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Assistance in action

We deliver hands-on assistance to parliaments. Our work enables parliaments to develop, reform and modernize. It assists individual MPs and parliamentary staff to further develop their parliamentary knowledge and skills. We connect parliaments that want to grow by using the experiences of the members and staff of other parliaments from similar political systems. 

Our goal is to help parliaments deliver on their democratic mandate, so they are better able serve the people they represent.

This is a fundamental and growing part of our work, particularly with countries in political transition and emerging from conflict.

All this work is driven by the parliaments themselves, and underpinned by the standards, core values and guidelines we develop.

We have been engaged in this work since the 1970s, offering practical help to strengthen the institution of parliament in many different ways. We have assisted parliaments to draft new constitutions, review their committee systems, reform procedures, and run induction sessions for new MPs. We have worked with parliaments to strengthen the skills of staff, and to develop their research, library and information management capabilities through an increased and better use of ICT.

For over four decades, we have helped parliaments around the world strengthen their capacity to better serve their people. We have worked in partnership with over 65 parliaments and delivered hundreds of activities in the form of punctual support to fully fledged projects around the world. We have done this with funding predominantly from the United Nations Development Programme (through agreements with individual country offices), the European Union, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and parliaments themselves.

Find out how you can join our team of parliamentary experts.

In this section
We help parliaments with library services, ICT, committee structures and procedural rules. Photo: © IPU
We help national parliaments around the world by providing core institutional advice and practical help.