20/11/2020 | 16:28:55 Dear colleagues, I want to congratulate the rapporteur Ms Petra STIENEN for her report and I fully agree with the rapporteur that this report is very timely. Of course it's always timely and necessary to address the gender issues here in the Assembly as elsewhere, but in the year 2020 we are remembering many international milestones of the fight for gender equality as the rapporteur mentioned: the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action for Gender Equality, and 20 years since the... 30/01/2020 | 18:06:54 Dear President, I just wanted to use some of these three minutes to welcome this debate and both of these reports and want to thank the rapporteurs, Mr Vernon COAKER and Ms Serap YAŞAR and the Secretariat, of course, for their very good work. We are here talking about the darkest side of human nature and humanitarian issues, exploitation of other persons and modern slavery. Because human trafficking is nothing else than that and let us just call trafficking what it is. The rapporteur, Mr... 30/01/2020 | 10:28:35 Dear colleagues, President, Commissioner of Human Rights, I want to congratulate the rapporteur and the secretariat for this timely, necessary and thorough report on an issue that seems to be very complicated but in reality revolves around a simple fact. It is our obligation to preserve and uphold children's rights. Don't get me wrong, I acknowledge the complexity of the issue, but the complexity regarding the repatriation of children is more or less in the political sphere like we've seen so... 28/01/2020 | 18:59:46 Dear colleagues. I want to congratulate Lord George FOULKES on this extremely important report. Threats to media freedom and journalists' security is a direct threat to democracy as is stated so clearly in the report. Did you all know that 10 journalists have been killed in Council of Europe member states since 2017, with their killing directly linked to their profession? Kim Wall, Daphne Caruana Galizia, Lyra McKee, Nikolai Andrushcenko, Mksim Borodin, Dmitry Popkov, Jan Kuciak and his... 27/01/2020 | 13:02:11 President and dear colleagues, as I congratulate us on a new President and wish him all the best I want to thank Lillian PASQUIER for her splendid work and my deepest thanks for her and I also want to thank the rapporteur for his progress report which is very good. I want to focus on the gender equality chapter in the progress report and what the annual preparation the breakdown shows us. It is sad and disappointing to see that the number of women members of the Assembly stays the same as in... 03/10/2019 | 18:47:19 Madame President, Migrant and refugee issues will continue to be one of the main issues in the upcoming months and years here at PACE. Climate change is now the main threat to human rights. As Michelle BACHELET, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated to the UN Human Rights Council meeting in September: “The world has never seen a threat to human rights of this scope”. Last June, the Council of Europe's Commissioner of Human Rights also made a statement on the human rights aspect of... 03/10/2019 | 17:30:25 President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur on this important report. Gender-based violence is rarely discussed. Increasing attention is being given to inherent gender bias in healthcare. Women and girls have different medical needs, and even different biological representation of diseases, than men and boys. This has long been a neglected area of research, resulting in women receiving less qualified health care than men, resulting in traumatic experiences for women and girls, with... 03/10/2019 | 10:16:43 Madame President, The journey across the Mediterranean Sea is treacherous at best, deadly at its worst. Hundreds of thousands have taken on this journey, to flee conflict and poverty in war-torn places, for the safety of Europe. Twenty thousand people have died on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea during the last six years. Migrants and refugees, desperate to escape from wars, droughts, poverty and inequality, to a European shelter. Many are coming from North Africa in... 28/06/2019 | 11:11:52 Dear colleagues, Thank you so much for your participation in the debate and your engagement in this serious issue. The war in Syria is a war that has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis in our times. It has been a humanitarian catastrophe of immense proportion with atrocious crimes, forced displacement, use of chemical weapons, torture and attacks against civilians that have been commonplace. It has been fought by countless militant groups within Syria representing various... 28/06/2019 | 10:06:51 Thank you Chair. Dear colleagues. We know that the war in Syria has been the source of many issues that we have been debating on here in this Assembly for the recent year. We have witnessed, extremely, many people fleeing the situation in Syria and that has also been the case that we've been dealing with especially when it comes to migration issues here in the Assembly. Today we are debating on this report, The Situation in Syria: prospects for a political solution? The report by Ms Theodora...