Parliament buildings are often statements revealing a country’s vision, traditions and culture. Here are the five types of plenary halls and their political significance. As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill commented: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Architecture has a profound impact on our behaviour. The size and shape of a […]
Following recent elections, women lawmakers now account for 30.4% of the elected seats in the Sierra Leone Parliament, up from 14.5% in the previous election. The surge in women MPs is largely thanks to the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act, signed into law by President Julius Maada Bio a few months ago, which sets a 30% quota of […]
As he enter his final months in office, IPU President, Duarte Pacheco of Portugal, was invited to visit to Palace of Westminster to address the BGIPU Executive Committee on the key challenges and successes of his time in office. He noted a key highlight have been the steady and progressive rebuilding of the IPU’s scope […]
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted many experts to warn about its impacts on democracy. With that in mind, the IPU is preparing a series of five articles on the topic. In this second piece, the IPU asks Denis Naughten, Chair of the IPU’s Working Group on Science and Technology, what advice […]
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted many experts to warn about its impacts on democracy. To explore this issue further, the IPU is preparing a series of five articles on the topic. In this first piece, IPU Secretary General, Martin Chungong, discusses the risks and opportunities for democracy and argues that we […]
On the eve of its 134-year anniversary and the International Day of Parliamentarism, the IPU and Uruguay have signed an agreement with the objective of opening a regional IPU office in Montevideo. The future office will be a pilot project designed to deepen the IPU’s engagement with parliaments in the Latin American and Caribbean region by encouraging […]
On 30 June 1889, visionary parliamentarians Frédéric Passy of France and William Randall Cremer of the United Kingdom brought together MPs from Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Liberia, the United Kingdom and the USA in the first inter-parliamentary meeting in Paris, France. The Inter-Parliamentary Conference, later to become the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) was born. What […]
Twenty years after the first edition, the IPU and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have published a new version of a handbook for parliamentarians on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol. What is the CEDAW Convention? More than four […]
The first global Parliamentary Conference on Interfaith Dialogue: Working together for our common future is expected to conclude with a declaration that encourages interfaith dialogue and calls for all religions and beliefs to be treated equally. The Marrakesh Communiqué calls on parliamentarians to ensure that “all religions, beliefs and faith-based organizations are treated equally and without discrimination under the […]
To mark the two-year anniversary of the I Say Yes to Youth in Parliament! campaign, the IPU organized an online event called Shout Out to Youth Changemakers on 24 May 2023. The gathering served as a platform for taking stock of progress in implementing transformative actions, sharing success stories, and galvanizing further action to rejuvenate parliaments. The event brought […]
