OSCE PA President Ilkka Kanerva addresses the IPU conference on 1 September 2015. © IPU, 2015COPENHAGEN, 2 September 2015 – Better co-operation among parliaments and interparliamentary bodies is crucial to meeting sustainable development goals and managing crises, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Ilkka Kanerva (MP, Finland) said in an address at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 1 September.
President Kanerva spoke before leaders from some 140 countries gathered at the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s World Conference of Speakers of Parliament.
“Are we moving towards a more secure world, with Sustainable Development Goals taken seriously, or are we moving towards more confrontation, or even war? The answer to that question depends on us and on our ability to deepen our co-operation and to tolerate each other in order to secure peaceful and humane international development,” the OSCE PA President said.
“A project towards more efficient and comprehensive co-operation between international parliamentary organizations should be launched as soon as possible,” he advocated.
Better synergy between parliaments can also combat the prevalence of geopolitical factors as the primary basis for decision-making and can also counter those who call into question human rights and democracy, the President said.
The World Conference of Speakers of Parliament is part of a series of high-level meetings ahead of the UN Summit later this month that will launch the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which lay out a post-2015 development agenda.
President Kanerva also noted the parallel between sustainable development pledges and the commitments contained in the Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE’s founding document. In the end, “keeping our word” is key, he said.
While in New York, President Kanerva met with incoming UN General Assembly President and former Speaker of the Danish Parliament Mogens Lykketoft.
He met bilaterally with Speaker of the Georgian Parliament David Usupashvili, who will host the 2016 OSCE PA Annual Session, for discussions that focused on the situation regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well as Georgia’s EU and NATO aspirations.
President Kanerva also met with Inter-Parliamentary Union President Saber Chowdhury; Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe President Anne Brasseur; Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN; Ambassador Milan Milanovic, the Permanent Representative of Serbia to the UN; high-level UN security experts; and representatives of several leading NGOs.
Several of the meetings focused on the conflict in and around Ukraine and mediation efforts.
