PUTTING PARLIAMENTS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
AT THE HEART OF SECURITY CHALLENGES
On 20 and 21 February, 2008, the National Assembly of Angola hosted a two-day regional seminar on The Role of National Parliaments and the SADC Parliamentary Forum in Ensuring Security in Southern Africa. It was followed immediately, on 22 February, by a one-day regional seminar exclusively for staff servicing national parliamentary defence and security committees.
The meeting was co-organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum, the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and the Institute for Security Studies. Chairpersons and members of parliamentary defence and security committees, officials and staff from the parliaments of Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia participated in the event.
The seminar was aimed at strengthening the capacity of parliamentary defence and security committees to address security concerns, with special emphasis on committee effectiveness, conflict management, legislative oversight and budgetary control.
The main conclusions and recommendations of the seminar underline that security governance - including the military, police and intelligence services – is far too important to be left to the Executive and “securocrats”. Security has become a collective responsibility and parliamentarians, as representatives of the people, must be involved in order to ensure transparency and accountability. This requires awareness among parliamentarians and staff about the workings of the security sector, including with respect to existing linkages between security policy, standard operating procedures and budget demands. Yet parliamentary oversight of the security sector is often hindered by a lack of information, expertise, and human and financial resources. Seminar participants made a strong appeal to the IPU and the co-organizers to help parliaments in the region address these challenges.
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