Meetings of the permanent commissions of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (IPA) on science and education, on issues of defence and security, as well as a meeting of the joint commission on harmonisation of the legislation in the sphere of combating terrorism, crime and drug business in the CIS will be held at the CIS IPA headquarters - the Tauride Palace.

The press service of the CIS IPA told Itar-Tass that one of the key issues at the meeting devoted to science and education will be the discussion of the concept of the model Innovation Complex for CIS member states. The parliamentarians will also consider a number of model draft laws: on the protection of rights on scientific discoveries, on scientific literature, on the primary and secondary vocational education and others. The meeting participants plan to raise the issue of the improvement of the quality of teaching Russian at secondary and higher educational establishments of the Commonwealth states and analyse the situation with the teaching of the international humanitarian law in CIS countries.

The meetings of the antiterrorist and defence parliamentary commissions will focus on draft amendments and addenda to the model Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes for CIS states in maters of combating terrorism. It is also planned to consider model laws on the protection of children from information harming their health and development, on the state border and on border security.

The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics. The CIS is comparable to a confederation similar to the original European Community. Although the CIS has few supranational powers, it is more than a purely symbolic organisation, possessing coordinating powers in the realm of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security. It has also promoted cooperation on democratisation and cross-border crime prevention. As a regional organization, CIS participates in UN peacekeeping forces. Some of the members of the CIS have established the Eurasian Economic Community with the aim of creating a full-fledged common market.

The organisation was founded on 8 December 1991 by the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, when the leaders of the three countries met in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Natural Reserve, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Brest in Belarus and signed a Creation Agreement on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of CIS as a successor entity to the USSR. At the same time they announced that the new alliance would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as other nations sharing the same goals. The CIS charter stated that all the members were sovereign and independent nations and thereby effectively abolished the Soviet Union.

On 21 December 1991, the leaders of eight additional former Soviet Republics - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan - agreed to join the CIS, thus bringing the number of participating countries to 11. Georgia joined two years later, in December 1993. As of that time, 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics participated in the CIS. Three former Soviet Republics, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania chose not to join.