National Assembly Speaker, Thandi Modise, has congratulated Duarte Pacheco on his election as President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) \u2013 the world\u2019s oldest and largest global parliamentary forum.<\/p>\n
Pacheco has been a member of the Parliament of Portugal since 1991 and has played an active role in the IPU for many years.<\/p>\n
He succeeds Gabriela Cuevas Barron, a parliamentarian from Mexico, elected IPU President in October 2017 and whose term of office as IPU President has now ended.<\/p>\n
Parliamentarians from 140 IPU member Parliaments elected Pacheco as the IPU\u2019s 30th President through an unprecedented virtual electronic secret ballot held across different time zones.<\/p>\n
About 40% of voting members were women MPs and 27% were younger than 45.<\/p>\n
Previous IPU Presidents have gone on to win Nobel Peace Prizes, including IPU founders Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy and William Randal Cremer.<\/p>\n
The IPU President, who must be an MP for the term in office, is the political head of the IPU, chairs its statutory meetings and represents it at global events.<\/p>\n
Modise is attending an extraordinary virtual session of the IPU\u2019s Governing Council with a multiparty delegation of Members of Parliament (MPs).<\/p>\n
Modise\u2019s delegation includes Shahidabibi Shaik from the National Council of Provinces; Thlologelo Malatji, an African National Congress member of the National Assembly and the Democratic Alliance’s Michael Waters, who is a member of the National Assembly.<\/p>\n
The South African Parliament has been a member of the IPU since democracy, and hosted the 118th IPU Assembly and Related Meetings in Cape Town in April 2008.<\/p>\n
The biannual meetings currently bring together about 1 500 parliamentary delegates from 179 national Member Parliaments and 13 regional parliamentary bodies in a world assembly.<\/p>\n
The meetings add a parliamentary dimension to global governance, including work of the United Nations and implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.<\/p>\n
The IPU, with its permanent observer status at the United Nations General Assembly, has broadened the role of parliaments in global affairs. \u2013 SAnews.gov.za<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" National Assembly Speaker, Thandi Modise, has congratulated Duarte Pacheco on his election as President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) \u2013 the world\u2019s oldest and largest global parliamentary forum. Pacheco has been a member of the Parliament of Portugal since 1991 and has played an active role in the IPU for many years. He succeeds Gabriela […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38678],"class_list":{"0":"post-171022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-sanews","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}