Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova had a meeting with Chair of the National Assembly of the Republic of South Africa Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula on 7 October as part of Mrs Gafarova’s current working visit to Jakarta.

Sahiba Gafarova greeted her colleague warmly, saying she was glad to meet her again after their previous encounter at the conference of the Non-Aligned Movement’s Parliamentary Network in Baku earlier this year. Mrs Gafarova spoke praisingly of Mrs Mapisa-Nqakula’s attendance of that conference before mentioning also that the RSA National Assembly had taken part in the constituent assembly of the Network in Madrid. It is planned to address issues that matter in terms of the Network’s institutional growth at its forthcoming conference, according to Sahiba Gafarova who underlined the significance of the PN format co-operation.

The emergence of the NAM PN was the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan who voiced remarkable thoughts about the Network’s growth, broadening its operations and deepening inter-parliamentary ties and collaboration amongst the participating states as he spoke at the Network’s first conference in Baku previously this year. Having told Mrs Mapisa-Nqakula that, Mrs Gafarova said that she was certain the PN was bound to become an outstanding platform upon which to foster multilateralism, dialogue and inter-parliamentary co-operation. At the same time, the Network is an institution capable of ensuring co-ordination of the parliaments’ joint endeavours, having our countries’ voices be heard internationally and getting the issues of common concern are resolved.

The Milli Majlis Speaker proceeded to tell her RSA colleague about the founding of the NAM Youth Organisation on the basis of the Youth Network, the special session of the UN General Assembly on combatting the coronavirus pandemic, the resolutions passed to provide an equitable, affordable, timely and universal access to the COVID-19 vaccines, elaboration of recommendations regarding post-COVID-19 global recovery and the institution of the UN High-Level Panel to take care of just that – all following the relevant suggestions of the President of Azerbaijan.

Chair of the National Assembly of the Republic of South Africa Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, in her turn, witnessed her pleasure with their meeting, remembered her trip to Azerbaijan to join the NAM PN Baku Conference, stressed the high organisational standards set by that event and shared her fine impressions about our country. She added that she was going to take part in the next Network conference in Manama as well, described the emergence of the Parliamentary Network as an initiative that is as serious and stressed her preparedness to support the Network’s endeavours in every way.

Also, the two parliamentary speakers exchanged thoughts about the inter-parliamentary connexions expansion possibilities, agreed on the necessity of furthering the co-operation amongst their legislatures’ friendship groups and talked over other matters of shared interest.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis