Strengthening Regional Parliaments towards Achieving The Millennium Development Goals
Mise à jour le Lundi, 20 Août 2012 14:22 Écrit par Administrator Mardi, 19 Avril 2011 08:43
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 Photo and Caption: Hon. Therese Frösch speaking during the Regional CEMAC Seminar on Parliamentary Engagement with the MDGs, 26-27 October 2011, Equatorial GuineaDonor Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) Political Coordinator Hon. Holger Gustafsson (Sweden) |
Background
In September 2010, world leaders gathered in New York to reaffirm their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and evaluate progress. With the 2015 target date only a few years away the campaign results are spread unevenly across the continents, with least achievement in Africa.
The goals are deemed to be still achievable, but good governance is a necessity to achieve the set objectives. Unfortunately in the process of policy formulation and implementation, there is a striking lack of systematic engagement of elected representatives of the affected populations. African parliamentarians face the daunting task of providing oversight of legislation, policies and development funds towards the MDGs without access to research on policy impacts, information on budgets allocations and foreign aid flows. Through the MDG Programme, AWEPA aims at capacitating parliamentarians, thereby strengthening parliamentary democracy as a means towards Africa’s achievement of the MDGs over 2011-2015.
Objective
The overall objective of the MDG Programme is to contribute to the realisation of democracy, poverty reduction and sustainable development in Africa through supporting the capacity development of regional African Parliaments and through promoting a better understanding among European parliamentarians of the challenges for achieving the MDGs in Africa.
Impacts
- Parliamentarians are taken increasingly more seriously by governments in MDG-related policy discussions
- A number of activity recommendations and communiqués were tabled for plenary discussions and adopted by the regional parliamentary bodies
- Qualitative amendments were made to the East African Community HIV and AIDS Prevention and Management Bill
- Increased recognition of the role of parliament by the COP 17 UNFCCC meeting
- Increased engagement from CEMAC parliamentarians to play a role in the issues concerning the drying up of Lake Chad
- Strengthened North-South dialogue through the exchange of lessons learned from the transformation process in Eastern Europe
- African Regional Parliamentary Bodies expressed the will for a continued dialogue with AWEPA on their institutions’ strategic objectives
- African Regional Parliamentary Bodies are aware of the need to harmonise monitoring structures, in order to better track the outcomes of MGD Programme activities
Programme Partners
