Inter-Parliamentary Union suspends Egypt's membership

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The inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organisation of parliaments which seeks to promote dialogue and ensure peace and co-operation between peoples and their representative democracies, suspended the membership of Egypt at its 129th Assembly in Geneva. The Assembly welcomed two new members, Somalia and Bhutan, but said that Egypt could no longer exercise its membership of the organisation.

Since the coup in Egypt, the country’s parliament was dissolved and currently has no representative parliament. The IPU said that with no parliament Egypt could no longer qualify for membership. The organisation did express concern about the situation in Egypt and said that it would be monitoring the situation closely and would offer support to the Egyptian people to ensure that a democratic parliament could be built. The IPU hoped that elections in Egypt would bring about a new parliament. Whilst there has been much disagreement about the terminology used to describe the coup in Egypt, with many countering that it was a revolution continued, the IPU has clearly stated that the events of July 2103 amounted to a coup d’etat.

The IPU Assembly’s meeting in Geneva will be discussing issues around human rights and pushing for nuclear disarmament amongst the members present. The agenda comes within the context of the sue of chemical weapons in Syria last month and the IPU aims to issue a resolution on a nuclear free world in 2014. Egypt will not be able to restore membership of the organisation until it has a functioning parliament, the IPU said it looked forward to welcoming Egypt back once this had happened.

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This page was updated at 12.35pm GMT on the 8th of October 2013 to include photos