Namibia is a member of various international parliamentary bodies that bring together national and regional parliaments to promote peace, democracy, and cooperation among countries. These are parliamentary linkages that foster international parliamentary diplomacy and relations.
International parliamentary bodies improve the accountability of international organisations by enabling national parliamentarians to participate in decision-making processes, ensuring that citizens’ voices are heard at the international level, and bridging the gap between national interests and global governance.
An international parliamentary body provides a crucial forum for inter-parliamentary cooperation, parliamentary oversight of international organisations, and the promotion of democracy, peace, and sustainable development. These bodies allow parliaments to share information, coordinate on global issues, and exert parliamentary influence on international decision-making, thereby strengthening the link between citizens and global governance. They can also serve as platforms for dialogue and knowledge exchange among lawmakers and experts.
The Namibian Parliament has actively been engaging at the international level, a move towards more structured and organised cooperation that calls for greater engagement between parliamentarians. The result has been structured and organised cooperation, Strategic Review for Namibia through the IPU, as well as through regional organisations such as the Pan-African Parliament (PAP), to name but a few, aimed at addressing the expanding international agenda and its domestic ramifications.
These bodies provide platforms for exchanging best practices, sharing information on parliamentary procedures, and developing expertise in parliamentary work, as seen in IPU, Pan-African Parliament, CPA events.
Parliaments are, therefore, no longer merely engaged in the processes of foreign policy, but are directly active as participants in international relations. This includes Members of Parliament (MPs) as part of national delegations to international negotiations, parliamentary delegations to intergovernmental meetings, and parliamentary study groups(benchmarks).
The just-ended Pan-African Parliament highlighted several further activities and engagements as constituting parliamentary diplomacy including bilateral cooperation between parliaments, the establishment of friendship groups, engagement between parliaments within sub-regions, the receiving and sending of parliamentary delegations, participation in ad hoc engagements such as election monitoring or conflict resolution, meeting ambassadors, and technical cooperation between parliaments.
Members of Parliament (MPs) and presiding officers have the opportunity to exchange and engage on different views and topics on a range of international challenges at these platforms as climate change, artificial intelligence, peace and security, etc.
As Namibia’s international participation on the world stage matures, Parliament has begun to develop an understanding of parliamentary diplomacy. This includes a focus on facilitating international participation along with its other core objectives of passing laws, oversight of the executive, and facilitating cooperative government. This was evident recently this year when the Parliament of Namibia facilitated the Association of Parliament Libraries of Eastern and Southern Africa (APLESA) conference in Swakopmund.
Namibia’s Parliament already has many multilateral and bilateral relations through which it can promote the interests and values set out in its foreign policy.
Within the Pan-African Parliament (PAP), Namibia›s Parliament is a participant in the Committee on Cooperation, International Relations and Conflict Resolution, the Committee on Gender, Family, Youth and People with Disabilities, Committee on Rural Economy, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environment, Committee on Trade, and the Committee on education, Culture, Tourism, and Human Resources. Parliament is also active in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Other multilateral relations include participation in the SADC-PF and the African, Caribbean, Pacific-European Union Forum (ACP-EU).
Regional parliaments and parliamentary assemblies play a more significant role, and therefore the domestic parliamentary dimension on international affairs should not be confused with the related question of the international dimension of parliamentary activities.
* Noreen Sitali works at the National Assembly under the Directorate of Research, Information, Publications and Editorial Services.