CPA NEWS Helping Parliaments to gain greater independence from Governments – CPA launches its Model Law for Independent Parliaments Today, more than ever, Parliaments are facing many challenges to their effectiveness. The current COVID-19 pandemic is stretching the capacity of Commonwealth Parliaments to remain fully functional, requiring costly resources and specialist services as well as the ability to be rapidly adaptive to new ways of working. To survive such pressures, Parliaments need to have robust leaders, services and finances to respond to such pressures. As part of its commitment to the Commonwealth Latimer House Principles, as well as its work in benchmarking Parliaments against international standards, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) has developed a Model Law to help empower Parliaments to take control away from the Executive to ensure it has the administrative, operational and financial resources it needs to function effectively. The Model Law is designed as a Parliamentary Service Commission Bill which seeks to create a parliamentary corporate body to oversee the institution of Parliament. It has also been structured to accommodate as many versions of the ‘Westminster System’ Parliament as possible. The Model Law can be adapted to suit unicameral or bicameral Parliaments, small or large Legislatures at either a national or subnational level. The Model Law has been developed with expert and experienced input from leading Commonwealth Legislative drafters and Parliamentary Clerks. The Acting CPA Secretary-General, Mr Jarvis Matiya said: “Since the establishment of the Commonwealth Latimer House Principles, over the last twenty years, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has been a leader in driving the agenda for strengthening the independence of Parliaments from the Executive, this Model Law is another important step in that process. It will undoubtably be an invaluable resource for Commonwealth Parliaments that need to create such entities and a clear reminder to other Parliaments to continue to perfect their institutional independence.” To download a copy of the CPA’s Model Law for Independent Parliaments please visit www.cpahq.org/cpahq/modellaw.
The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) Headquarters Secretariat joined a number of international partners for the ParlAmericas webinar on gender-responsiveness and disaster resilience during COVID-19. The webinar was hosted in partnership with UN Women Caribbean and the Parliament of St Lucia and it brought together Parliamentarians, technical staff and representatives of civil society from across the Caribbean and Americas. Jack Hardcastle, Programmes Assistant at the CPA Headquarters Secretariat spoke about the CPA’s toolkit on Climate Change and Small States (www.cpahq.org/cpahq/SBclimatechange) and the newly launched toolkit on parliamentary responses to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (www.cpahq.org/cpahq/coronavirus). The CPA Small Branches network operates in 43 Commonwealth jurisdictions with 16 of them in the CPA Caribbean, Americas and Atlantic Region. The ParlAmericas webinar was introduced by Tonni Brodber, Head of the UN Women Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean, who was followed by the Speaker of the House of Assembly of St Lucia, Hon. Andy Daniel, MP, Member of the ParlAmericas Board of Directors and CAA Regional Representative on the CPA's Executive Committee. The webinar also heard discussions on a wide range of issues in relation to gender-responsiveness and disaster resilience during COVID-19 from representatives of a wide range of organisations in the Caribbean Region including the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Caribbean Office. To view the ParlAmericas webinar please visit https://youtu.be/-iViwH0fQG4 and for access to the resources accompanying the webinar please visit https://parlamericas.org/en/gender-equality/our-work-pnge.aspx.
The Parliamentarian | 2020: Issue Three | 100 years of publishing 1920-2020 | 213
For more images of CPA activities and events please visit www.cpahq.org/cpahq/flickr.
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association joins Caribbean-focused webinar on gender responsiveness and disaster resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic
