The 137th Assembly of the Ministry of Railways has been completed in St. Petersburg. The delegation of the Interparliamentary Assembly of CIS member states took part in its events, which took place at the headquarters of the IPA CIS from October 14 to October 18. Valentina Matvienko, the Chairman of the IPA CIS Council, acted as the head of the delegation. The delegation included Sergei Rybakov, Chairman of the IPA CIS Permanent Commission on Culture, Information, Tourism and Sport, Alexei Sergeyev, Secretary General of the CIS IPA Council, Deputy Secretaries -An authorized representatives of the parliaments of the states-participants of the IPA CIS.
The plenary sessions were made by the heads of parliamentary delegations of almost all member countries of the Commonwealth who took part in the meeting of the IPA CIS Council held on the eve of the IPU Assembly on October 13.
In the framework of the general discussion of the Assembly on the topic “Promoting cultural pluralism and peace through interreligious and interethnic dialogue” from the IPA CIS, Sergei Rybakov said that “the activities of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, uniting the highest legislative authorities of nine states, are aimed not only at development dialogue between national parliaments, but also on the rapprochement of positions on such sensitive issues as pluralism of opinions and cultures, ethnic and confessional diversity. ”
At the last Assembly, the status of a permanent member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union was given to the parliaments of the two states – members of the Commonwealth – Turkmenistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan.
At the final meeting of the Assembly, a resolution was adopted “Towards the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Democracy: the commonality of our diversity,” which included the proposal of the IPA CIS – as an associate member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union – on appealing to the UN with the initiative to establish the International Day of Parliamentaryism on June 30 in commemoration of the first Assembly of the IPU, held in 1889.
During the Assembly, the Russian edition of the Inter-Parliamentary Union “Parliaments and Sustainable Development Goals: A Toolkit for Self-Assessment” translated and published by the IPA CIS was disseminated among the participants of the events, and the decision of the Governing Council included the joint implementation in 2018 of a St. Petersburg regional seminar on sustainable development goals for the Commonwealth parliamentarians.
On the margins of the 137th Assembly of the IPU, the Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council also held a number of bilateral meetings with the heads of parliamentary delegations attending the activities of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, including with the Chairman of the Mejlis of Turkmenistan Akjoy Nurberdyeva, the Chairman of the Committee of the Legislative Chamber of the Republic of Uzbekistan for Democratic Institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations and citizens’ self-government bodies Akmal Saidov, Secretary General of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly Mohammed Reza Majidi.