The Hon. Speaker Roger Mancienne is leading a delegation to the 145th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) General Assembly being held in Kigali, Rwanda from 11th to 15th October. The Seychelles delegation includes of Hon. Waven William, Deputy Chairperson of the IPU’ Sustainable Development Committee and the IPU desk officer of the National Assembly, Ms Emma Didon.
Speaker Mancienne and his delegates attended the inauguration ceremony held on the Tuesday 11th October, where the guest of honour, H.E. President Paul Kagame, the IPU President, Mr. Duarte Pacheco, Mr Martin Chungong, the Secretary General of the IPU and the host of the Assembly, the Rt. Hon Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Ms. Donatille Mukabalisa were in attendance. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Antonio Guterres, also addressed the Union in a video message.
Prior to the inauguration ceremony, the delegation attended the SADC and the Africa geo-political group meetings on Monday 10th October. The purpose was to build consensus on an Africa position on the 145th IPU General Assembly agenda including on the emergency item where much debate was seen. Mr Speaker will be amongst the 45 speakers of various parliaments who will be speaking on the main theme of debate entitled ‘Gender equality and gender sensitive parliaments as drivers for a more resilient and peaceful world’. Hon William will be involved on the Committee on Sustainable Development and Ms Didon will be engaged in meetings, such as the Youth and Women's forums. The following are some of the topical issues that the general assembly and committees will be dealing with: climate change, human rights abuses globally, democracy, peace and security, gender parity and gender-sensitive parliaments, ongoing geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine amongst others. The General Assembly will also adopt a resolution on an emergency item to be discussed and approved by a two thirds majority. Speaker Mancienne will also be having bilateral meetings with various dignitaries.
On the morning of Wednesday 12th October, the Hon. Speaker Mancienne, attended the 210th Session of the Governing Council. The first agenda point addressed the election of the presiding officer of the 145th Assembly where here, the Speaker of the Chamber of Representatives of Rwanda, Hon. Mukabalisa was unanimously elected as the President of the 145th Assembly. Other items on the agenda included Reports of the SG and President of the IPU, the IPU’s financial situation and its 2023 budget, reports on the IPU’s specialized meetings, activities of the committees and other bodies amongst other pertinent issues. In the meeting of the standing committee on Sustainable Development the same day, Hon. William made an intervention on the theme of the next resolution entitled ‘Parliamentary efforts in achieving negative carbon balances of forests.’ He called on the meeting to use the outcome of the Sendai framework midterm review to adopt more focused and targeted strategies to prevent desertification and deforestation in order to sustain a negative balance of carbon free forest.
The general debate themed ‘Gender equality and gender sensitive parliaments as drivers for a more resilient and peaceful world’ was opened by President Pacheco where he expressed his gratitude to the Rwandan parliament for its hospitality and its exemplary status as a gender sensitive parliament with over 60% of female parliamentarians. He shared his hope that the parliamentarians present learn from each other and to adopt best practices in achieving gender parity in parliaments worldwide, not in 40 years but much earlier, wherever possible.
Keynote speeches were then given by the UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous, Mr Wessel van den Berg from the Equimondo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice; the President of the Bureau of Women Parliamentarians, Hon L. Vasylenko; the United Nations envoy on Youth and; the President of the Board of the Forum of Young Parliamentarians, Hon Albazar. Following these, the debate on the theme was officially launched by President of the Assembly.
