Parliament Speaker Calls for Joint Effort Against Poverty

from All Africa

Angola Press Agency (Luanda)

Angolan Parliament speaker, Roberto de Almeida, Monday in Cape Town, South Africa, called on world's politicians and civil society to mobilize efforts and speed up the progress of development, in order to rollback poverty in line with the millennium's goals.

Addressing the plenary session of the 118 Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU)) conference taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, Roberto de Almeida said that another indispensable condition to rollback poverty is the fulfilment of the pact established in 2002, in Monterrey, providing for a new global partnership between the developed and underdeveloped nations.

"This partnership should be centred, mainly, on national development strategies and on the international support of donors, taking into account the extension of the challenge, in which everybody should be accountable, that is to say, requiring the poorest countries to conduct the necessary reforms and demanding assistance from the richest nations towards this effort", stressed the Angolan speaker.

Still, according to him, this responsibility falls, mainly, on politicians, because they have the collective duty of respecting and defending the principles of human dignity, equality and of social cohesion, across the world.

The Angolan speaker also called for the need of progressive remove of the economic, social, cultural and political obstacles that hinder the real equality among citizens, thus contributing to the strengthening of the tools of political, economic and social development in the world.

Since 2000, the Millennium goals have been uniting the international community against poverty and inequalities, with the new century inspiring the world leaders to change words into actions, aiming at reducing famine and diseases by 2015, added the speaker.