Common principles for effective parliamentary development assistance

Representatives of Asian parliaments and parliamentary organizations provide their input to the Common Principles for Parliamentary Development.©IPU

Representatives of Asian parliaments and parliamentary development organizations are meeting in Manila on 28-29 August in on-going work to develop a framework for coordination on parliamentary development assistance.

Hosted by the Senate of the Philippines, participants will review the draft of the Common Principles for Parliamentary Development.

Coordinated by IPU, this ambitious project will offer clear and helpful guidelines to parliaments and parliamentary development practitioners on receiving, providing or facilitating development assistance.

The Common Principles, work on which began in late 2013, are aimed at providing an effective tool in building strong, functioning and inclusive institutions that can more efficiently carry out their legislative, oversight and representational role.

Using a common language that all actors involved in the field of parliamentary development can share, the Common Principles will also help ensure that parliaments retain ownership of their own development process. This will allow them to adapt their parliamentary development to their history and local context and make sure offered assistance matches their needs and priorities.

The Common Principles will also help ensure more streamlined and coordinated action by donor institutions to avoid overlap and to increase effectiveness of development assistance being provided.

At the meeting organized with the support of Worldwide Support for Development (WSD), participants will be able to share experiences with the drafting group composed of IPU, the European Parliament, the French National Assembly, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). They will also look at ways the Common Principles could be implemented in their countries.

The meeting will result in a revised text of the Common Principles for final approval by IPU’s Governing Council at its next meeting in October followed by endorsement by national parliaments and parliamentary development organizations.