resolution entitled How parliaments can and must promote effective ways of combating violence against women in all fields. They called upon governments and parliaments to give priority to and raise awareness about violence against women as both a cause and a consequence of the rising incidence of HIV/AIDS and to include these considerations in their national strategies; and to implement the United Nations General Assembly resolution on Crime prevention and criminal justice measures to eliminate violence against women; in particular to punish all acts of violence against women perpetrated by State or non-State actors in the public and the private spheres; to establish courts specialized in hearing cases of such violence; and to establish a governmental body promoting the prosecution of all acts of violence.
Governments and parliaments should promote public awareness of the problem of violence against women, and "enact and enforce legislation against the perpetrators of practices and acts of violence against women and children, including tough and clear measures to combat recidivism". Moreover parliaments are urged to "review legislation to detect practices and traditions that impede the attainment of equality between the sexes and to eliminate inequality in all spheres, in particular in education, health and access to property and land". Changes in social and cultural attitudes to gender roles and the elimination of patterns of behaviour that engender violence should also be encouraged, as should cooperation with the media.
Parliaments are also urged to denounce and combat the extreme forms of gender violence against women that are derived from the violation of their human rights and that are shaped by a set of misogynous conducts which can involve impunity and which have culminated in homicide and other forms of violent death of women.
Last but not least, parliaments and governments are requested to make rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity crimes under their domestic legislation and to repress them as such. With reference to human trafficking, parliamentarians stressed the need to build international and regional cooperation among the countries of origin, transit and destination, through instruments such as bilateral agreements and international treaties.
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