PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

178 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
(AWEPA). A host of non-parliamentary agencies such as the United Nations
Development Programme, the United States Agency for International
Development, the European Commission, the Inter-American Development
Bank, the World Bank Institute as well as the US-based NGOs the National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican
Institute are now also involved in far-reaching technical assistance programmes.
A list of institutions that provide technical assistance to parliaments
can be found in the annex to this Guide.
Technical assistance at the bilateral level actually preceded multilateral
technical assistance. Indeed, many parliaments of former colonial countries
initiated assistance to the new parliaments of their ex-colonies. These often
included attachments in the donor parliament as well as exchanges between
staffers and Members of the respective parliaments.
The Indian Parliament also developed, several years ago, a programme of
assistance to a number of parliaments, especially in the Commonwealth. This
programme still functions today, and covers areas such as legislative drafting.
In addition to delivering training programmes to Indian State legislators and
staff, it organises attachments and study visits for members and staff of
foreign parliaments.
Like its multilateral counterpart, technical assistance at the bilateral level
has developed considerably in recent years. In addition to providing a pool of
expertise for the programmes run by the multilateral agencies, the long-established
parliaments, generally those in the North, have developed full-fledged
technical assistance programmes in support of parliamentary institutions of the
South. The Italian Chamber of Deputies, for example, indicates that it gives
high priority, in its international activities, to programmes of assistance to
parliaments in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, South-Eastern Europe and
the Caucasus. These programmes cover constitutional reform or reorganising
the technical-administrative machinery supporting parliaments.
Both Houses of the French Parliament have also developed extensive programmes
of assistance to parliaments, not only in the former French colonies,
but also to other parliaments such those in Cambodia, Romania and Georgia.
In many cases, these programmes are funded by the European Union and the
United Nations Development Programme. The Swedish Parliament, with
funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
(SIDA), has been and is currently involved in a project to develop information
and documentation systems in support of the lawmaking and oversight
functions of the Vietnamese National Assembly. The Swedish Parliament has