Context and Rationale
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Context and Rationale
Parliaments have a long tradition of bilateral and multilateral cooperation on many levels and on a wide array of subjects. Many of agreements and partnerships exist among chambers and parliaments to carry out common activities or achieve shared goals. The last decade has witnessed a significant surge in international activities undertaken by legislatures. This has been accompanied by the establishment of new regional and transnational parliaments and by the creation of formal parliamentary assemblies, informal parliamentarians’ associations and networks of legislators. As the Inter-Parliamentary Union highlighted in a recent publication “One common feature of regional inter-parliamentary assemblies is the aim to foster greater integration and legislative coordination between member countries.”
Although the majority of these exchanges have taken place among members of parliaments, many assemblies have also engaged in bilateral or multilateral efforts directed at mutually strengthening, improving or evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of their administrations. Apart from the importance of political collaborations, it is in fact commonly acknowledged that frequent consultations, sharing of experiences, targeted knowledge transfers and the exchange of lessons learned are extremely important mechanisms to strengthen the human resources capacity needed by parliaments to perform a variety of critical tasks in support of their representative, legislative and oversight functions.
There is no doubt that the recent evolution and growth of technology has helped to intensify the number of exchanges and facilitate communication between parliaments and supporting institutions. But few people would challenge that global and regional coordination among all the parliaments involved needs to improve to ensure coherence of action, leverage the forces of many institutions, and foster better analyses of lessons learned.
The success of long established networks like the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) in the United States and the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD) in Europe, both with more than 20 years of experience, underscores the value of these associations for parliamentary development. And their success suggests the opportunity to extend the benefits of cooperation to other regions and eventually to a global level.
Regional groups are a natural way to gather information from participating parliamentary bodies. Knowledge can be gained through a variety of channels, including conferences, virtual meetings, online discussion groups, and even simple e-mail exchanges. There are, of course, significant challenges in establishing and sustaining cooperation and collaboration. Differences in language, for example, can be a hindrance, especially when there are limited resources. Differences in the infrastructure or the technical approach preferred by individual parliaments can also limit sharing. However, by engaging as many entities as possible the burden on any single parliament can be reduced and the value of the benefits gained by sharing experiences and working together will certainly overcome the investments needed.
Rationale
The establishment of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) has also created new and legal compelling reasons to foster collaboration and exchange of information among African Parliaments, while the existence of regional parliamentary assemblies, like the East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA), the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum should be taken into account. The time has come to create a formal framework to foster the exchanges among parliaments in Africa, between sub-regional groups, and between individual countries in different sub-regions.
Parliaments have to increasingly address regional and continental issues. Inter-parliamentary cooperation should not be limited to the political level between Parliamentary Committees and MPs or Speakers. Strengthening exchanges among parliamentary staff - the permanent core resource of Parliament - has become imperative for the benefits that sharing experiences and learning from best practices can provide in terms of improving skills and competence of parliamentary staff in Africa.
It is also commonly acknowledged that frequent consultations, sharing of experiences, targeted knowledge transfers and the exchange of lessons learned, are not just very important at the political level, but they are also extremely fruitful mechanisms to strengthen, the capacity of human resources in the parliaments needed to perform a variety of critical tasks within the parliamentary administrations.
At a meeting hosted by the National Assembly of Nigeria in Abuja in March 2007 the opportunity to establish a continent-wide Africa Parliamentary Knowledge Network (APKN) was discussed among members and officials from twelve parliamentary delegations from African assemblies and the Pan-African Parliament. The meeting, supported by the United Nations, and taking place under the auspices of the Pan African Parliament, evaluated a number of options and possibilities relating to the establishment of the APKN.
Participants agreed on the need to establish the APKN with the aim of strengthening the information and knowledge management capacity of parliamentary administrations to better serve their institutions and members by promoting a continental level training and capacity building initiative for members of parliaments and parliamentary staff in the area of legislation, information & research and information technologies.
