Madrid, February 25, 2010 – Marina Ponti, UN Millennium Campaign Deputy Director for Europe, and Falu Njie, the Campaign’s Deputy Director for Policy, participated this Thursday and Friday in the seminar “Parliament and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Context of the Changing Aid Architecture: Prioritizing South-South Cooperation,” organized by the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA) and the Spanish Senate in Madrid, as part of the Spanish European Union Presidency.

More than 80 African, Latin American and European parliamentarians are attending this event to discuss the role of legislative chambers in the implementation of the MDGs and the various ways in which parliaments can contribute to improve aid effectiveness and reinforce South- South cooperation.

During the opening session of the seminar, Ponti called on developed countries to meet their commitments on aid, trade and debt relief, and encouraged European parliamentarians to urge their governments to bring an ambitious plan to reactivate the fight against poverty to the UN Summit on the MDGs, to be held in New York on September 20-22. The Vice President of the Spanish Senate, Isidre Molas, and Chairman of AWEPA, Miet Smet, also stressed the increasing importance of South – South cooperation in the opening session.

Njie participated in the second session of the seminar, speaking on the role of parliaments in making aid more effective for the achievement of the MDGs. He discussed liability, ownership and transparency in aid, which fall under parliamentarian control. At the seminar, Njie also presented the new Millennium Campaign brochure on the role of Parliamentarians in the South.

The seminar also served as a preparatory session for the High-Level Meeting on South-South Cooperation that AWEPA is organizing in March in Bogotá, Colombia, in collaboration with the OECD.