PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

150 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The paper acknowledges that much remains to be done, and that the attitude
of party leaderships in Parliament remains crucial. Yet it envisages Parliament
as having a key role in helping spread training in conflict transformation skills
throughout the country through the newly created parliamentary constituency
offices.
Mali is another country where the Parliament has been taking a lead in
conflict resolution activity within the country. Its role can best be described in
the words of the submission made for the present study:
In young democracies such as Mali’s, the maintenance of peace and
social stability are a basic concern for the national authorities.
Therefore, in addition to adopting laws and overseeing government
action, the National Assembly has also assumed the role of ensuring
social cohesiveness and of consolidating the national conscience.
The adverse effects of globalization, the inexorable advance of the
desert and social changes have often led to existential crises between
communities, fuelling inter-ethnic and community conflicts, uprisings
and even civil wars. Since 1992, a great deal of importance has therefore
been given to the Malian parliament’s role as an intermediary.
Each time the peace has been threatened or the consensus on national
unity has been jeopardized, deputies have assumed the duty to propose
to act as intermediaries to solve the conflict in question. For example,
in handling the third Tuareg rebellion which broke out in 1990 and
1991, the deputies of the first legislature, which sat from 1992 to 1997,
designated a delegation led by the President of the National Assembly
to meet all the parties involved (the rebel factions, the army and civil
society) to bring about dialogue and consultation. Experience has
shown that this approach was decisive for the return to peace in the
northern part of Mali. The same methods have been applied with more
or less success to other kinds of conflicts (such as religious, land and
grazing disputes).
A different example is provided where a parliament is able to take the lead
in resolving a deep-seated conflict which has broken out at the constitutional
level. The submission from the Ukrainian Parliament points out the key role
played by the Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) in resolving the crisis of
November/December 2004 during the ‘Orange Revolution’. Before this time
the Verkhovna Rada had been actively involved in discussions on constitutional
reform which would redistribute power between President and