Final Report of SEAL I - UNDP Afghanistan

Support to the Establishment of Afghan Legislature
Project ID 00043513
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were prepared. Further taking into account the framework of the civil, criminal and
commercial laws of Afghanistan, curricula and course modules were prepared on Legislative
Drafting, apart from presentations on Legislative Analysis and Drafting. Training modules
for meeting the long term training needs of members of the National Assembly were also
prepared.
Using the Rules of Procedure of previous parliaments of Afghanistan as a guideline, SEAL has
provided advisory services by international experts to draft Rules of Procedure to assist the
members to develop Rules to suit the Afghan parliament. SEAL also assisted the Secretariat to
draft Staff Rules, Code of Conduct and Security Guidelines through on the job training. SEAL has
conducted programmes to increase awareness about democracy, legislature, and separation of
powers.
SEAL has created a modern ICT environment at the Parliament through installation of a state of
the art audio-visual system throughout the complex, a Local Area Network (LAN), computers and
related equipment, and other modern office equipment. SEAL has arranged training for selected
staff of the Secretariat on maintenance of these systems.
With the arrival of the members of parliament in December 2005, SEAL has started an aggressive
capacity building during the first six weeks of 2006. A training programme for the Private
Secretaries of Members was conducted in December. This has been followed by a training
programme for secretariat support on support to committees, and the international relations
department of the Meshrano Jirga. An expert from the parliament of Belgium commenced training
on record keeping for the staff of the Hansard Department.
A ‘Top Management’ course was initiated by sending two senior members of the Secretariat to the
Bureau of Training of the Lower House of the Indian Parliament on a month-long fellowship. This
provided the officials with an excellent view of all aspects of the Indian Parliament and because
the course was attended by representatives from many countries an international perspective was
gained also.
The Secretary-General of the Meshrano Jirga and senior members of the Secretariat attended a
series of informal and highly successful seminars on parliamentary procedure held by a SEAL
senior consultant.
The consideration of the National Budget is a key role of bothHouses. SEAL has been closely
engaged with officials of the assembly in seeking to form a Budget Unit to assist parliamentarians
generally with their budget responsibilities.
SEAL continued providing English trainings to members and conducted many workshops for the
members in during 2006 on different matters as: (Workshop on the narcotics problem, Workshop
on anti-corruption efforts, Workshop on the Socio-Economic Status of Afghanistan and so on).
These workshops were fully interactive and were usually provided in response to requests from
individual Members or committees.
In addition, various Seminars were organized and delivered for the staff of both Secretariats as
Parliamentary Committee System, Scrutiny of State Budget and Development Plans and the like.
Besides, a large number of documents were drafted for the use of members and committees.
There is no space to list all of those but a few might be noted to provide some idea of the scope of
the material produced: (Citizens’ Guide to Presenting Submissions and Assembly - Code of
Conduct for Members of the Wolesi Jirga, Draft of Revised Mandate - Committee on Gender and
Civil Society)
SEAL has been working to strengthen the capacity of Parliament through technical training and
study tours for Members and staff in the Secretariat, Departments of Security, Information & Public
Relations, Finance, Administration, Management, ICT, and Legal Services.
Final Project Progress Report |