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In partnership with the UN Millennium Campaign, the IPU will hold a side event for members of parliament attending the United Nations High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG Review Summit) that will take place in New York from 20 to 22 September 2010. The Summit will be held at the level of Heads of State and is expected to conclude with an Outcome Document outlining key policy prescriptions to propel the MDGs forward in the run-up to their 2015 deadline. The parliamentary side event is one of several being organized to provide delegations attending the Summit with more informal opportunities for interaction and debate.
The side event will take place on Tuesday, 21 September 2010, from 1.15 to 2.30 p.m.
in the North Lawn Building, Conference Room 7 (second floor), at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
The MDGs scorecard shows that considerable progress has been made to reduce global poverty and some other development indicators. However, the picture remains skewed with most of the gains accruing to a few countries; many other countries are off track in their progress with respect to at least some of the MDGs - if not all. To redress this situation, a greater effort will be required by governments. Parliaments too must be more pro-actively engaged by adopting enabling legislation, scrutinizing national budgets, and generally by ensuring that MDG-related policies are placed high on the political agenda.
The parliamentary side event at the Summit will serve to highlight in very concrete terms what parliaments and parliamentarians can do to help advance the MDGs. A new comparative study of how parliaments are working to integrate the MDGs in their institutional mechanisms and political agendas will be launched. This will be followed by a brief overview of the main messages coming out of the Summit and of the MDG-related work of the IPU and of the UN Millennium Campaign. The IPU President, Dr. Theo Ben Gurirab, will address the Summit with a statement on behalf of the 3rd World Conference of Speakers of Parliament that took place in Geneva in July 2010.
Important notice: Only MPs attending the Summit as part of their national delegations will be allowed to the parliamentary side event. The IPU will not be able to accredit individual MPs to the Summit and is not in the position to arrange for hotel reservations or other logistical support. An early notice of the side event was distributed for information only to the Speakers attending the 3rd World Conference of Speakers of Parliament. No advance registration is required to attend the side event.
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