The European Parliament adopted by 468 votes to 116,
with 78 abstentions, a resolution with a proposal for a European
Parliament recommendation to the Council on the 71st session of the
United Nations General Assembly.
Recalling the EU's commitment to effective
multilateralism and good global governance, Parliament addressed
the following recommendations to the Council:
Peace and security:
- to take active steps to ensure that all parties
directly or indirectly involved in armed conflicts and their
organisations comply in full with their international obligations
and the standards laid down in international law and make efforts
to secure peaceful, diplomatic solutions to conflicts;
- to continue to support multilateral attempts to find
lasting political and peaceful solutions to on-going conflicts in
the Middle East and North Africa;
- to support the Intra-Syrian Talks aiming for a
cessation of hostilities;
- to make certain the UN General Assembly provides, in
cooperation with the EU and the USA, all instruments to ensure that
a two-state solution, on the basis of the 1967 borders, with
Jerusalem as the capital of both states and with a secure State of
Israel, with secure and recognised borders, and an independent,
democratic, contiguous and viable State of Palestine living side by
side in peace and security, is sustainable and
effective;
- to underline the need for coordinated humanitarian
action in Yemen under UN leadership and urge all parties to allow
the entry and delivery of urgently needed food, medicine, fuel and
other necessary assistance through UN and international
humanitarian channels in order to address the urgent needs of the
Yemeni people as a matter of urgency;
- to continue to call for the full respect of
internationally-recognised borders and the territorial integrity of
Eastern European and South Caucasus countries, including
Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine;
- to support the ongoing comprehensive efforts to
strengthen UN peace operations and the organisation's ability to
address conflict;
- to promote a culture of prevention within the UN
system in order to improve its
capacity to respond more quickly to emerging crises and potential
threats to peace and security,;
- to increase Member State support for UN peacekeeping
and peacebuilding operations including through the deployment of EU
Battlegroups, while paying sufficient attention to issues such as
human rights, sustainable development and the root causes of mass
migration.
Fight against terrorism:
- to reiterate its unequivocal condemnation of terrorism
and its full support for actions aimed at the defeat and
eradication of terrorist organisations, in particular, the
so-called 'ISIS/Daesh', which poses a clear threat to
regional and international security,
- to continue to work with the UN in combating the
financing of terrorism;
- to promote a coordinated international effort to
counter the growing threat posed by Improvised Explosive
Devices (IEDs);
- to reiterate the need for an adequate mix of security,
law enforcement, human rights, socio-economic instruments that
offers more adequate options for responding to violent extremism as
posed by Daesh, al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and
others;
- to support an enhanced EU contribution to UN
capacity building initiatives concerning the fight against foreign
terrorist fighters and violent extremism.
Non-proliferation and disarmament:
- to support UN efforts to prevent non-state actors and
terrorist groups from developing, manufacturing, acquiring or
transferring weapons of mass destruction and their delivery
systems;
- to insist on full compliance with the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Chemical
Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention, and on
finishing the ratification process of the Comprehensive Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty;
- to encourage all UN Member States to sign and ratify
the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling,
Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their
Destruction;
- to work towards more effective action against the
diversion of and illicit trade in weapons and ammunitions,
including Small Arms and Light Weapons, in particular by developing
a weapons tracking system;
- to promote a policy response at global level on the
use of armed drones, aimed at keeping their use strictly within
the limits of international human rights and humanitarian
law.
Migration:
- to promote greater support for the work of UNHCR in
implementing its international mandate to protect
refugees;
- to prevent irregular migration and to fight
people smuggling and human trafficking, in particular by combating
criminal networks through timely and effective exchange of relevant
intelligence;
- to improve methods to identify and protect victims and
to reinforce cooperation with third countries with a view to
tracking, seizing and recovering the proceeds of criminal
activities in this sector.
Human rights, democracy and the rule of
law:
- to reiterate clearly and firmly that all human rights
agreed under UN conventions are universal, indivisible,
interdependent and interrelated and that respect for these rights
must be enforced;
- to continue to advocate for freedom of religion or
belief, including for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
intersex (LGBTI) persons;
- to continue to advocate for zero tolerance for the
death penalty and to further work towards its universal
abolition, leading the way towards the adoption of the next UN
General Assembly resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death
penalty;
- to strengthen the work of the International Criminal
Court (ICC) and call for a UN Security Council referral of the
situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the
ICC;
- to engage with the public and a comprehensive debate
with all members of the UN General Assembly on the importance of
respecting constitutional limits in presidential mandates
worldwide;
- to call on the UN to address the legal shortfalls in
the term ‘climate refugee’, including its possible
international definition.
Development:
- to work towards the implementation of the Sustainable
Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development;
- to enhance access to sexual and reproductive health
services, as this contributes to reducing infant and maternal
mortality;
- to insist on the need to strengthen policy coherence
for development within the UN working structures in order to
effectively integrate all dimensions of sustainable
development;
- to work towards the reinforcement of international
fiscal cooperation, supporting the creation of an international tax
body within the UN system;
- to launch a global plan to fight antimicrobial
resistance, in order to prevent the further spreading of resistant
super bacteria.
EU and reform of the UN system:
- to support a comprehensive reform of the United
Nations Security Council on the basis of a broad consensus, in
order to better reflect the new world reality and to ensure that
the Council is able to deal effectively with threats to
international peace and security;
- to promote the revitalisation of the work of the
General Assembly, and improved coordination and coherence of the
action of all UN institutions;
- in view of the 2015 UN report and recent sexual
child abuse allegations against French and UN troops in the
Central African Republic, to make sure that the UN, EU Member
States and the EU's CSDP organs investigate, prosecute and sentence
any UN, national and EU personnel who committed acts of sexual
violence;
- in view of the recent case of conflict of interest of
the UN Special Representative for Libya to initiate a binding code
of conduct that obliges office holders to maintain
impartiality.