B Explanatory memorandum,
by Mr Bernard MarquetNote
1 Introduction
1. Suicide is the act of intentionally
putting an end to one’s own life. Since the work of Emile Durkheim
in 1897, suicide is no longer exclusively associated with mental
disorders or mental illness, but may also result from social problems.
It has become a major public health problem second only to serious
diseases, especially since the 1970s. In addition to ending young
lives prematurely, suicide leaves an enormous amount of damage in
its wake. Its effects ripple out to impact on those close to the
death of a young person.
2. Suicide profoundly affects western societies. It kills more
people than traffic accidents. Of the Council of Europe member states,
the Russian Federation, Hungary and Slovenia are among the countries
with the highest suicide rates. It affects all population categories,
including children and teenagers and comes second only to serious
illness as a public health problem.
3. In the 11 to 24 age-group, two thirds of young suicides are
male and one third female. The proportions are the reverse for suicide
attempts. While attempted suicides are primarily a cry for help
or an expression of deep suffering, suicide itself is a much more
violent act which is sometimes planned and rehearsed over a period
of time.
4. Adolescence, a transitional period of life which varies according
to national traditions, may be roughly situated between the ages
of 11 and 24. In particular, it represents a time of searching in
order to construct one’s own personality, very often resulting in
a need to control everything, even one’s own death. Adolescents often
exchange confidences that sublimate death and anguish.
5. Suicide often involves a complex interplay of factors mental
disorder, poverty, drug or alcohol abuse, isolation, bereavement,
relationship difficulties and work problems. As an indicator of
social malaise, suicide is being mainly bound up with unemployment,
economic insecurity and the loosening of family ties. For many adolescents,
suicide is linked to failure or fear of failure. Moreover, alcohol
and drug misuse have both been found to be associated with young
suicide and intoxication often provides the context for suicide
in young people.
6. The suicide rate in Europe is often low in countries where
religion is important, for example, Italy and Poland, as well as
the Muslim countries and some Asian countries. Religious belief
can also prevent suicide, because adherents to all religions hold
that only God can decide the time of death. Lastly, religions provide
a social framework for sharing values relating to truth and peace,
and this gives teenagers a feeling of belonging to a group at a
time when they are in quest of adult or peer recognition. However,
this approach can also lead to problems, particularly within sects
or millenarian religious movements where indoctrination can result
in collective suicides or a desire to kill oneself in order to gain
access to a better world. One example was in Albania in February
2005, when several children between the ages of 9 and 16 committed
suicide after contacts with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
7. Material on the Internet needs to be addressed in a discriminating
manner. Young people value the Internet as a space where they are
not subject to adult supervision and scrutiny. It has been argued
that young men particularly may find it easier to express troubling
feelings and thoughts in the anonymous and unsupervised space of
the Internet and some successful initiatives, such as the CALM initiative
in the United Kingdom which aimed to intervene to support young
men with depression, have used the Internet to encourage young men
to express feelings of distress and to access counselling. However,
the unsupervised nature of chatrooms and blogs mean that they also
offer opportunities for suicide to be glamorised and for information on
lethal means of death to be freely circulated.
8. The appearance of “suicide clusters” has also been observed.
This is the term used to describe a number of suicides occurring
close together in time and place. These have been identified in
institutions such as universities, schools and prisons. A suicide
occurring at proximity appears to have the effect of lifting the inhibitions
associated with the act of taking one’s own life.
9. Finally, there is another phenomenon that specialists call
the “Mat Syndrome”, a process consisting of five phases of varying
duration which enables adolescents to transform their distress into
a complex path towards suicide. The initial phase is predominantly
imaginary, that of escape into one’s own head. Then comes the phase
of struggle, during which the teenager is alone with his or her
anguish, and the third phase which is the one akin to depression.
This is the period when the young person calls for help. There follows
the phase of revolt, also the phase when the teenager will look
for persons who have the same thoughts. The last phase of all is
the one called “the eye of the hurricane”, the most dangerous. During
this period, the young person may flaunt a deceptive calm, but in
reality he or she will be preparing the scenario of his or her death.
Note
10. In this context, prevention must therefore become the major
concern for countering this ever-increasing problem. Yet, suggesting
that a young person approaches suicide through distinct and identifiable
sequential stages might be misleading since these stages will not
be readily identifiable to those seeking to identify young people
at risk of suicide.
2 Factors involved in suicide
11. The first point to remember
is that suicidal thoughts are by no means abnormal in a teenager.
Where suicidal thoughts become worrying is when the person’s only
way of solving his/her problems and difficulties is to implement
these thoughts. Suicide can indeed be interpreted as “a cry of pain”
in response to the feeling that a person is trapped in an impossible
situation from which there is not other form of escape.
Note
12. Young suicide has been shown to be associated with a wide
range of factors. While mental disorders are associated with a high
proportion of all suicides, they are less likely to characterise
young suicides as young people are less likely to have a diagnosis
of mental illness. In addition to factors related to the individual’s mental
health, personality traits such as impulsivity and perfectionism,
family history and life events such as the break-up of a relationship,
bullying or bereavement can be significant for young people.
13. The family environment also poses risks such as loss of a
close relative, family violence, sexual abuse (incest, interfering
and rape) and exposure to suicide by a family member. Loneliness,
unemployment, imprisonment in the case of older teenagers, and very
low social status can also be factors in suicide. All these factors
can result in diminished self-esteem, shutting the young people
into a feeling of malaise and solitude. The Conduites à Risque resource
centre in the Bas-Rhin department, France, summarises the situation
as follows: “In the more extreme cases, the feeling of loneliness
becomes a feeling of drifting away or even becoming detached from
a society which fails to provide solid references or existential
meaning. The loneliness theme is also germane to much more serious
problems such as scarification and suicide.”
Note
14. According to a Canadian study,
Note children
of divorced parents suffer more frequently from depression than
others and may display depressive or anxious behaviour. Yet, the
rapporteur believes that as divorce is now a widespread and well-established
feature of European society, it may be unhelpful to suggest a direct association
with young suicide. It may be more relevant to note that changing
family and social structures have deprived young people of some
of the traditional forms of emotional and practical support which
eased their path through the transition to adult status and independent
living. Some of those resources formerly provided by government
for young adults such as public housing, apprenticeships or income
support are no longer provided by the state.
15. Among young females, suicide often results from rape, sexual
abuse or the end of a relationship. In the event of rape, girls
develop feelings of guilt and disgust with their own bodies which
can drive them to suicide.
16. The distress that manifests itself in delinquent behaviour
can also temporarily produce violence towards the self. The question
is whether the violence will take the form of delinquency or suicide
delinquency or suicide. In fact we might ask ourselves whether the
mass killings perpetrated by students in their secondary schools
are not another form of suicide, because after all the violence
against their peers they turn the gun against themselves. Nevertheless,
the rapporteur wishes to underline in this respect that the relationship between
suicide and homicide is complex and varies between different countries.
17. Risk taking is generally held to be a normal feature of adolescent
development and one of the means by which young people extend their
experience and test out boundaries. Yet, for some years now, we
have seen an increase in risk behaviour (placing oneself in danger
with physical, bodily and health risks – injuries, illness, deaths
– but also psychological risks) largely arising from pacts between
adolescents. Such suicides also take place in the context of games
in which the teenagers try to come as close as possible to death,
either by confusing reality and fiction or in order to experience
a sensation halfway between ecstasy and death. Such suicides are
the result of roleplaying and other such games.
18. Collective suicide or incitements to suicide are therefore
likely to develop via the new communication channels such as the
blogs on the Internet. The latter brings lonely youngsters into
contact with other “companions in adversity”. Instead of talking
to their parents, doctors or social workers, they build up a sort
of community and thus shut themselves into a world in which suicide
becomes an obvious, or even a romantic solution. “In their minds
suicide became as commonplace as changing their shirts,” says the
mother of one Belgian child who tried to commit suicide following
intensive exchanges with other teenagers on the Internet blogs.
Note
19. The rapporteur is indeed concerned by the risk of harm from
online information which promotes suicide. While such content may
not be illegal nor conclusively proven by research evidence
Note to induce suicide there is
a risk to the physical, emotional and psychological well-being of
young people in particular with regard to the portrayal and glorification
of self-harm. The rapporteur believes that the protection of children
and young people from such risks forms part of the general obligations
of member states pursuant to the European Convention on Human Rights.
20. The most iconic case of such “teenage networked suicides”
happened in Bridgend in Wales. In 2007 seven teenagers hanged themselves
after allegedly corresponding by Internet on the Bebo social media network.
(Despite media speculation, there has been no evidence produced
to suggest that the young people who died in Bridgend discussed
suicide on the Internet. Yet the media has been heavily criticised
in the United Kingdom for its coverage of these deaths.) Many youngsters
took this tragedy as a model, because several attempts at teenage
collective suicides followed in Europe, the most recent case being
in Gent in Belgium. These blogs often create the impression that
suicide is easy and commonplace and make adolescents, often in the
depressive phase, want to follow this example, especially if it
carries a challenge.
21. Teenagers growing up in our media-oriented society are often
confronted with media hype surrounding suicide, where it is presented
as an heroic, “glamorous” act. Mentioning the site and method of
the suicide and the person’s identity creates a kind of model for
these vulnerable youngsters, who are then tempted to copy them.
In 2006 the Austrian Association for the Prevention of Suicide,
backed by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (AISP),
launched a major media awareness campaign urging the media to exercise caution
in their coverage of suicide. Furthermore, at an age when young
people are building up their personal identities and need role models,
suicides by rock singers (for example, Nirvana and INXS) can give
rise to copycat attempts.
22. Special attention must be paid to young people with unconventional
sexual orientations. In such cases there is a higher risk of psychological
crisis linked to discovering their own homosexuality, rejection
by family or friends, harassment or homophobic assault. Social rejection,
especially homophobia, more so than homosexuality and its acceptance,
is apparently the main factor in suicide among teenagers, particularly among
young males. Several studies
Note have
found that young people in this category are more vulnerable to suicidal
depression. These young people can find themselves trapped between
their new sexual identity and their former identity which is the
one known to family and friends. The authors of these studies consider
that profound acceptance of one’s own homosexuality is the only
way to protect against suicide.
3 Factors
involved in attempted suicide
23. Unlike suicide, attempted suicide
is often regarded as a call for help or a result of acute social
isolation or neglect by adults. Frequently, suicide attempts develop
from apparently trivial situations, such as a poor mark at school,
a family reprimand or sentimental setbacks. Lastly, the manner of
the suicide attempt sends out a strong message to the young person’s
family and the medical profession. Some of the less violent methods
are more cries for help than any genuine wish on the person’s part
to kill him/herself.
24. At present there are no statistics on attempted suicide but
as a rule attempted suicide is found more frequently among young
females. This is put down to the fact that young males use more
violent means than young females.
25. The consensus conference on teenage suicidal crises organised
by the French Psychiatric Federation in Paris in 2000 identified
three categories of factors: 1. primary factors with strong predictive
values (attempted suicide precedents multiply the risk of a further
attempt by 20; depression multiplies the risk by 5; and previous psychiatric
treatment multiplies it by 30); 2. secondary factors, which may
aggravate the risk if there are primary factors (violence between
the parents or between the parents and children, sexual violence,
depression, alcoholism, death or brutal separation, disciplinary
problems at school); and, lastly, 3. tertiary factors, which are more
sociological in nature (including age and sex).
Note
26. In cry-for-help suicide attempts young females generally use
medicinal drugs that can kill, hoping to find refuge in sleep and
wake up different. In most cases the taking of medicinal drugs by
young people is not fatal.
27. Medication and chemical treatment for suicide attempts also
raise a number of problems. Taking medicines, particularly antidepressants,
creates certain risks for suicidal patients. Apart from the addiction phenomenon,
the disinhibiting effect can cause fresh suicidal risks.
28. 28 Where one suicide attempt has been made there is a high
risk of a repeat attempt. This may not necessarily occur immediately
or within a year but later on in life. It is estimated that 15%
of adolescents who have attempted suicide will make a repeat attempt.
To help adolescents as much as possible, it is essential that their
families and teachers give them the support they need and try to
rebuild their self-esteem by emphasising and capitalising on their
skills and abilities. As one doctor puts it, “it is important to
visit the young patient while they are still in intensive care.
You must be there when they regain consciousness, talk with them and
immediately set an appointment. The fact of creating a bond, a commitment
at that particular moment is essential. In many cases if you wait
three days it is too late: the youngsters will swear that they don’t
need treatment and that they will not do it again.”
Note
29. Desperation or the perceived impossibility of solving one’s
problems provides a possible explanatory link between depression
and attempted suicide. Desperation may show up as aimlessness, feelings
of incompetence or low self-esteem. Desperation accounts much more
often for suicide attempts than does clinical depression, and can
be one of the best predictors of a suicide attempt.
30. Student suicide is also a matter for concern. For these adolescents
or young adults the student world is often a strange new world where
their parents’ authority and benevolence are inoperative, a society
in which they are faced with the challenges involved in the transition
to independent living and adult status.
31. A British study
Note has
shown that the rate and causes of suicide among students are very
often similar to those for young adults in general. Nevertheless,
some factors (mental health problems, alcohol consumption, drug-taking,
active participation in risk behaviours, deliberate selfmutilation
particularly among young females, broken relationships, etc.) are
intensified in the student environment, an area of renewed freedom
in which the students structure their social relations. Moreover,
some factors associated with young suicide are specific to the student
world, for example, a lack of financial resources and the fear of
academic failure.
32. Lastly, student suicide often creates a climate of anxiety
and fear if the act is committed on campus or in a hall of residence.
Waiting for the police and the undertakers, watching the police
investigations, arranging for the identification of the suicide
victim by his/her fellow students, accompanying the parents to the
morgue and announcing the news to the other students are all events
which affect the mental balance of these young adults and can lead
to copycat attempts among the more fragile students.
33. Close attention should also be paid to a new phenomenon: blogs
(contraction of “web logs”) on the Internet, being a collection
of personal pages enabling teenagers to express themselves with
texts, photos or snatches of music, and to carry on a dialogue with
websurfers. It is not so much a diary, but a public area subject
to the laws that govern freedom of expression.
34. In this context, self-harm may also be regarded as suicide
attempts in the broad sense. They have indeed become emblematic
of adolescence. This practice more often affects girls, whereas
boys express their aggression through violent acts directed outwards.
4 Risk-detection
and prevention of repeat attempts
35. Suicide prevention was born
in the United Kingdom in November 1952. Reverend Chad Varah laid
the foundations by placing an advertisement in the London papers
begging anyone about to commit suicide to phone Man 2000. It was
his own number. He sent out this appeal after the suicide of a young
acquaintance and was convinced that if he had been able to speak
to his friend just before the deed was done, the young man would
have stopped short of going through with it.
36. Mostly, risk-detection involves trying to identify a particular
vulnerability in an adolescent or child. Parents, teachers, classmates
and everyone else in contact with them need to be alert to tell-tale
signs: in the case of a child these might include increased unhappiness,
a slump in school performance or signs of agitation. It is important
in this context that all signs are taken into account, and one of
the most visible signs is cutting on the body, an act by which the
adolescent will initially try to sublimate his distress.
37. The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that in order
to prevent suicide in Europe, it is first of all necessary to identify
the mental illnesses which prompt people to take their despair out
on themselves. Some illnesses, such as depression, begin early and
according to the medical fraternity, depression among a 14-year-old
girl takes a very different form from depression in a 45year-old
woman.
38. According to a study carried out in hospitals, a distinction
needs to be made between primary, secondary and tertiary prevention.
Primary prevention relates to individuals who are not at risk of
committing suicide but who do have certain risk factors: the breaking-up
of a relationship, family bereavement and emotional losses. Such
situations which do not warrant immediate protection measures such
as hospitalisation highlight the importance of early psychosocial
action. This type of prevention is especially important in the school environment
as it is much easier here to identify young people who pose a suicide
risk.
39. The aim of secondary prevention is to stop the suicide process
before the individual goes through with it. It is very important
for those close to the individual to be able to recognise references
to suicide. Most of those who commit suicide had spoken about their
plans to someone close to them beforehand, whereas others had kept
their plans secret.
40. Tertiary prevention seeks to avoid a repeated suicide attempt
by trying to identify the factors which could lead to a repeated
attempt.
41. A Quebec association active in the field of suicide prevention
suggests, as prevention measures, restricting access to the means
of impulse suicide (firearms, knives, toxic household products),
building anti-suicide barriers, providing specialist supervisors
in schools and detention centres who can recognise the signs of
depression, and making psychological assistance available both to
teenagers and their families for averting repeat attempts.
42. Another example is the Samaritans in the United Kingdom who
provide a listening service and face-to-face contact for anyone
in psychological distress. The fact is that in the United Kingdom
the annual rate for suicides is the lowest in Europe.
43. Suicide prevention consequently involves activities ranging
from education to treatment of psychological disorder and environmental
control of risk factors. Doctors’ response to the problem can no
longer be purely pharmaceutical.
44. Medical prevention has developed over the past few years.
The medical profession was long helpless in the face of this problem.
Today prevention is an integral part of regional and municipal programmes
that can fall back on structures that include doctors, nurses and
child psychiatrists. Medical provision should, however, be intensified.
In February 2005 the French Medical Association revealed that 75%
of teenagers attempting suicide were not hospitalised.
Note
45. Consequently, it is important to provide appropriate facilities,
from the resuscitation stage and initial treatment onwards. The
significance of the suicide attempt must not be played down, and
both the adolescent and his or her family must be helped to get
over the attempt, put it behind them and face up to the future. Sometimes
the suicide attempt marks the end of an adolescent crisis and this
gesture, as a means of expressing the entire distress felt, can
sometimes be the start of a period of recovery.
46. Moreover, health professionals should also be provided with
training and educational programmes in the suicide phenomenon, especially
teenage suicide. Health professionals’ attitudes towards young people
who express suicidal thoughts, self-harm or attempt suicide can
be key to engaging young people with counselling or support services.
There is a considerable amount of evidence from young people themselves
that health professionals’ attitudes can be judgemental, dismissive
or unsympathetic (Mental Health Foundation, 2006). Challenging and
changing such attitudes is a key task for training programmes. Several
countries (for example, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway) have
launched extensive programmes to deal with the issue. In Norway,
for instance, training is a priority. Educational programmes in
suicidology reach right across the board, incorporating new fields
of competence (medical, social, regional specificities, etc.).
47. Psychological prevention programmes are also needed for early
detection of the psychological dysfunctions which induce adolescents
to act out their suicidal thoughts. Finland and Canada, for instance, have
included in their prevention programmes a method called a “psychological
autopsy” which highlights the factors leading to suicide. Like a
conventional autopsy, the psychological autopsy method goes back
over the suicidal patient’s previous psychological, social and medical
history in order to try to understand his or her act and thus facilitate
earlier detection in problem teenagers.
48. Of course there is no substitute for social prevention as
practised in the teenager’s family and circle of friends. The fact
of being loved, recognised, valued and feeling that he/she is understood
and integrated in a given group is of major benefit to a child in
ensuring his or her balance. Adults play a crucial role in helping teenagers
in all departments of their lives. The priority must go to listening
and engaging in dialogue. Parents should not see references by the
teenager to death or possible suicide as blackmail but as a cry
for help. As Patrick Delaroche, a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
and author of Adolescents à problèmes (Problem teenagers),
puts it: “in conflicts between teenagers and their parents, many
adults only see the oppositional crisis and sometimes overlook the
genuine suffering which may be lurking beneath the conflict”.
49. Lastly, families must realise the extent of the problem and
confide in their GPs, because a persistent feeling of shame often
prompts parents to conceal teenage suicide attempts from the family
circle and from the family doctor. Doctors and families must therefore
be fully associated with the psychological reconstruction of the
teenagers in question.
50. The parents’ role is particularly important for teenagers
with unconventional sexual orientations, because their attitude
is vital in helping them to live and come to terms with their orientation.
Similarly, schools, colleges and universities also have a role to
play in encouraging young people, both individually and in groups, to
accept diversity with regard to sexuality as well as in respect
of race and disability.
51. Where such social prevention is not available in the family
home, the social structures must become involved in order to detect
such risks of suicide. At school, social workers must link up with
medical professionals to provide an area for dialogue on the problems
which eat away at these teenagers and may drive them to suicide.
However, as WHO points out, “the balance that must be struck in
the contact with a suicidal student is between distance and closeness
and between empathy and respect”.
Note Such
associations as Papyrus in the United Kingdom, which deals with
preventing youth suicide, provide teenagers and their parents with
assistance and also advise policy makers in order to improve the
implementation of the relevant political decisions.
52. Many structures have emerged in various countries to serve
as dialogue platforms for adolescents at risk of attempting suicide.
These centres dealing with risk behaviours provide potential suicides
with a listening ear for their anxieties, which reassures teenagers.
In Germany, for instance, the Alliance against Depression, a major
suicide prevention strategy, has introduced a twenty-fourhour hotline
for suicidal people and their families. In France, the Conduites
à Risque resource centres provide young people with spaces for listening and
dialogue. As Valérie Béguet, the director of one of these centres
in the Bas-Rhin Departmental Council in Strasbourg points out, “the
work of the counsellors is not confined to listening: they play
an active role during the telephone call. They help callers to put
new words to their thoughts, fears and indeed their suffering”.
Note
53. Prevention also involves major awareness-raising policies
covering both media treatment of teenage suicides and rejection
of the trivialisation of such suicides. Such countries as Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Norway and the United Kingdom have fully
grasped the media impact of suicide on adolescents and are beginning
to act accordingly.
54. Such prevention policies also require educational strategies
targeting the teenagers themselves. This is the approach advocated
by the Papyrus association, which considers that teenagers should
be able to recognise the symptoms of mental illness in both themselves
and others in order to react promptly and appropriately. Indeed,
research addressing a range of issues has shown that the first people
young people turn to for support when in distress are other young
people.
55. Lastly, the unfortunate fact has to be faced that death is
sometimes the outcome, mostly leaving the parents with huge feelings
of loss and guilt. Families and the immediate circle live the nightmare
of wondering if they could have done something to prevent it. Close
attention therefore needs to be paid to the state of mind of young
people who have experienced suicide of a relative or friend. They
need help to cope with what is a particularly distressing form of
bereavement.
56. In this context, the rapporteur wishes to underline the importance
of so-called “postvention strategies” and the role of institutions
such as schools, clubs, colleges, universities and prisons in delivering
such strategies. “Postvention” is a term which is used it to cover
a range of planning and support activities which aim to reduce the
impact of suicide on survivors.
Note The risk of suicidal
thoughts and behaviour being transmitted to other young people within
such communities means that schools, clubs, colleges, universities
and prisons have a role to play in ensuring that postvention strategies
are adopted following a death.
5 Conclusions
and recommendations
57. Loss of a child, whatever the
cause of it, completely alters parents’ lives. In cases of suicide,
however, parents are faced with the unbearable.
58. To quote the findings of a conference on the subject in Nantes
in 2000 “suicide is always a failure, the failure of someone who
has given up, the failure of family and friends who saw nothing
and heard nothing, the failure of a society unable to equip itself
to help, support or save them”.
59. A teenage suicide is a scandal and a trauma which reflects
on the whole of society because it affects all the members of the
family in question and reflects relations between the members of
the whole of society, but above all it always reflects failure on
the part of any democratic society which calls itself progressive
and egalitarian.
60. The Assembly recommends, among other things, that governments
take all possible measures to recognise suicide and attempted suicide
as major health issues. As Dominique Gillot, the former French State Secretary
for Health, reminds us, “tomorrow’s Europe, which represents a factor
for hope for the great majority of young people, demands that we
must do our utmost to prevent such despairing acts”.
Note
***
Reporting committee: Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee.
Reference to committee: Doc. 10773 and Reference No. 3164 of 23 January 2006.
Draft resolution adopted by the committee on 14 March 2008.
Members of the committee: Mrs Christine McCafferty (Chairperson), Mr Denis
Jacquat (1st Vice-Chairperson), Mrs Minodora Cliveti (2nd
Vice-Chairperson), Mr Konstantinos Aivaliotis, Mr Farkhad Akhmedov,
Mr Vicenç Alay Ferrer, Mrs Sirpa Asko-Seljavaara, Mr Jorodd Asphjell,
Mr Lokman Ayva, Mr Zigmantas
Balčytis, Mr Miguel Barceló Pérez, Mr Andris Berzinš, Mr Jaime Blanco García, Mr Roland Blum,
Mrs Olena Bondarenko, Mrs Monika
Brüning, Mrs Bożenna Bukiewicz, Mr Igor Chernyshenko, Mr Imre Czinege,
Mrs Helen D’Amato, Mr Karl Donabauer, Mrs Daniela Filipiová, Mr Ilija
Filipović, Mr André Flahaut, (alternate: Mr Philippe Monfils), Mr Paul Flynn, Mrs Pernille
Frahm, Mrs Doris Frommelt, Mr Renato Galeazzi, Mr Henk van
Gerven, Mrs Sophia Giannaka, Mr Stepan Glăvan, Mr Marcel Glesener,
Mr Luc Goutry (alternate: Mr Geert Lambert),
Mrs Claude Greff, Mr Michael Hancock,
Mrs Olha Herasym’yuk, Mr Vahe
Hovhannisyan, Mr Ali Huseynov, Mr Fazail İbrahimli, Mrs Evguenia
Jivkova, Mrs Marietta Karamanli (alternate: Mr Jean-Paul Lecoq), Mr András Kelemen, Mr Peter
Kelly, Baroness Knight of Collingtree, Mr Haluk Koç, Mr Slaven Letica, Mr Andrija
Mandić, Mr Michal Marcinkiewicz, Mr Bernard Marquet,
Mr Ruzhdi Matoshi (alternate: Mr Aziz Pollozhani),
Mrs Liliane Maury Pasquier,
Mr Donato Mosella, Mr Felix Müri,
Mrs Maia Nadiradzé, Mrs Carina Ohlsson,
Mr Peter Omtzigt, Mrs Vera Oskina, Mrs Lajla Pernaska, Mrs Marietta
de Pourbaix-Lundin, Mr Cezar Florin Preda, Mrs Adoración Quesada
Bravo (alternate: Mrs Bianca Fernández-Capel),
Mrs Vjerica Radeta, Mr Walter Riester, Mr Andrea Rigoni, Mr Ricardo Rodrigues, Mrs Maria de Belém Roseira, Mr Alessandro
Rossi, Mrs Marlene Rupprecht, Mr Indrek Saar, Mr Fidias Sarikas,
Mr Andreas Schieder, Mr Ellert B. Schram, Mr Gianpaolo Silvestri,
Mrs Svetlana Smirnova (alternate: Mr Vladimir Zhidkikh), Mrs Anna Sobecka, Mrs Michaela Šojdrová, Mrs Darinka Stantcheva,
Mr Oleg Ţulea, Mr Alexander Ulrich, Mr Mustafa Ünal, Mr Milan Urbáni, Mrs Nataša
Vučković, Mr Victor Yanukovych, Mrs Barbara Žgajner-Tavš.
NB: The names of those members present at the meeting are
printed in bold.
See 15th Sitting, 16 April 2000 (adoption of the draft resolution,
as amended); and Resolution
1608.
