The Secretaries General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Mr. Martin Chungong, and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), Amb. Sergio Piazzi, discussed reinforced cooperation between the two organisations during a meeting held in Geneva on 1 September 2017.
In the framework of their ongoing commitment to parliamentary diplomacy, IPU and PAM will jointly organize, in cooperation with the Maltese authorities, a major international conference on Mass Migrations from Africa to Europe, in Valletta, on 16-17 November 2017.
In this context, parliaments and their members have a critical role to play in adopting adequate legislation, in ensuring that effective policies are in place and implemented and in mobilizing public support for such actions. The Conference will explore what this means concretely for receiving, transit countries and countries of origin. It will identify steps that the parliaments of those countries can take, including through stronger regional and cross-regional coordination and cooperation, to help ensure fair, smart and humane migration.
All EU national parliaments and the PAM constituency will be invited to attend and contribute, together with, among others, the European and Pan-African Parliaments. The national Parliaments of Niger, Chad, Mali and Senegal, as well as the relevant international organizations, such as UNHCR and IOM, will also be associated to the event.
The two Secretaries General will meet again in New York, in two weeks, on the margins of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, and the outcome of the joint IPU/PAM Valletta conference will represent a dedicated parliamentary input to the strategic Global Compact on Migrations, set as a top priority for the UN General Assembly by its new President, H.E. Miroslav Lajčák, Foreign Minister of Slovakia.