Strengthening women's rights within the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Americas...

In contrast to the official governmental negotiations, the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Americas Parliamentarians of the Americas (COPA) have chosen to include Cuba in their talks during their parallel meeting in Quebec. Within the framework of the COPA, women parliamentarians have formed a network to make sure that women’s rights, such as access to the negotiating process as well as in issues of substance, are on the agenda when the parliamentarians mobilize. Because one can literally speak of a mobilisation. The atmosphere at Tuesday’s Parliamentary forum can in some ways be described as a grey-suit version of the frustration expressed at many of the NGO forums at the Peoples Summit of the Americas confronted with the lack of transparency and democracy of trade agreements. The symbolic security wall was used to describe that while civil society and elected people equally where held outside the negotiation processes, the big corporations could have access through sponsoring a very expensive coffee break.
Malin Björk – Les Penelopes- WomenAction