April 23 2006, Kabul: Well functioning legislatures are always regarded as one of the key indicators of democracy. And already Afghanistan’s legislature, up and running for the first time in almost three decades, has signed off on its first major act by voting on the composition of the new Cabinet of Ministers proposed by President Hamid Karzai.
So can or should the international community start to ponder as to whether it is time to pack up and leave Afghanistan since a legislature is already in place alongside an Independent Election Commission to organize the elections for the next one?
“No” is the very loud and clear answer from Fawzia Koofi, the Deputy Speaker of the powerful Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) of the Afghan National Assembly.
“If the international community says after elections ‘you have a parliament now’ and then leaves, then we will return to instability. Our democracy is a baby. To keep it alive, we as parliamentarians need to pamper it and help it grow. If democracy dies, things will be even worse for women [in Afghanistan] than they were before,” she stresses in a statement prepared for delivery at the Brussels gathering of representatives of more than 100 donor organizations and legislators from around the world.
The meeting was organized jointly by the UNDP and the Belgian Ministry of Development Cooperation and the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium, in association with the International Parliamentary Union to focus on UNDP guidelines designed to boost the vital role of parliamentarians in building peace and preventing crises in fragile states around the world
(See: Newly Elected Parliaments in Post-Conflict Countries Need More Support)
Ms. Koofi says in her statement that although the establishment of the Afghan Assembly had brought under one roof factions fighting among themselves for decades, she said there was still much to do before feeling the comfort of an accomplished mission.
Thusitha Pilapitiya, the Project Manager of SEAL (Support to the Establishment of Afghan Legislature), UNDP’s mainstream assistance scheme in support of the Afghan National Assembly, underlines that the emergence of a parliament is just the first step in empowering a legislative organ to carry out its functions. She says in order to become a full fledged representative of the population, any parliament must have communication links with all sections of society, from NGOs to academia, from marginalized groups to the movers and shakers of public opinion. Only then can the legislature establish lines of interaction with the population in order to ensure that the voice of the people can be heard, not only through the ballot box, but through their communications with their representatives in the legislature.
Ms. Pilapitiya stresses that such an approach necessitates a strategic commitment to the issue of assistance to parliaments in post-conflict countries and short-lived projects, regardless of the good intentions nurtured, could leave much to be desired.
With the strong expression of support by the donor community at the Brussels meeting to the UNDP’s intentions to remain committed to the long term support of legislatures in post-conflict countries, the SEAL project is likely to start planning its further steps in earnest.
For more information, please contact:
Mustafa Eric
Sr. Public Information Officer
United Nations Development Programme
mustafa.eric@undp.org
+93 (0)70 157 494
