The IPU and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have worked together for over 40 years. This long-standing partnership was reinforced by the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 27 November 2017.
At the signing ceremony last week in New York, IPU Secretary General Martin Chungong and UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner reaffirmed their commitment to work together for stronger parliaments and for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They stressed the importance of governance which is crucial to achieving the SDGs and is at the heart of democracy.
Recent cooperation has included the production of knowledge tools, such as the recent 2017 Global Parliamentary Report and Common Principles for Support to Parliaments; joint parliamentary support programmes in post-conflict and transitioning countries, for example in Afghanistan, Georgia, and Myanmar; parliamentary initiatives, tools and trainings on SDGs, the self-assessment toolkit on Parliaments and the SDGs being one of them; work for the promotion of gender equality through iKNOWPolitics; and joint work on youth empowerment.
Through the 2017 MoU, the IPU and UNDP will continue to work together to support parliaments in improving their institutional capacity for legislation and oversight, building more inclusive and transparent processes, and ensuring that they have the means to function efficiently. The two organizations will also work together on the implementation of the SDGs by helping parliaments understand integrated economic, social and environmental planning and by carrying out self-assessments of parliaments’ capacity to achieve the SDGs through the IPU-UNDP toolkit.
