PARLIAMENTARIANS ADDRESS THE QUESTION OF EFFECTIVE UNITED NATIONS REFORM AT THE ANNUAL PARLIAMENTARY HEARING IN NEW YORK

The global response to terrorism, humanitarian crises, and post-conflict situations were the subjects of a discussion that brought parliamentarians together with United Nations officials, governmental representatives and other experts against the backdrop of efforts to reform the world body.

"What goes up must come down", as the saying goes, and so it is for recent plans to reform the United Nations, and related initiatives on terrorism, humanitarian intervention, and peacebuilding: first adopted by some 190 heads of State at the United Nations in early September, those plans will hardly become effective until they are taken up again at the legislative level in the national parliaments of the world. That was one of the messages of this year's Parliamentary Hearing at the United Nations, entitled Our shared responsibility for a stronger United Nations to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, which took place on 31 October and 1 November in New York.

Opened by the President of the General Assembly, Mr. Jan Eliasson (Sweden), and the newly elected IPU President, Mr. Pier Ferdinando Casini (Speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies), the meeting provided an opportunity for the United Nations to hear the views of parliamentarians on the real prospects of recent reforms and initiatives to be implemented at the national level. As Mr. Eliasson said, "parliamentarians can bring a higher degree of realism to the work of the United Nations; it is important for representatives of the people to come to the United Nations for the United Nations to nurture its links with the people".

The IPU President expressed a similar view in his opening remarks, saying that "while we perform our constitutional role at home to represent the will of the people, this includes a clear responsibility in relation to the multitude of international negotiations that take place in multilateral forums. We want to make sure that we are well informed of these negotiations, that we have an opportunity to debate what is being negotiated, that we can question ministers and that we can call into question the negotiating position they are advancing on behalf of our people."

Notable panelists at this year's Parliamentary Hearing were: Congressman Jim Leach of the United States House of Representative's International Relations Committee; Senator Mohammedmian Soomro, Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan; Senator (Lieutenant General) Romeo Dallaire of Canada; the Honourable David Musila, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Kenya; and the Honourable Finn Martin Vallersnes of Norway, President of the IPU Committee on Middle East Questions.

Of the four broad topics on the agenda of this year's Parliamentary Hearing, the one on terrorism generated the most heated exchanges and raised several critical questions: how does one distinguish acts of terrorism from liberation struggles? Should anti-terrorism legislation impede upon basic civil liberties?

On the other hand, the parliamentarians found common ground on other aspects of the matter, calling all acts of terrorism (in the broad sense of any form of violence targeting innocent civilians) criminal acts that should be punished by law in all jurisdictions; pledging to ensure the early ratification and effective implementation of the relevant international instruments against terrorism; calling for the root causes of terrorism (poverty, discrimination, occupation) to be seriously addressed; and supporting further efforts at international coordination against terrorism.

The full report and the programme of the Parliamentary Hearing are available on the Parliamentary Hearing dedicated web page