Mobilising parliaments for Africa’s development
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Text
adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf of
the Assembly, on 13 March 2009 (see Doc. 11636, report of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development,
rapporteur: Mr Bjørnstad).
- Thesaurus
1. In 2001,
the heads of state of the Organisation of African Unity (now the
African Union) adopted the New Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD). This “strategic framework for Africa’s renewal” has four
primary objectives: a. the
eradication of poverty; b.
placing African countries on a path of sustainable growth and development; c. the integration of Africa into
the global economy and the end to its marginalisation in the globalisation
process; and d. the acceleration
of women’s empowerment. The main significance of NEPAD lies in the
fact that it is an African-led strategy for development and that
it entails strong political commitments by the participating heads
of state. It therefore represents a benchmark against which leaders
can be held accountable and a framework into which the international
community’s efforts can be placed.
2. NEPAD is a political initiative designed to promote peace,
security, democracy and good governance, and at the same time the
socio-economic programme of the African Union which is meant to
implement the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations
(UN) in 2000. Under these goals the world community committed itself
to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; to achieve universal primary
education; to promote gender equality and empower women; to reduce
child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV/Aids,
malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability;
and to develop global partnership for development.
3. The Parliamentary Assembly has repeatedly underlined the importance
of the Millennium Development Goals, for instance in its
Resolutions 1449 (2005) on the environment and the Millennium Development Goals and
1450 (2005) on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and
the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals.
4. Unfortunately, despite progress, it is widely expected that
sub-Saharan Africa will fall short of the target of reducing poverty
by half by 2015. Moreover, the continent is also lagging behind
in most other indicators, although evaluating progress in many countries
is difficult due to a lack of statistics.
5. NEPAD’s founders acknowledged that good and responsible governance
is key to overcoming the hurdles to Africa’s development. Unaccountable
governments, wasted resources and corruption have for a long time
hampered sustainable economic growth and equitable social development.
In the NEPAD framework document, political leaders jointly undertake
to promote and protect democracy and human rights in their respective
countries by developing clear standards of accountability, transparency
and participatory governance at national and regional levels.
6. Among members of parliament, both in Africa and in Europe,
there is widespread consensus that the successful implementation
of NEPAD and the objectives of good governance in general cannot
be achieved without the parliamentary system and the role of parliament
itself being strengthened and supported. Furthermore, Europe cannot
review its development co-operation policies without consultation
with Africa and without paying due attention to African parliaments.
7. However, it is also widely acknowledged that parliaments,
both in Africa and Europe, are not sufficiently involved in the
NEPAD process and are often not sufficiently informed about it,
and that parliamentarians are therefore unable to engage in dialogue
with their constituents on the important aspects of NEPAD, which means
that the NEPAD process is still lacking its grassroots base. Parliaments
in Europe are not fully committed to taking the NEPAD process into
account in their decision making on issues of importance to the development
of Africa.
8. The Assembly believes that parliaments in Council of Europe
member states should involve themselves more closely in development
issues. National parliaments might consider the possibility of establishing development
co-operation committees where they do not yet exist. The Assembly
underlines the importance of parliamentary involvement in and scrutiny
of official development assistance. There should be more effective monitoring
of commitments both in quantity and quality. There should be greater
policy coherence, notably between donor countries. Parliamentarians
must be duly mobilised and informed with a view to taking African and
other development issues into account and explaining the importance
of these issues to their constituents.
9. The Assembly welcomes the work of interparliamentary institutions
and networks in mobilising parliaments in Europe and Africa, in
strengthening their capacity and involvement in development issues
and in promoting NEPAD. These include the Inter-Parliamentary Union,
the European Parliament, the Pan-African Parliament, the Association
of European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA), the Parliamentary
Network on the World Bank (PNoWB), the Parliamentarians’ Forum for
NEPAD, the NEPAD Contact Group of African Parliamentarians, the
African Parliamentarians’ Network Against Corruption (APNAC) and,
in the context of the preservation of Africa’s environment and its
capacity to produce its own food, the Parliamentary Network of the UN
Convention to Combat Desertification (PNoUNCCD).
10. As representatives of the people, parliamentarians should
play their full constitutional role, exercising legislative, elective
and budgetary power, holding the executive to account and influencing
international affairs. In Africa, there is a need for a greater
role and involvement of parliaments in the systematic scrutiny of
how development assistance is used, in policy making and monitoring
of progress (Millenium Development Goals, Africa Partnership Forum,
African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), NEPAD, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers).
11. Enhancing the role of parliaments in Africa requires capacity
building and institutional strengthening. Accordingly, the Assembly
firmly supports the principle whereby all official development assistance contributions
and agreements should earmark specific amounts for strengthening
the capacity of Africa’s national parliaments and parliamentary
bodies. Such agreements should stipulate that parliaments must be involved
in overseeing their implementation in accordance with the principles
of good governance.
12. The APRM is an important African Union initiative that aims
to improve governance in participating countries, on the assumption
that good governance is key to creating a positive investment climate
as a prerequisite for sustained economic growth. The Assembly believes
that African leadership of the APRM should be maintained but that
Council of Europe member states and their parliaments should follow developments
critically and sustain their support for this process and for the
implementation of the resulting action plans.
13. The Assembly underlines the need to step up bilateral parliament-to-parliament
dialogue and co-operation, at both national and continental levels,
with a view to greater mutual understanding with regard to official
development assistance and good governance. In this context, it
recalls its agreement concluded in 2005 with the Pan-African Parliament
and considers that steps should be taken to implement it more actively. Moreover,
based on the Assembly’s experience as a forum for reviewing such
international financial and economic institutions as the EBRD and
the OECD, the Pan-African Parliament might consider acting as a parliamentary
forum for such institutions as the African Development Bank.
14. The Assembly welcomes the Resolution on the state of play
of European Union-Africa relations (INI/2007/2002) adopted by the
European Parliament on 25 October 2007 and the joint statement adopted
by the European and Pan-African Parliaments in advance of the Lisbon
European Union-Africa Summit held in Lisbon on 8 and 9 December
2007. Implementation of the joint strategy and action plan resulting
from that summit should be closely monitored by parliaments in the
European Union and Africa.
15. Experience of international co-operation has shown that sharing
of experience and good practice improves the quality of policies.
Among other institutions, the European Centre for Global Interdependence
and Solidarity of the Council of Europe (the North-South Centre)
has a wide range of experience on which to base new work focusing
on global development education and on good governance founded on
human rights, democracy and the rule of law. It is vital that the
centre regain the full confidence of the Council of Europe member
states by pursuing programmes that correspond more closely to the
needs and interests of its present and potential stakeholders, with
the full support of the Parliamentary Assembly.
16. Therefore, the Assembly:
16.1 gives
its full support to the efforts made both in Africa and in Europe
to enhance the role of parliaments in promoting and exercising supervision
of NEPAD and the processes of its implementation, and in winning
the support and participation of the people;
16.2 calls on the governments and parliaments of the Council
of Europe member states to:
16.2.1 increase
support and assistance for NEPAD by all appropriate means in order
to help it achieve the success the peoples of Africa deserve;
16.2.2 ensure that, in all official development assistance contributions
and agreements, specific amounts are earmarked for strengthening
the capacity of Africa’s national parliaments and parliamentary
bodies, and that such agreements stipulate that parliaments must
be involved in overseeing their implementation in accordance with
the principles of good governance;
16.2.3 follow critically and sustain their support for the APRM
and the plans of action resulting from the process, over which the
African countries should remain in control;
16.3 calls on the parliaments of the Council of Europe member
states to involve themselves more closely in development issues,
possibly by establishing development co-operation committees where they
do not yet exist;
16.4 calls on the parliaments of Europe and Africa to:
16.4.1 intensify their scrutiny of
development policies, processes and mechanisms with a view to ensuring
coherence and good governance and, in particular, to step up their
supervision of overseas development assistance so as to ensure that
it is properly spent in accordance with government policy;
16.4.2 step up intercontinental parliament-to-parliament dialogue
and co-operation between the two continents with regard to development
assistance and good governance;
16.5 calls on the governments of the member states to:
16.5.1 keep to their commitments regarding
official development assistance in general and for the African continent
in particular;
16.5.2 step up their support for the North-South Centre and,
as the case may be, join the centre or resume their membership of
it;
16.6 invites the Bureau of the Assembly to:
16.6.1 take steps to implement more
actively the Assembly’s co-operation agreement with the Pan-African
Parliament;
16.6.2 make fuller use of the Assembly’s co-operation agreement
with the North-South Centre.
