05/10/2011 | Session
"High unemployment is the big elephant in the room: this job crisis is the human face of the crisis", highlighted OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria while addressing PACE on Wednesday. The former Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs underlined many interconnections between areas of expertise of both OECD and Council of Europe, such as youth unemployment, gender, and tax havens.
05/10/2011 | Session
In a context of modest growth, weak public finances and persistently high unemployment in many member states, the Assembly considers that combating unemployment is one of the central challenges confronting the OECD economies; it has called on the OECD to develop appropriate policy advice in order to prevent high long-term unemployment rates from becoming entrenched.
05/10/2011 | Session
“Child pornography is a crime and a grave violation of the rights of the child,” the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography emphasised in her address to the Parliamentary Assembly.
05/10/2011 | Session
Deeply concerned at the public’s increased access to violent and extreme pornographic material, the Assembly has called on European governments to ensure the effective implementation of existing law regulating the production, distribution and sale of pornography. “A common feature in Council of Europe member states is the poor enforcement of existing law and regulations,” it underlined.
05/10/2011 | Session
According to the PACE, the partnership between the Council of Europe and the EU facilitated by the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty should lead to “a common space for human rights protection across the continent in the interest of all people in Europe”, through the European Union’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights, which is a requirement of the treaty.
05/10/2011 | Political Affairs and Democracy
PACE Political Affairs Committee today backed the intention of the Rapporteur for Belarus, Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), to make a fact-finding visit to Minsk in the coming months in order to have the opportunity to meet not only with the authorities but also with political prisoners, including former Presidential candidates and Ales Bialiatski, President of the Human Rights Centre Viasna, following reports of physical and psychological ill treatment.
05/10/2011 | Session
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of PACE has today expressed its dismay that Ales Bialiatski, a highly-respected human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, has been arrested by the Belarusian authorities.
05/10/2011 | Session
“Crimes committed by travelling sex offenders are among the worst forms of violence against children, because they reduce them to mere objects of abusive desires and commercial interests,” said Liliane Maury Pasquier (Switzerland,, SOC), Chair of the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, speaking today at the 4th meeting of the network of contact parliamentarians to stop sexual violence against children.
05/10/2011 | Session
“The outcome of the latest general amnesty in Armenia, the renewed impetus to investigate the 10 deaths during the March 2008 events, and the resulting start of a constructive dialogue between the opposition and ruling coalition mean that the chapter on the March 2008 events can finally be considered closed for the Assembly, whilst its monitoring of Armenia’s human rights and democracy obligations, including with respect of the investigation into the ten causalities, will continue unabated”, PACE said today.
05/10/2011 | Session
PACE has declared that images of child abuse on the internet should be rapidly removed where possible, but if this is not possible then they should – as a complementary measure, and following transparent procedures that respect human rights principles – be blocked. Unanimously approving a report by Agustín Conde Bajén (Spain, EPP/CD), the Assembly said Council of Europe member states should, in the long term, criminalise the intentional viewing of child abuse images.
04/10/2011 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
In a resolution adopted today, PACE calls on member states not to recognise or support in any way the de facto authorities of territories resulting from unlawful secessions, in particular those supported by foreign military interventions.
04/10/2011 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
" A child is first and foremost a child, and only in second place a migrant. This is the starting point for any discussion about undocumented migrant children; the status of the child is secondary and arguably irrelevant," according to Pedro Agramunt (Spain, EPP/CD), speaking today at the opening of a joint hearing on the subject of children of undocumented migrants organised by the PACE Sub-Committees on Migration and on Children.