Brussels, 30/07/2008 (Agence Europe) - Place of honour at the European Parliament in the week 8-11 September will go to Africa,in all its political complexity and cultural diversity.
This “African Week” organised as part of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue will close on the morning of 11 September with a joint meeting of Members of the Pan-African Parliament and Members of the ACP/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, which will be addressed by Nigerian Nobel Literature Prize winner Wole Soyinka. European parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering (EPP-ED, Germany), President of the Pan-African Parliament Gertrude Mongella and African Nobel Prize winners will also speak at this closing event.
Among the events and Parliamentary debates scheduled for the week are:
a round table discussion on the role of the diaspora in development, organised by the Parliamentary development committee chaired by Josep Borrell (PES, Spain)
a human rights sub-committee debate on the role of African human rights institutions, with speakers including Nobuntu Mbelle of the Coalition for an Effective African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, and Gerard Niyungeko, Head of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Court
a meeting of the members of the European Parliament ad hoc delegation to the Pan-African Parliament, chaired by Michael Gahler (EPP-ED, Germany), and their counterparts from the Pan-African Parliament
a meeting of the standing committees of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) to prepare the sixteenth session of this joint body of the ACP-EU partnership (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 25-28 November)
a special meeting of the Parliamentary agriculture and rural development committee on world food security and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with Dr Babagana Ahmadu, Head of the Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission) and Philip Machara Kiriro of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF)
artists' exhibitions in the European Parliament, to be opened by Luisa Morgantini (GUE/NGL, Italy) and Malik Sidibé, Malian photographer who was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2007 Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, and a concert of African music on the evening of Wednesday 10 September (Place Fernand Cocq, Brussels). (A.N. /transl. rt)