GENEVA, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The third World Conference of Speakers of Parliament will be held in Geneva from Monday to Wednesday.
The first such conference, the Conference of Presiding Officers of National Parliaments, was organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in cooperation with the United Nations at the UN headquarters in New York in 2000.
It was held in conjunction with the Millennium Assembly with the aim of showing support for international cooperation and pushing forward reforms at the Inter-Parliamentary Union for it to work more closely with the UN system and other major international organizations.
Parliamentary leaders from 142 countries took part in the New York conference, the largest gathering since the establishment of the IPU.
The second World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments was organized by the IPU and took place, again, at the UN headquarters in New York in 2005, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.
The second conference saw leaders of over 150 parliaments discuss multilateral cooperation and new challenges facing the world in the 21st century.
