No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) and the Senegalese organisation La Palabre, in partnership with the Ministry of Family Affairs, Food Security, Women’s Entrepreneurship and Micro Finance of Senegal, and with the financial support of the Italian Cooperation, UNOPS, UNFPA and the Municipality of Rome, is organising the Inter-Parliamentary Conference “Harmonisation of legal instruments prohibiting FGM: Sharing successes – Consolidating achievements – Pursuing advances!Towards a United Nations ban on FGM”, to be held in Dakar, on 3 and 4 May 2010.
The Conference, which will see the participation of Emma Bonino, Vice-President of the Italian Senate and founder of NPWJ, will gather parliamentarians, civil society activists and government representatives from Senegal and the other 27 African countries affected by the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). The aim of the Conference is to share and discuss actions and strategies to eliminate FGM through its legal ban that have been undertaken since the adoption of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) in 2003.
The Inter-Parliamentary Conference will provide both to legislators in their national and regional institutions (National Assemblies, CEDEAO Parliamentary Assembly, Pan-African Parliament, African Union and the United Nations), and to Government representatives, the opportunity to consolidate their common path in the framework of an international campaign for the adoption of a resolution explicitly banning FGM as a violation of human rights of women and girls during the 65th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
In particular, the Conference will provide the opportunity to establish coordination among parliamentarians and activists on the content priorities for the Resolution and on the strategies to ensure that Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Missions to the UN in New York take on the priorities that emerge from the Seminar.
Location of the interparliamentary conference:
Conseil Economique et Social, 25 avenue Pasteur, B.P. 6100 Dakar
3 May : 9 am – 1.30 pm / 2.30 – 6 pm – 4 May: 9 am – 1.30 pm
Download the draft program of the Conference
For further information please contact: in Dakar Valentina Pomatto, vpomatto@npwj.org – phone: +221 77 209 3583 – Martin Schulthes +221 77 209 3605 ; in Bruxelles, Nicola Giovannini, ngiovannini@npwj.org – phone : +32 548 39 15 / +32 486 78 31 93.
