Video highlights of the 130th anniversary

In a recent survey of IPU Member Parliaments, 31 per cent of respondents confirmed that new legislation had been put in place as a direct result of IPU assemblies, programmes, initiatives and resolutions. Of the sample, 75 per cent also

Parliament buildings are often statements revealing a country’s vision, traditions and culture. Here are the five types of plenary halls and their political significance. As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill commented: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings

According to the IPU’s yearly analysis, the share of women in national parliaments increased by nearly one percentage point last year, from 23.4 per cent in 2017 to 24.3 per cent in 2018. This 0.9 percentage point increase confirms the continuing rise of women in parliament, at a slightly faster rate of change compared to previous years. Countries with well-designed gender quotas elected significantly more women to parliament than those without, respectively, 7 points more in single or lower chambers, and 17 points more in upper chambers.

Parliaments play a vital role in ensuring safe and humane migration through the ratification and effective implementation of international treaties. They can also help to change the negative discourse around migration by putting in place and strengthening legislation against xenophobia and racism and by promoting balanced and empirically sound public debate. These were among the conclusions of a conference for parliamentarians on smart and humane migration across the Mediterranean. The conference, co-organized by the IPU with the Parliament of Malta and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), took place in Valletta, Malta, from 16 to 17 November 2017.

Parliaments of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia met to discuss the next steps in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The seminar, which took place in Budapest on 23­-24 February and was co-organized by IPU and the Hungarian National Assembly, was a follow-up to previous meetings that had called for concrete parliamentary action in key areas, such as environmental risk and climate change.

On 30 June 1889, visionary parliamentarians Frédéric Passy of France and William Randall Cremer of the United Kingdom brought together MPs from Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Liberia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the USA in the first inter-parliamentary meeting