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1. Overview
On the 19th of May, as a delegate for the Canadian Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the Honourable Dennis Dawson travelled to New York to attend the 86th plenary meeting of the sixty-eight session of the United Nations General Assembly.
He was the only Canadian parliamentarian delegate at this conference but met with the IPU secretariat and other delegates of the General Assembly meeting. The United Nations office of foreign affairs was there and participated in sponsoring the resolution. The main objective was lobbying for wide ranging support to resolution 68/272: Interaction between the United Nations, national parliaments and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The aim of the resolution was to encourage both parties to work closely in various fields, in particular, peace and security, economic and social development, international law and human rights and gender issues. It also aimed to mobilize parliamentary action towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015, as well as to bring a parliamentary contribution to the design of the next generation of global development goals. After many interventions the resolution was adopted unanimously. It reaffirms the commitment of national parliaments and the Inter-Parliamentary Union to support the work of the United Nations and continue the efforts to bridge the democracy gap in international relations.
This report provides an overview of the IPU-UN parliamentary hearing.
2. Background
The IPU is the international organization of parliaments of sovereign states. It was established in 1889, is “the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue,” and “works for peace and co-operation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy.” The IPU “supports the efforts of and works in close co-operation with the United Nations, whose objectives it shares.”
In
addition to this meeting, the IPU’s annual parliamentary hearing bring
parliamentarians to the UN headquarters in New York “for an interactive
discussion with high-ranking UN officials, representatives of [UN] Member
States and experts drawn from think tanks and civil society organizations.” As a joint event of
the IPU and UN, the hearings reflect a commitment by the UN to hear the views
of parliamentarians with regards to urgent issues facing policy-makers and
legislators around the world and on the key issues on the UN agenda. This resolution
Recalled its previous 2010 resolution deciding “to pursue a more systematic engagement with the Inter-Parliamentary Union in organizing and integrating a parliamentary component of and contribution to major United Nations deliberative processes and the review of international commitments”;
and
Called for “the annual parliamentary hearing at the United Nations to be more closely linked to major United Nations processes, including the preparation of global conferences, so as to help to inform such deliberations from a parliamentary perspective.”
The conclusions of the hearing are circulated to the wider UN community as well as to all national parliaments.
3. Programme of the Parliamentary Hearing
The main theme of the hearing that took place in New York on the 19 of May 2014 was: Interaction between the United Nations, national parliaments and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The meeting with the delegates started at 10 a.m. and rose at 11.25 a.m.
The full programme, which includes details on the themes and case studies explored during the hearing, and the complete list of panellists, may be found online.
Respectfully submitted,
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