05/07/2004 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have decided to join forces and adopted a common declaration of concern, made public today, on the case of Victor Gonchar, a prominent opposition politician who disappeared in Belarus.
05/07/2004 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
Edward O’Hara (United Kingdom, SOC), General Rapporteur on the Cultural Heritage of the Assembly’s Committee on Culture, Science and Education, visited from 12 to 14 July the site of the Rosia Montana gold mine, in the Apuseni mountains of western-central Romania, to assess whether plans to re-activate mining activities respect this archaeological site. He met representatives of Romanian authorities, the mine’s owners and NGOs opposed to the plan, and will report back to the committee with his conclusions after the summer.
05/07/2004 | Monitoring
Andreas Gross (Switzerland, SOC) and Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), co-rapporteurs for the Assembly’s monitoring of Azerbaijan, made a fact-finding visit to the country from 4 to 9 August, focussing in particular on the issues listed by the Assembly in its most recent monitoring resolution, from January 2004, on the functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan.
05/07/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold (Switzerland, SOC), who is preparing a report on "The disappearance and murder of a great number of women and girls in Mexico" for the Committee on Equal Opportunities, is currently on a fact-finding visit in Mexico (9 - 13 August) at the invitation of the Mexican observer delegation to the Assembly. In a February 2004 motion, 54 Assembly members noted the apparent disappearance of many hundreds of young women from the cities of Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and Chihuahua in the last ten years, possibly linked to sexual exploitation. Mrs Vermot-Mangold has requested to meet federal and regional authorities, prosecutors working on some of the cases and NGOs campaigning on the issue. Mrs Vermot-Mangold will give a press conference at the Mexican Senate on Friday 13 August at 12.30.
05/07/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Michael Hancock (United Kingdom, LDR), who is assessing the follow-up to the Assembly’s April 2003 recommendation on “Improving the lot of abandoned children in institutions” for the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, will visit Bulgaria from 24 to 27 August. Accompanied by Bulgarian Assembly member Darinka Stantcheva, he is due to visit a number of orphanages and day-care centres in Sofia as well as meeting government ministers and other authorities responsible for childrens’ matters and childrens’ NGOs.
05/07/2004 | Monitoring
Hanne Severinsen (Denmark, LDR) and Renate Wohlwend (Liechtenstein, EPP/CD), co-rapporteurs for the Assembly’s monitoring of Ukraine, will make their next fact-finding visit to the country from 29 August to 1st September, focussing on the preparations for the forthcoming Presidential election on 31 October 2004, in particular the functioning of local and regional self-government within the election process and the independence of the media. They hope to visit the eastern regions of the country, notably Dniepropetrovsk and Donetsk.
05/07/2004 | Political Affairs and Democracy
Andreas Gross (Switzerland, SOC) and Tadeusz Iwiński (Poland, SOC) – who are preparing reports on, respectively, the political and the humanitarian aspects of the situation in the Chechen Republic – plan to visit the region in connection with the presidential election on 29 August 2004 in the framework of the preparation of their reports. The Assembly is provisionally due to debate both reports, together with a third by Rudolf Bindig (Germany, SOC) on the human rights situation in the Republic, during its October session (4-8 October 2004).
05/07/2004 | Monitoring
Miloš Budin (Italy, SOC) and Jonas Čekuolis (Lithuania, LDR), co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Serbia and Montenegro, will visit the country from 31 August to 2 September to prepare their report on the functioning of democratic institutions, possibly for debate during the Assembly’s October session (4-8 October 2004). This will be the Assembly’s first assessment of Serbia and Montenegro’s progress since it joined the Council of Europe in April 2003.
05/07/2004 | News
The Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly Bruno Haller, speaking today at the end of a visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, has said he will propose to the Bureau of the Assembly a programme of reinforced co-operation with the parliaments of the three South Caucasus countries. This co-operation could include closer relations between the corresponding committees of the national parliaments and the Parliamentary Assembly, the organisation of seminars on subjects of concern to these countries, study visits of members of parliament and of the staff.
02/07/2004 | President
Assembly President Peter Schieder today adressed the following message to the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, Bülent Arinç: "On behalf of the Assembly, I should like to offer my condolences on the tragic loss of life following this morning’s earthquake centred on the eastern province of Agri. Yet again, the Turkish people − already visited by so much devastation − have had to face natural catastrophe on a terrible scale. Fortunately the loss of life is not so high as in the past and hopefully the toll will not rise, but for the families bereaved, the random destructiveness which took away their loved ones must seem incomprehensible. My colleagues in the Assembly and I would ask you kindly to convey our heartfelt sympathy to those who have suffered ."
01/07/2004 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who is preparing a report for the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on "the circumstances surrounding the arrest and prosecution of leading Yukos executives", said she was "outraged" by a selective and thereby misleading Interfax report today on a confidential memorandum she presented to the committee last week. "I said in this document that I have not yet completed my evaluation, which is why the statement reported by Interfax that the Council of Europe sees no political colouring in the case is clearly false," said Mrs Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a former German Justice Minister.
29/06/2004 | President
Assembly President Peter Schieder made the following statement today: “After almost two years of trying, four elections and six rounds of voting, Serbia finally has its first democratically elected president. I congratulate Boris Tadic on his success and wish him all the best in the challenge of living up to the hopes of the Serbian people who wish to live in a modern, open, tolerant and prosperous Serbia. The best way to achieve this goal is to take full advantage of Serbia and Montenegro’s membership of the Council of Europe."