Dmitriy Kobitskiy: IPA CIS Facilitates Development of Common Approaches to Protect Sovereignty Across Commonwealth

On 21 May 2021, the conference of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia on “Countering External Challenges and Threats: Parliamentary Dimension of the Union State” took place.

Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council Dmitriy Kobitskiy delivered a report via videoconferencing. “The world has entered the age of information society, and the widespread use of modern technologies in all spheres of life creates new opportunities and poses new challenges for society and states. In recent years, there has been interference in the internal political processes of sovereign states with the use of new instruments, which is a direct threat for the stable and progressive development of the Commonwealth Member Nations”, he said and stressed the importance of inter-parliamentary cooperation in countering this threat.

Among the systemic tasks of the IPA CIS, the Secretary General named the approximation of national legislations of the Member Nations in the field of crime prevention, countering international terrorism and the Nazi ideas; holding parliamentary conferences on countering terrorism and violent extremism, which the IPA CIS traditionally holds together in cooperation with the international partners; efforts to develop democracy and parliamentarism. Director of the International Institute for Monitoring Democracy Development, Parliamentarianism and Suffrage Protection of Citizens of IPA CIS Member Nations (IPA CIS IIMDD), Doctor of Law, Professor Ivan Mushket informed the participants in detail about the last of the above-mentioned activities of the IPA CIS.

The conference also featured reports by the IIMDD IPA CIS experts : Professor of St. Petersburg State University, Doctor of Economics Stanislav Tkachenko and Chief Researcher, Head of the Center for Belarusian Studies of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Economics, Professor Nikolai Mezhevich.