Objective 1 2017-2021

One of the key areas of support in the past five years has been to legislation and oversight, including budget oversight. The IPU has built parliamentary capacity for these functions in Benin, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, the Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Tunisia.

In Djibouti, the IPU helped create a standing parliamentary committee on human rights, as well as a caucus of women parliamentarians. IPU support strengthened representation, oversight and legislative work by Djibouti’s National Assembly, which adopted a new law on violence against women in 2020.

“Indeed, the seminar that the IPU organized for our benefit enabled us to be more than ready to welcome the members of the Transitional National

Council, Chad’s new legislative body. The members of the new chamber told us they were bowled over by how well-organized we were.”

 

Senior staff, parliament of Chad (2021)

Self-assessments are important first steps to strengthening parliamentary capacity. The IPU supported self-assessments, using an IPU suite of toolkits, with the national parliaments of Djibouti, Georgia, Myanmar and Zambia. Zambia’s self-assessment led to further collaboration with the IPU in 2020 and 2021.

From 2012 until Myanmar’s military coup in February 2021, the IPU had also been providing long-term assistance to the country’s national parliament, including the establishment of an international-standard parliamentary learning centre and related technical assistance. The centre was used to build capacity for more than 800 MPs and 2,000 parliamentary staff.

“Support provided by the IPU over many years is standing the test of time and being used even now (since the coup).”

 

Chair, Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (parliament of Myanmar), (2021)

By referring to “effective, accountable and inclusive institutions”, Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlights the importance of parliaments for development. The IPU worked with Member Parliaments during this period to identify standards, guidelines and good practices that will help them to operationalize the 2030 Agenda.

The 2017 IPU-UNDP Global Parliamentary Report, for example, made 26 recommendations for strengthened parliamentary oversight. In 2018 and 2020, the World e-Parliament Reports tracked baseline data on parliaments’ use of technology, including their engagement with citizens. Since late 2019, a new IPU initiative has been helping parliaments to measure themselves against the 2030 Agenda targets.

These standards, guidelines and good practices are expected to have long-term impact, since stakeholders, including civil society, can also use them to advocate for change.

The IPU’s Parline database is the global standard for data on national parliaments. In 2021, more than 450,000 users consulted Parline, and its data has been referenced by the OECD, UN and the World Bank.

The data is often used as evidence to advocate for change. For example, IPU data shows the continued imbalance be- tween men and women in legislatures, including leadership positions on parliamentary committees. Whereas women chaired 69 per cent of committees on gender equality in 2020, they chaired just 17 per cent of committees on finance, defence and foreign affairs. We are still far from gender parity in parliamentary leadership positions.

Information and communications technology (ICT) helps parliaments to operate more effectively. Throughout this strategy period, the IPU provided ICT support, such as train- ing, resources and advice to the parliaments of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Zambia.

The IPU also facilitated south-south and peer-to-peer knowl- edge sharing between New Zealand, Vanuatu and Tuvalu. In Tuvalu, the parliament now has an ICT action plan, including a set of short- and long-term milestones. Vanuatu’s parliament has a new data storage system, allowing it to digitalize and store parliamentary documents.

In 2020, the IPU began to develop an online learning initia- tive, covering topics such as gender equality, human rights, sustainable development and climate change. The pilot of this initiative was launched with the National Assembly of Zambia in late 2021.

The Common Principles are now the most widely accept- ed framework for parliamentary development, providing a common language and set of values to frame parliamentary support. Since 2016, the IPU has hosted three expert round- tables to share good practice and facilitate their application. In 2020, the IPU launched a guide, Putting parliamentary self-development into practice.

By the end of 2021, some 139 national parliaments had endorsed the Common Principles, together with 27 parlia- mentary assemblies and partner organizations.