Message from the INTER PARES team

I hope that you have enjoyed a peaceful and relaxing holiday season, and are looking forward to 2021 with renewed optimism. Many families endured tragedy during 2020, and all of us have had to deal with uncertainty, stress, and disruption. As we anticipate putting the Covid-19 pandemic behind us and gradually reverting to a more normal way of life, we all look forward to meeting in person as well as online.

The peer-to-peer sharing of experience and knowledge is of course not only the core of the INTER PARES project, but also a fundamental feature of human life. During 2020 we learned how to interact on-line, and we appreciate the tremendous efforts that our European Union Member State Parliaments and Partner Parliament made to build and strengthen collaboration, even without the possibility of face-to-face interaction. The last quarter of 2020 was busy and successful at INTER PARES, thanks to this tremendous commitment of our partners, and I’ll highlight some of our activities that are described in more detail in the articles in this newsletter.

While we are anxious to renew our in-person exchanges of expertise as 2021 progresses and the virus is brought under control, we have continued to build on the new approaches for virtual interaction that are a silver lining in the cloud of the pandemic. In this vein, we were very pleased to launch our first two e-learning courses geared for parliamentary secretariat staff in partner parliaments, on Legislative Drafting, and Parliamentary Oversight. These combine the expert authorship of leading parliamentary scholars, with the practical guidance and insight from the e-learning working group drawn from EU Member State Parliaments.

Peer-to-peer partnerships advanced rapidly in a number of countries, and there are brief updates below from Bhutan, The Gambia, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago. In each of these cases, European Union Member State Parliaments have freely contributed their expertise, helping to make reality the European Union’s commitment to being a beacon of democracy around the world.

We recognise and deeply appreciate the financial and programmatic contribution of the European Union through the Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, as well as the precious partnership with the European Parliament that grew wings in 2020. In December, we co-organized with these partners a highly successful conference on Parliaments and Democratic Innovations that took up the challenge to share new learning and practice from across Europe and beyond, on the renewal and reinforcement of representative democracy; placing citizens at the heart of responsive governance. 20 speakers from parliaments, academia, and civil society in Europe and around the world shared their knowledge and experience with the 750 participants tuned in to the discussions that took place over three days

The conference theme of building citizen participation is one of six cross-cutting priorities of INTER PARES which also include enhancing emerging parliaments’ strengths in gender equality, engaging youth, combatting climate change, fostering digital innovation, and promoting human rights.

In November we organized the Parliaments and Youth: Bridging the Gap workshop.  More than 40 participants from 24 countries engaged intensively in designing our strategy for involving youth in all dimensions of parliaments’ work, a challenge for developed and emerging democracies alike.

Also in November, the AGORA parliamentary web portal was relaunched. Originally founded in 2010 as a collaborative endeavor of several parliamentary development organizations, INTER PARES has taken on co-ordination of the platform. Read more below about the ambitious plans for 2021!

2020 marked the 25th anniversary of International IDEA, of which the INTER PARES project is proud to be part. In June 2020, the project organized a month of activities to celebrate the anniversary, which came to an exciting crescendo in a 25-hour virtual conference bridging November 19 and 20.

Finally, we welcomed Laura Mancilla to our team, as Associate Programme Officer with special responsibility for our Latin American partnerships, and as INTER PARES gender focal point. Read more about Laura in the Staff Updates section!

Thanks again for all your continuing support and engagement to help strengthen parliaments and democracies around the world.

Jonathan Murphy
Head of Programme, INTER PARES