Joint Parliamentary Assembly

Members of African, Caribbean, Pacific and European parliaments are in Kigali this week for the 14th Joint Parliamentary Assembly. The assembly is a week-long plenary session that happens twice a year that was originally set up by the Contonou Agreement to “improve standards of living and economic development in the ACP countries and to establish close cooperation between these countries and the European Union.” This afternoon I had the opportunity to attend one of the sessions that focused on the fight against impunity and on victims’ access to justice. The session was headed by Denis Polisi (vice president of the Rwandan parliament) and Johan van Hecke (member of the European Parliament) and included speakers from a number of organizations. The topics that were addressed included a victim’s perspective on the need for justice, the International Criminal Court, the concept of universal jurisdiction, the role of non-governmental organizations in investigation and prosecution of serious international crimes, and the role of parliamentarians in strengthening the fight against impunity. The session was really interesting and the entire set up of the conference was quite impressive. There were even headsets for each person with immediate translations of the discussion in English, French, German, Spanish and Dutch.

Later in the afternoon, the parliamentarians split into groups to visit three projects in Kigali that had been selected to represent various field such as HIV/AIDS and gacaca. We were honored that Projet San Francisco was chosen as the HIV/AIDS site to be visited. Approximately thirty parliamentarians came to tour our clinical trials research site and hear presentations from the supervisors of each of our departments. The supervisors were so nervous about giving their presentations in English (the vast majority of them are francophone), but they did wonderfully. They presented the project well and were able to answer some difficult questions. At the end of the visit, the parliamentarians gave the project a very good review. The next day, I was even told that the director of HIV/AIDS for the Rwandan government had been praising and promoting PSF on the radio all morning, another sign that the parliamentarian visit went well.