Training Workshop on “Enhancing the Role and Effective Participation of Parliamentarians in the APRM Process”

Scope and Objectives of the training

The overall objective of the training workshop is to enhance the participation and effectiveness of Parliamentarians in the APRM process in participating countries. By so doing, the Parliamentarians would be capacitated to oversee the implementation of the National Plan of Action (NPoA) in their respective countries.

The training will give an in-depth understanding of the rationale, structure, processes and expectations of their role in the APRM. The training will provide valuable learning opportunities for exchange of views, sharing country specific experiences and peer learning among Parliamentarians from both pioneer and newly acceded countries. It will also emphasize the need to build coalitions between Parliamentarians and civil society organizations to improve the level of citizen engagement in the APRM as a whole.

As such, the purposes of the training workshop are as follows:

• To define the role of Parliament and its structures in the self-assessment, review and implementation phases of the process;

• To inform and empower MPs to ensure that the process would be credible and transparent;

• To enhance the quality of National Country Reviews by incorporating the inputs of Parliamentarians in the national self assessment report;

• To strengthen the relationship between MPs and their constituencies, using the APRM consultation process as a vehicle of outreach;

• To highlight its role in the formulation, validation and implementation of National Programme of Actions; and

• Establish MPs networks among Parliamentarians from APRM participating countries with a view of improving the continental oversight of the process through the Pan-African Parliament.

Contents of the Training Program

The Parliamentarians will benefit from expert knowledge, peer dialogue and exchange of experiences. In this context the training will try to answer to the following questions:

1. What is the role of Parliamentarians as articulated in the APRM base documents?

2. How can the APRM process, through a country self-assessment and NPoA implementation, assist Parliamentarians in better understanding their role within the governance system?

3. How can the oversight role of MPs be reconciled with the participatory role of the institution in the APRM process? In other words, is the legislature both a change agent and a stakeholder in the governance system of country in the context of the APRM?

4. Do the lack of resources and sufficient access to information - affect parliamentarians’role in the APRM process?

5. To what extent did the APRM National Governing Council facilitate the involvement of Parliamentarians in the pioneer countries and what lessons can be learned from them?

Format of the training

The training will be organized as a workshop using both plenary and breakout working group sessions. The plenary sessions will afford opportunity for expert presentations to be discussed and lessons learned. While, the breakout sessions will encourage peer learning and sharing and provide more in-depth analysis of some particular thematic issues. A write of the conference proceedings would be used as a manual/module for future training.

To that end, a combination of methods will be used as follows:

1.      Brainstorming/exchange/dialogue

2.      Formal Presentations by experts

3.      Working Group Exercises

4.      Case studies/Country examples

Target Group and beneficiary countries

The primary target group of this training is Parliamentarians from the English speaking APRM participating countries. To date, Fourteen (14) English-speaking countries2 acceded to the process. The total size of the target group is estimated at a maximum of 45 participants:

parliamentarians, parliamentary staff, representatives of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and ECA East and Southern Africa Offices.

Expected outcomes

The main expected outcomes of the training workshop are:

1. Enhanced capacity of the trainees MPs to participate effectively in APRM process at the national level so as to promote transparency and credibility, and;

2. Improved capacity of the MPs to oversight the implementation of the National Programme of Action.

 Documentation

The provisional agenda for the meeting, together with the Aide-Memoire, will be circulated under the reference number: E/ECA/APRM.1/Inf.1 prior to the workshop date.

As background documents ECA will distribute APRM guidelines and basic documents of the APRM process. All workshop documents and the Workshop news will be available on the following site: http://www.uneca.org/aprm

Working language

The meeting will be conducted in English and no translation service will be provided.