PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

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A parliament that is open and transparent I 65 The Iceland Parliament has a special website for schoolchildren aged 13-15. ‘The users can interact with cartoon style figures, answer questions by searching the web for information and be graded instantly for their effort when they send in their answers. It has proven popular and is widely used as a teaching tool.’ The Finnish Parliament has established an electronic game ‘Legislators’ in which groups of schoolchildren can virtually enact legislation in the same way as is done in the real Eduskunta, playing different roles between them. Many long-established democracies have seen it as an essential part of such a curriculum that school students should experience what it is like to run their own parliaments, in the form of an elected assembly or such like, to help decide issues of school policy and discipline. These can also make an important contribution to democracy-building in countries seeking to consolidate a more democratic culture. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey has recently joined forces with the education ministry in a ‘Parliaments of Schools’ project, to establish such assemblies in schools throughout the country. The project has been launched to familiarise the students of primary and secondary education with the culture of election and to be elected, to make them handle their problems with their own perspectives, to build consciousness about functional democracy including the concepts of public participation and tolerance, as well as to spread the culture of democracy to all the segments of society. This project, initiated in 2004, has been implemented in 200 primary schools and 100 secondary schools……The objective here is to spread this system in a short period of time to all schools in Turkey. The project has attracted considerable media attention, and the Assembly Speaker attended some of the first elections to underline the importance and support attached to the project by the National Assembly. Parliament-based programmes These programmes can also take different forms. Many parliaments have arrangements for regular visits from school students, on a weekly or monthly basis, in which students from across the country can attend plenary sessions and committee meetings, question ministers and meet with their own assembly members. Others run ‘young people’s sessions’, in which students learn parliamentary procedure through organising their own debates and question sessions. The Norwegian Storting was planning to open an events centre in
66 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY the autumn of 2005, in which school pupils will conduct simulations of the parliamentary process. ‘They will act as parliamentarians in fictive plenary meetings, meetings in standing committees and party groups, they will write the necessary documents, and they will be confronted with the press.....This will give them a very vivid impression of parliamentary democracy at work.’ A method which combines both school-based activity and a programme in parliament involves school meetings to elect representatives to a National Youth Parliament. Poland, for instance, has an annual Young Parliamentarians meeting, in which young deputies are elected from schools across the country and hold debates in parliament according to parliamentary procedure. A more elaborate version has been developed by the Danish Folketing: The purpose of the Youth Parliament is to help young people from Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland to understand the democratic process better by letting them draw up their own Bills and proposals for legislation, which they debate in committees and in full session in the Folketing……Information on the Youth Parliament is forwarded to teachers of grade 8 and 9 students at all schools. Each class wishing to participate must draft a Bill collectively. The Danish Parliament then selects 60 Bills according to the following criteria: ■ contents of the bills ■ variation (coverage of the widest possible number of subjects) ■ wide geographical coverage ensuring that schools from all parts of the country are represented. The 60 Bills are distributed according to the relevant standing committees. The initial part of the committee work is done electronically. The second part of the committee work is done at Christiansborg Palace at the meeting of the Youth Parliament……Each of the 12 committees will discuss five Bills, of which one from each committee is selected by the participants for discussion and vote in the Chamber. Each committee also frames a question which will be put orally to a Minister during Question Time. The above comprise only a small selection of the initiatives being carried out by parliaments in this important area. Beyond school, St. Kitts runs a Youth Parliament for young people, representing various youth groups. ‘They interact with Parliamentarians, the Speaker of the House and the Clerk of the
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An effective parliament (I): The na
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Where parliaments lack capacity thr
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that the Senate, the House of Commo
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consideration of a bill more effect
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Oversight through parliamentary que
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A case-study of oversight: security
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An effective parliament (II): Parli
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Japan’s ODA is effectively reachi
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8. Facing the future Facing the fut
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Figure 8.1: Sources of Parliamentar
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Facing the future I 187 State: give
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and also to allow for increased par
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strengthening of both legislative a
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As regards the practicability and c
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3. Technology assessment. This has
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Australia Austria Belarus Belgium B
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Organization’s programmes aimed a
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MS. MARTA LAGOS CRUZ-COKE Executive
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MS. DULCE MARIA SAURI RIANCHO Membe
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Commonwealth Parliamentary Associat
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Non-governmental organisations Cent
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Index Note: Page numbers in bold in
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types of, 8, 15-17, 69 voter partic
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Myanmar, 176 Namibia, 77, 110 Natio
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Sweden, 63, 75, 110, 112, 165 gende
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