Senator Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani, President, International Parliamentarians Congress (IPC) has proposed to sign MOU between IPC and International Parliamentary Union (IPU). He conveyed his vision to Ms. Gabriela Cuevas Barron, President and Mr. Martin Chungong, Secretary General, International Parliamentary Union (IPU). He said IPU is the global organization of National Parliaments which empowers parliaments and to promote peace, democracy and sustainable development. While IPC is a global network of individual members of parliaments which empowers the individual parliamentarians to conceptualize, strategize and implement the ideas of peace, prosperity and progress in the world. He viewed that the mandate of two organizations, the IPU is a platform for institutions i.e. Parliaments and the IPC is the platform for the main actors of these institutions i.e. the Parliamentarians.

He further conveyed that the spread of this Covid-19 to more than 190 countries during the last five months has shown our collective vulnerability in the areas of economy and public health highlighting the need that the world as a whole need to have robust strategies to counter such challenges in future. Aimed chaos, this challenge has pushed us for greater cooperation among the nations of the world to adopt mutual and conclusive strategies for dealing with similar situations. He proposed and urged that IPU and IPC will be instrumental in bringing peace, health emergencies and stability in the world, therefore, signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which will provide an avenue with the Parliaments and Parliamentarians to be united to defeat the challenges which are being faced by this globe.

Positively, Ms. Gabriela Cuevas Barron, President of the IPU appreciated the proposal of President IPC to sign MOU between IPU and IPC and said that the pandemic is an unprecedented global challenge and she agreed with the proposal that the only way forward is to foster even greater cooperation among the nations and organizations. She considered that any efforts and initiatives are much more likely meet success if they can find avenues for partnerships and consensus-driven collaboration. While appreciating she is certain that compatibility between IPU and the PIC and cooperation between our organizations would potentially bring outstanding results. She urged that they naturally have to look for partnerships have a bigger influence and impact in today’s world, particularly as there is an urgent need for multilateral institutions to come forward with solutions. She also confirmed that IPU and IPC Secretariats will be in contact with each other for signing an MOU and hoping that this leads to a collaboration that can jointly resolve existing global challenges.

Mr. Martin Chungong, Secretary General IPU in his letter also appreciated the proposal of President IPC for signing of MOU between IPC and IPU and said that the proposal would be brought to the attention of IPU’s Governing Bodies for further action at the earliest.