Strasbourg, 09/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - By adopting several resolutions during its emergency debate on Thursday in Strasbourg, the European Parliament took a position on:
The special session of the United Nations General Assembly on the rights of children: the EP invites the EU and its Member States to actively work notably in order to reinforce the Convention on the rights of children and to accelerate its full implementation and guarantee that powerful mechanisms are set up to control the application by the governments of their obligations and their undertakings, with a significant NGO and civil society participation. The Parliament invites the Council to work as a priority in the drafting of a common strategy in terms of children's rights. The Council is invited to nominate an EU special envoy responsible for co-ordinating the EU activities in this area and to guarantee full respect and the implementation of this strategy. The Parliament invites the Member States to include in the Treaties, during the next intergovernmental conference, a legal basis allowing to promote the issues relating to children. It also invites the Commission to carry out an assessment, on the level of the human rights of children, from all the accession candidate countries in the framework of its annual reports on their respective progress;
Burundi refugees in Tanzania: the EP calls on the EU to take measures to assist the Tanzanian authorities in the action in favour of the Burundian refugees and to guarantee that there will not be any repatriation as long as the political situation in Burundi has not changed;
Religious freedom in Vietnam: the EP calls for the freeing of all the prisoners of conscience and the full respect for freedom of religion for the Buddhist, Catholic, Protestants as well as all other so-called "unrecognised" churches and calls on the Member State ambassadors to closely follow this matter;
South Africa: the EP invites the South African government to committee itself even more strongly to the fight against poverty and social inequalities, accelerate the agrarian reform in favour of the landless peoples', do its utmost to combat AIDS;
Belarus: the EP invites Belarus to create the conditions necessary for a free and democratic presidential election. It also calls on the Belarus authorities to respect the international standards in terms of human rights, freedom of expression and of the press. The Russian government and President Putin are invited to support, in the framework of the political union between Russian and Belarus, the development of a pluralist democratic system in Byelorussia. The EP calls on President Loukachenko to grant a Presidential pardon to Professor Bandashevski and on the EU to grant its aid for the continuation of activities by the latter. Finally the Parliament hopes: for the creation of a action programme for Belarus, on the model of those already enjoyed by the former republics of Eastern Europe and taking into account the situation and the specific environment of this country.