The Conference was opened by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, President of the UN General Assembly Sam K. Kutesa and IPU President Saber Chowdhury.

Addressing the gathering, Gojkovic said the countless global challenges remind us that we need to constantly work on building democratic institutions and strengthening parliamentarism which is the only guarantee of stability and protection of civil rights and freedoms.

“Terrorism, extremism and radicalism of any kind are merciless toward our civilizational values. It is our duty to keep and promote the democratic order, capable of fighting against all the dangers of modern times”, said the National Assembly Speaker.

Gojkovic said that the parliament should be strong and efficient as well as open and transparent, because that is the only way it can inspire trust from the citizens, and stressed that Serbia is working on strengthening its democratic institutions, peace and stability and developing parliamentarism.

“The Serbian Assembly fully contributes to the establishment of dialogue and trust in the SEE region. The current parliamentary legislature’s priority is dialogue with the parliaments of all the states in the region in order to promote bilateral relations. I am sure we have to a great extent met this goal”, said Gojkovic at the UN headquarters.

The Conference, organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) with the support of the UN, is focused on the role of the parliament in designing and implementing new sustainable development goals, challenges of parliamentary oversight, growing importance of international parliamentary cooperation and gender equality in the parliament.

Within the World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, the National Assembly Speaker also had a series of bilateral meetings.