Parliament-CSO collaboration needed to tackle insecurity
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has called for a stronger collaboration between parliaments and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the West African sub-region.
According to the Speaker, the political tensions in these countries could have serious consequences for the people within the sub-region should it be regarded only as a particular country’s problem.
The Speaker said this at the maiden West African Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations (PMOs) conference organised by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana).
The event was in collaboration with the National Democratic Institute of Washington, Parliamentary Network Africa and the Ghana Network of Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations for this invitation.
Addressing the gathering, Mr Bagbin said, “We must together as a sub-region deal with the emerging issues that confront us because they can have dire consequences for the people within the sub-region.”
He said this required a partnership with CSOs and other forward-looking organisations in educating and sensitising the citizens on the role they have to play to ensure the growth of democracy, stability, and peace in the West African sub-region.
He assured his commitment to helping achieve such a goal as one of the key pillars of the Corporate Strategic Plan of Ghana’s Parliament.
Beyond this, he explained that Parliaments exist because of the citizens within their jurisdiction. Therefore, parliamentarians need to reach out to citizens constantly and make them a part of the parliamentary procedures.
Parliaments and Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations (PMOs) must work together to achieve effective parliamentary monitoring.
Information and data gathered from monitoring by the PMOs are used to understand parliamentary activities and finding remedies to challenges.
Monitoring contributes to empowering and motivating the partners working together on a particular course, in this case, parliaments and the citizens.
It ensures accountability by stakeholders and contributes to influencing processes, procedures, and policies and sharing learning and best practices.
Mr Bagbin urged that the monitoring by the PMOs should focus on the measurement of the quantity and quality of activities or outputs, the outcomes and the effects or changes that occurred because of the intervention, and the impact.
Pledge to support PMOs in strengthening parliamentary work
Mr Bagbin indicated his support to the realisation of the objectives of the Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations, having recognized the support they would need in strengthening and promoting parliamentary work in West Africa.
He said he was confident that the conference would help give birth to a network of West African PMOs that would provide a platform for sharing experiences and challenges.
It would provide an avenue that would come out with innovative ways of assisting Parliaments to be more inclusive, participatory, open, transparent, accountable and responsive to the citizens.
For her part, Senior Programmes Officer at CDD-Ghana, Regina Oforiwaa Amanfo Tetteh, also expressed optimism that the conference would sharpen participating organisations’ skills.
This would then enable them, advocate for issues, policies and programmes that would affect the lives of the people, especially those in the marginalised groups.
She said the network of PMOs was to ensure that its members were equipped to enable them to contribute meaningfully to help achieve the objectives for its establishment.
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About the conference
The conference, the first of its kind in the sub-region, sets the stage towards connecting PMOs in West Africa to share best practices, learn from one another and explore effective ways of engaging Parliaments within their respective countries.
Ultimately, the network was to advocate for the adoption of the ‘Declaration on Parliamentary Openness’ by their respective national legislatures.
They would also campaign for inclusive social policies and programs that will positively enhance the lives of marginalised groups in their respective countries.