On June 3 2021, PAM MPs gathered on the side of the 15th Plenary Session to prepare for the launching of the PAM Women Parliamentary Forum (WPF).
The initiative is being spearheaded by Hon. Joana Lima, Head of the Portuguese Delegation, and in close cooperation with Hon. Yana Chiara Ehm (Italy), President of the 3rd PAM Standing Committee.
PAM Bureau members had decided earlier this year to establish the PAM Women Parliamentary Forum to provide PAM MPs with a unique platform for dialogue. The Forum will be a space for discussion to challenge negative norms, transform habits, introduce legislative ideas, and to promote a Mediterranean region without gender-based discrimination.
The Assembly’s commitment to gender issue had been further strengthened this year by the adoption of an amendment to the PAM Statutes requiring both genders to be represented in PAM delegations in order to enjoy full voting rights.
Hon. Lima stressed that MPs have a responsibility to address women’s under-representation in the political and economic decision-making spheres. She shared the draft Terms of References to be used as basis for discussing the composition and shape of the Forum, and then decide on its future functioning and priority themes.
Ms. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, President and founder of Women Political Leaders (WPL), said it is crucial for women politicians to meet in dedicated and non-exclusive fora and that the timing of the establishment of PAM WFP is very opportune. Hon. Lesia Vasylenko, President of IPU Bureau of Women Parliamentarians, added that parliaments must be models of gender-sensitivity where every budget and policy is analysed through a gender lens.
A dynamic parliamentary debate highlighted the consensus for the establishment of the PAM WPF. Some key issues to be addressed by the Forum were already put forward, including female poverty and vulnerability, domestic violence, the plight of women refugees, and championing women’s rights as fundamental human rights throughout the Mediterranean region.
The inaugural session of the WPF shall take place in person, kindly hosted by Portugal, in fall 2021.