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World Conference of Speakers of Parliament to meet in person in Vienna on 7-8 September

Vienna

The Fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, the world’s largest gathering of the highest level of parliamentary representation, will take place in Vienna, Austria on 7-8 September.

Organized jointly by the IPU and the Austrian Parliament, in cooperation with the United Nations, this in-person segment of the conference follows a virtual session held in August 2020.

The conference will be preceded by the Thirteenth Summit of Women Speakers of Parliament on 6 September and will be followed by the First Global Parliamentary Meeting on Counter-Terrorism on 9 September.

Over 110 Speakers of Parliament from around the world are expected to come to Vienna for the first physical large-scale inter-parliamentary meeting since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

The Austrian authorities have put in place robust and comprehensive health measures to guarantee a safe conference, including compulsory COVID-19 testing to access the conference venue, limits to the numbers of delegates, social distancing and mandatory face-masks.

The two-day conference takes place under the umbrella theme of “Parliamentary leadership for more effective multilateralism that delivers peace and sustainable development for the people and the planet.”

The Speakers of Parliament will focus on priorities that require urgent international parliamentary action including the global response to the pandemic and the post-COVID recovery, the climate emergency, countering misinformation, youth participation in politics and gender equality.

The opening of the conference will include remarks from Duarte Pacheco, IPU President; Wolfgang Sobotka, Speaker of the Austrian National Council; Peter Raggl, Speaker of the Austrian Federal Council; Tone Wilhelmsen Trøen, Speaker of the Norwegian Storting (reporting on the outcome of the Summit of Women Speakers) and Abdulla Shahid, the 76th President of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Speakers will also hear from youth activists including Xiye Bastida, one of the lead organizers of the youth climate justice movement.

The World Conference of Speakers of Parliament takes place every five years. Its objective is to reinforce the parliamentary dimension of global governance.

Discover the conference website www.ipu2021vienna.at/

 

Practical information for the media

All the meetings will take place at the Austria Center Vienna. A Media Centre with live-streaming of the plenary meetings will be available for the media in Hall K2.

Access to the main plenary hall will be limited because of social distancing and COVID-19 protocols.

A press conference is planned at the Media Centre on Tuesday 7 September at 13.00 with representatives from the IPU and the Austrian host parliament.

Only accredited media are eligible to register for the conference at [email protected]

Parliamentary TV channels who would like to live stream the event, please contact [email protected]

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The IPU is the global organization of national parliaments. It was founded more than 130 years ago as the first multilateral political organization in the world, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. Today, the IPU comprises 179 national Member Parliaments and 13 regional parliamentary bodies. It promotes democracy and helps parliaments become stronger, younger, gender-balanced and more diverse. It also defends the human rights of parliamentarians through a dedicated committee made up of MPs from around the world. Twice a year, the IPU convenes over 1,500 parliamentary delegates and partners in a world assembly, bringing a parliamentary dimension to global governance, including the work of the United Nations and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

For more information about the IPU, contact Thomas Fitzsimons at email: [email protected] or [email protected] or tel: +41(0) 79 854 31 53