Hommam Al Nassim 
The African Parliament will hold an extraordinary session from 20 to 27 March at the Foundation’s headquarters in Midrand, South Africa.
This session comes to fill vacancies in positions within the Bureau of the Pan-African Parliament as the highest legislative body of the Union, where the election of a Speaker, a First Vice-President and a Fourth Vice-President of the Bureau are expected.
These vacancies were the result of elections and changes of government in some AU member states.
This special session comes within the context of the deliberations of the forty-fourth regular session of the Executive Council, which was held in Addis Ababa last February.
At the regular session, African Ministers of Foreign Affairs were tasked with overseeing the process of electing the members of the Bureau, to ensure transparency in accordance with the directives of the Office of the Legal Adviser of Parliament.
According to Lucia dos Passos, Acting President of the Pan-African Parliament, this extraordinary session will represent the full resumption of parliamentary activities in order to complete the development of the policies and programs of the African Union.
The Pan-African Parliament comprises deputies from the member states of the African Union and was established under Article 5 of the Constitutive Act of the Union and officially entered into force on March 18, 2004.
Each country is represented within the Pan-African Parliament by five majority and opposition parliamentarians, including at least one woman, elected, or appointed by national parliaments or legislatures.
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