BACKGROUND
Parliamentary Immunity, also known as parliamentary privilege and legislative immunity, is a system in which members of the parliament or legislatures are granted special rights and immunities including, in some cases, partial immunity from prosecution. These immunities are provided to help ensure that they can play their legislation and oversight roles effectively.
Parliamentary immunity has because controversial because in some jurisdictions of its potential for abuse. A member can use such immunity in some cases to avoid prosecution for actions not related to his/her parliamentary duties. Alternatively, a member can in some situations make damaging allegations that would ordinarily be discouraged by defamation laws, without first determining whether those allegations have a strong foundation.
The GOPAC Global Conference resolution (Arusha) on Parliamentary Immunity confirms the need to address parliamentary immunity provisions and practices in many parts of the world and, urges GOPAC to develop global standards and encourage their implementation. At the same time, it is recognized that there is a substantial consensus as to the immunities parliamentarians require to undertake their oversight, legislation and representation roles and the provisions and practices that encourage parliamentary its misuse, sometimes called “impunity”. Nonetheless, there remain many jurisdictions that have little success in converting such understanding into practices where the need for change is evident.
In addition to encouraging inappropriate actions by parliamentarians in particular countries, excessive immunity has a broader impact. The low level of citizen trust of representative assemblies is affected by improper use of immunity privilege, including in neighboring countries, reducing the effectiveness of parliamentarians as agents of integrity in governance. In GOPAC’s view effective parliaments are essential to sustainable effective governance and effective governance is essential to development, security and socio-economic performance.
The Inter American Bar Foundation (IABF) has done extensive research on the immunity provisions and practices in Latin America, has initiated corrective actions, but feels that there might be more rapid success if GOPAC and its Latin American chapter (LAPAC – Latin American Parliamentarians Against Corruption) were to be engaged and provide political leadership in pursuing corrective action.
USAID, which undertook a number of case studies of parliamentary immunity and sponsored the GOPAC Conference workshop on this matter, has remained engaged and also is supporting this work.
GLOBAL TASK FORCE
The central idea is to begin the global work on parliamentary immunity by seeking to undertake initiative in 2 or 3 countries in Latin America where IABF work indicates an urgent need for reform. A team including IABF, USAID and GOPAC/LAPAC experts would assist as required and also monitor impediments, challenges and successful responses in these implementation case studies. Based on these experiences, the Initial Task Force would be in a position to engage GOPAC members at the 2008 conference on next steps and we would hope that LAPAC would be in position to follow up on lessons learned for any additional improvements to parliamentary immunity practices in the region.
Links:
LAPAC www.oplacc.org
USAID Democracy and Governance Section http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance/technical_areas/
Parliamentary Immunity in the European Union (Paper by the ECPRD)
http://www.ecprd.org/Doc/publica/OTH/RulesParllmmu.pdf
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