General Assembly Session 54 meeting 41

The President

I give the floor to the representative of India to introduce draft resolution A/54/L.9.

Mr. Sharma (India)

I have the honour, on behalf of 133 sponsors, to introduce the draft resolution contained in document A/54/L.9, on cooperation between the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

Last year, we had spoken about the important work being done in the IPU, and at the national level in India, for the empowerment of women and to redress gender imbalances. We are therefore particularly pleased that this year the Deputy Chairman of the Upper House of the Indian Parliament has been elected as the first woman President of the Inter-Parliamentary Council in the 110-year history of the IPU.

The text of the draft resolution has been jointly prepared by the delegations of the States members of the Executive Committee of the IPU. I believe that it commands overwhelming support, as is clear from the number of sponsorships it has received, which is at the highest level ever. In addition, the following States have also become sponsors: Australia, El Salvador, Eritrea, Mauritania and Swaziland, for a total of 138 sponsors.

The Secretary-General, in his report to the General Assembly, has highlighted the intensification of cooperation between the United Nations and the IPU in several areas. The report also especially welcomes the progress made in preparing for the Conference of Presiding Officers of National Parliaments, which is to be held at United Nations Headquarters from 30 August to 1 September 2000, in conjunction with the Millennium Assembly. We are happy to note that the representative of the Secretary-General has been regularly participating in the meetings of the IPU Preparatory Committee for this first-ever Conference of Presiding Officers. We share the Secretary-General's hope that this Conference will be a major milestone in efforts to enhance people's understanding of, and support for, the United Nations through their elected representatives.

Substantially, the concerns of the United Nations and the IPU are common. The relationship between them dates back to the establishment of the United Nations, in which the IPU played a significant part. As the President of the General Assembly, addressing the meeting of Parliamentarians, said two days ago:

"With its membership and activities transcending members' political convictions, culture, religion and economics, the IPU is ideally placed for playing a constructive role in our common search for finding workable solutions to the problems besetting our nations and peoples". (GA/SM/115)

Today, in the 11Oth year of the establishment of the IPU, when the next century is just a few weeks away, we must make an appraisal of past achievements and, in their light, design a future course of action to complete the unfinished agenda and to face new and emerging challenges.

Among the priority tasks before the United Nations and the IPU today is the need to promote the development of developing countries in a globalizing world. We must work to make globalization equitable, broad-based and informed with ethical concern so that it responds to the aspirations of all and leads to the marginalization of none. One of the demonstrated fallout effects of globalization has been accentuated marginalization. The Secretary-General has himself spoken of this. To quote from his observations at Davos this year:

"Globalization is a fact of life. But I believe we have underestimated its fragility...The spread of markets far outpaces the ability of societies and their political systems to adjust to them, let alone to guide the course they take. History teaches us that such an imbalance between the economic, social and political realms can never be sustained for very long." (SG/SM/6881)

The IPU has taken up the cause of the large segment of humanity which is not a beneficiary of globalization and, at the recent conference in Berlin, discussed the need to revise the current global financial and economic model, and adopted a resolution which called for special initiatives for underdeveloped, debt-ridden countries.

Cooperation between the United Nations and the IPU now extends to several specialized agencies and bodies of the United Nations system. We are pleased that during the course of last year an Agreement of Cooperation was concluded between the IPU and the International Labour Organization, as also a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, thereby opening up new avenues for support by national parliaments for the work of the United Nations system.

During the last year, IPU has continued to consider issues such as disarmament, global peace, social development, environment, population and parity between men and women, which are important areas of the work of the United Nations. It has supplemented United Nations conferences and summits in the past, and will continue to do so in the future, by organizing specialized meetings of parliamentarians on their themes. It proposes, among other things, to hold a joint meeting with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) later this year on women and democracy, as well as tripartite interactions in the context of the five-year reviews of the implementation of the World Summit for Social Development and the Fourth World Conference on Women.

The positive picture that I have briefly outlined demonstrates the potential of cooperation between the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. There is an essential similarity in the approach, convergence of actions and, most importantly, a perfect congruence of the objectives of the two organizations. It is for this reason that the draft resolution, in its preambular part, having recalled resolution 53/13 of 28 October 1998, notes with appreciation the activities carried out by the Inter-Parliamentary Union during the past year in support of United Nations actions in the fields of peace and security, economic and social development, international law and human rights, democracy, governance and gender issues.

Furthermore, in its operative part it welcomes the support provided to the United Nations and expresses the wish that the cooperation will be further strengthened and enhanced in the third millennium. It also welcomes the information contained in the Secretary-General's report regarding preparations for the Conference of Presiding Officers of National Parliaments and requests the Secretary-General to examine and report on the possibilities of inviting the Inter-Parliamentary Union to report to the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly -- the Millennium Assembly -- on the outcome of that Conference.

In operative paragraph 4, the draft resolution requests the Secretary-General to submit a report to the General Assembly at its fifty-fifth session on various aspects of cooperation between the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Finally, in operative paragraph 5, it decides to include in the provisional agenda of the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly an item entitled "Cooperation between the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union".

In conclusion, and given the fact that the draft resolution that I have just introduced has no financial implications for the programme budget, I wish to propose, on behalf of all the sponsors, that it be adopted by consensus.

Allow me to depart from my printed text to convey our deep condolences and sense of shock to the people of Armenia on the deaths of the Prime Minister, Speaker and several Members of Parliament, who were assassinated today by gunmen inside the parliamentary building, and to condemn that dastardly and execrable act.