PAM President, Sen. Alia Bouran, participated and contributed to the 140th General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which took place in Doha from 6 to 10 April 2019.
The Session was opened by the Emir of the State of Qatar H.H. Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Over 1600 parliamentarians and 80 speakers of parliament from around 160 countries, as well as the UN experts and representatives of international organisations, took part in the work of the Assembly. The main topic under discussion was “Parliaments as platforms to enhance education for peace, security and the rule of law”.
The PAM President, in her address to the Assembly, referred to the recent analysis by GLOBSEC of the profiles of some 300 ISIL terrorists, arrested in 11 European countries in 2015, which shows that one of the common traits among the radicalised young terrorists was a lack of education, with only a very small percentage of them having completed high school.
In order to deal effectively with all aspects relating to radicalisation and terrorism, PAM has established, last February, a special Parliamentary Committee on Terrorism, to integrate the UN Global Strategy. The PAM Committee will discuss, at a dedicated session of a forthcoming PAM’s own conference in Turkey, the issue of Youth and Prevention, and the role of education will be central in that work.
“As parliamentarians, we must call all stakeholders to invest in increasing the level of compulsory schooling, encouraging vocational training, tackling school drop-out rates and boosting university and post-university education, and research and development” she stated.
She also referred to the work of the PAM Academic Platform and Economic Panel to facilitate interaction among key actors in the fields of higher education and research, as well as cooperation with institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, WTO and the OECD, in order to try to anticipate the challenges posed by the demographic trends of the region particularly in relation to the prospects for the evolution of the job market.
Senator Bouran also participated in the meeting with the Heads of regional parliamentary organizations to brainstorm and further explore modalities to enhance inter-parliamentary cooperation. In her intervention, she spoke about the PAM specific activities relating to the Middle East Peace Process, conflict resolution, countering terrorism, migration governance, as well as trade facilitation and investments. She called for parliamentary assemblies to work together and capitalize on their specific areas of expertise on issues of common concern and geo-political mandates.
On the side-lines of the conference, the PAM President also had a number of bilateral meetings with, inter-alia, the delegations of Italy, Palestine and Kuwait.