Syria constitutional committee starts talks in Geneva News
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Syria constitutional committee starts talks in Geneva

A hundred and fifty representatives hailing from the Syrian government, the opposition, and broader Syrian civil society met Wednesday in Geneva to discuss the drafting of a new constitution.

According to the procedural rules of these UN-facilitated discussions, meetings of the 150-member Committee will take place in parallel with a smaller “drafting group,” made up of 15 people from each of the three delegations.

Almost 30 percent of the representatives at this meeting are women, a “minimum threshold” that the UN has long pushed for, in the interests of representing the widest possible number of Syrians affected by the conflict.

“The Constitutional Committee may review the 2012 Syrian constitution including in the context of other Syrian constitutional experiences and amend the current one or draft a new one,” said UN Special Envoy for Syria Mr. Geir O. Pedersen, adding that it was “the first political agreement between the Government and the Opposition to begin to implement a key aspect of Security Council resolution 2254, which called for setting a schedule and a process for drafting a new constitution.”

The Government of Syria Co-Chair, Ahmad Kuzbari commented that the meeting “would improve Syrian reality and bring about a positive change that can be directly reflected in the lives of Syrian people.”

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