The Annual General Meeting of the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, presided over by the Speaker of the House of Commons, The Rt Hon John Bercow MP, Honorary President of the Group, was held on Wednesday 3 December 2014 where BGIPU members adopted the 2014 Annual Report, including hearing financial statements from the Treasurer, made amendments to BGIPU Rules and elected the Executive Committee for 2014/15.
BGIPU hosted a parliamentary delegation from Romania from 24-28 November 2014 led by Mr Dumitru Oprea, Chairman of the Democratic Liberal Party in the Senate. The key focus of the visit was on bilateral relations, EU cooperation and migration issues, providing valuable opportunities to explore the contribution being made by the Romanian community in the UK against the backdrop of the current UK debate regarding free movement provisions within the EU.
This year’s Parliamentary Hearing at the UN, jointly convened by the IPU and the UN from 19-20 November, was entitled, “Ensuring a people-centred approach to the new SDGs: A shared responsibility”. Key issues which drove the discussion included: how economic and social inequality, as well as discrimination, risked undermining people-centred development; the need to strengthen transparency and accountability to the people in both the public and private sectors; the responsibility of governments vis-à-vis the market; and how countries could deal more effectively with their human rights responsibilities and obligations.
Roger Godsiff MP led a delegation of UK parliamentarians including, Graham Brady MP and David Amess on behalf of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Thailand which visited Bangkok at the invitation of the Thai Government from 10-15 November 2014. This was the APPG’s first trip to Thailand since its inception and took place against the backdrop of the military coup in Thailand in May 2014 and the political and economic uncertainty resulting from it.
A little bit of BGIPU history was made when a Parliamentary delegation from our Parliament visited Guatemala and Honduras in the second week of November. We had not sent a delegation to Guatemala since 2008 and Honduras had never had a visit from the BGIPU. The visit highlighted the key difficulties Guatemala and Honduras are facing in the light of the current security situation and social inequalities, in addition to seeing potential opportunities for British investment and economic engagement.
The election of a new IPU President will be one of the main highlights of a content-rich 131st Assembly in Geneva on 12-16 October. The new president will take over from Abdelwahad Radi, who ends his three-year mandate at the end of the event. Over 120 IPU Member parliaments involving more than 650 MPs have so far registered to attend the 131st Assembly. Among them, there are more than 75 Speakers and Deputy Speakers of Parliament, as well as a significant percentage of women and young MPs.
The 131st IPU Assembly met in Geneva from 12 to 16 October 2014 with over 1,500 participants including 725 parliamentarians from 144 parliaments, with 113 Speakers or Deputy Speakers and 234 women MPs, and welcomed back Madagascar and Guinea bringing total IPU membership to 166 of the world’s parliaments. In an Assembly which saw S H Chowdhury elected as the new IPU President, key issues addressed including gender equity and violence against women, the current Ebola crisis and the threat of terrorism and extremism.
On 15 October, BGIPU co-hosted with civil society organizations Womankind and Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS UK), a lunchtime panel discussion on “Implementing the UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace & Security: How parliamentarians can engage.” Drawing on the recently launched UK National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security, participants highlighted the importance of recognising the role women can play in addressing conflict and the differing impacts of violent conflict on women and girls, including the need to address sexual violence in conflict.
No conversation about the UK and its relationship with the European Union is complete without someone talking about Norway at some stage or another. We don’t want to be like Norway, say some whilst others suggest that Norway is an example of what the future for a United Kingdom outside the EU could look like. Norway is an economically successful country and not part of the EU. But not all is quite as straightforward as it seems as we found out on our visit to Oslo in September this year.
The United Kingdom’s close friendship with Norway, forged in the dark days of Norway’s WWII occupation, remains strong despite the passage of time since 1945 and the dramatic change in Norway’s situation now that oil and gas have made it one of the richest countries in the world. Indeed, our recent delegation visit to Norway found that the wartime experience was still a strong factor in Norwegian perceptions of the UK, and that Norway was happy to be investing parts of its wealth in the UK.
