🇷🇺🎙️Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko opened the second day of the General Debate of the Sixth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). The main theme of the discussion was “A world in turmoil: Parliamentary cooperation and multilateralism for peace, justice and prosperity for all.” The event was held at the UN Office in Geneva.

🤝Valentina Matvienko thanked the IPU and its President Tulia Ackson for hosting and organizing the Conference.

Never in the 80 years since the end of World War II has the fate of the world been so alarming.

Huge spending on weapons instead of sustainable development and the implementation of the climate agenda, sanctions instead of trade, ultimatums instead of diplomacy, military coalitions instead of integration - this is the reality we live in today.

➡️In this regard, Valentina Matvienko emphasized the importance of the parliamentary diplomacy. According to her, the founders of the IPU in 1889 considered its main goal to be the settlement of disputes.

It is time to turn to the origins and bring parliamentary diplomacy back to its mission of settling international conflicts. Conflict is the result of accumulated problems and contradictions. Without eliminating the causes, it will flare up again, as in the Middle East, where the long-standing confrontation is being tried to "extinguish with the gasoline" of missile strikes instead of implementing the well-known resolutions of the UN Security Council.

❗️Speaker of the Federation Council named among the main causes of most conflicts the contradictions between the principles of international law, in particular, between the self-determination of peoples and the territorial integrity of states.

There should be a clear legal hierarchy between them, the call for which I propose to enshrine in the final document of the Conference. After all, free interpretations of law and principles are the "perpetual motion machine" of wars.

‼️She emphasized the absolute inadmissibility of attempts to replace international law with some "rules-based order" that no one has seen or approved.

👉Furthermore, the cause of conflicts is the contradiction between the principle of indivisibility of security and the right of states to choose military alliances, taking into account that the activities of the blocs themselves are still not regulated by law, Valentina Matvienko said.

The principle of sovereign equality of the UN member states has not been implemented. Sanctions of the strong against the weak and military interventions are signs of inequality, as are the practices of neocolonialism. It is time to start calling a spade a spade - there are no "humanitarian interventions", but aggression. Which leads to catastrophe, not to democracy.

⚔️Speaker of the Federation Council also attributed interethnic and interreligious contradictions to the causes of conflict: when they are not resolved, but aggravated by the actions of the authorities, they spill out. Valentina Matvienko recalled that the 137th Assembly of the IPU adopted the St. Petersburg Declaration on the Promotion of Cultural Pluralism through Interreligious and Interethnic Dialogue.

We pledged then to intensify mediation and parliamentary diplomacy at the national and global levels in the process of the settlement of interreligious and interethnic conflicts, to counter discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. If we had achieved the fulfillment of these intentions, in most cases bloodshed would have been avoided. All current conflicts, including the one around Ukraine, have a chance of being resolved only if their root causes are eliminated.

🕊️Speaker of the Federation Council believes that it is time to launch diplomatic resources at full capacity, and first of all, the resources of international organizations.