Mr. Florin Urcan, Roving Ambassador of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), represented the Assembly at the 63rd Annual Session of the NATO PA, held in Bucharest on 6-9 October 2017.
In his address to the Session, Mr. Urcan recalled that over the past three years PAM has been working closely with the UN Security Council on the parliamentary dimension of counter-terrorism efforts.
Subsequently, based on the successes of four parliamentary conferences on this topic in Bucharest and Rome, the UNSC Executive Directorate has recently asked PAM also to bridge the gap in their cooperation with Central Asia Republics, another region highly affected by the Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) phenomenon.
This coming November, in St Petersburg, PAM together with the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the UN, will organise a conference on ensuring interoperability between national legislations in the implementation of UNSC resolution 2178.
The PAM Roving Ambassador said that the other major issue requiring inter-parliamentary cooperation is the issue of Migration. In addition to refugees from Syria, many of the people on the move, through the Sahel, to Europe via Libya, are economic migrants. Many African nations are facing a demographic problem, with high population growth that from the present 900 million will reach 2.6 billion across the continent by 2050, with a poor level of sustainable development, and struggling economies.
“Therefore, to truly stem the flow of migration, we must address structural problems by engaging with countries of origin”, Mr. Urcan added.
To this end, PAM has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Pan-African Parliament, to increase cooperation between parliamentarians of our regions to address the issue of migration. Additionally, at the margins of the 72nd UN General Assembly, PAM delegates met with the President of the General Assembly and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for West Africa and Sahel to coordinate efforts in this area.
Furthermore, in November 2017, in cooperation with the IPU and the Maltese Parliament, PAM will organise an international conference to address Mass Population Movements from Africa to Europe. This event will bring parliamentarians from the Mediterranean and the Sahel, as well as key international experts on the issue. The outcome of the event will contribute to the drafting and negotiations of the UN General Assembly Global Compact on Migration.