Description

From 1991 to 2001, Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) sent teams of its members out on peace-making missions to resolve parliament-based conflicts, especially in countries with emerging democracies. This effort met with significant success.

These missions, organized by PGA’s Task Force on Peace & Democracy, were sent to Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, Tanzania, Togo and elsewhere, in response to requests for assistance from the parliaments themselves or from Special Representatives of the United Nations Secretary General.

The men and women taking part in these peace-making missions found that they had some unique advantages over other peacemakers. Unlike diplomats representing nations, they were not constrained by their own governments’ policies. Yet, compared with representatives of non-governmental organizations, they had more credibility and more access to people and information. And because all had dealt with disputes about power sharing and the rights of minorities in their own parliaments, they could often provide insights and suggest solutions based on their personal experience.

Praised by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his predecessor Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and hailed by leaders in several countries, the Task Force was described in 1999 by Professor Stephen Marks of Columbia University, an authority on international peace-making, as “one of the most valuable, integrated and professionally run preventive diplomacy and conflict management programs that exist in the non-governmental sector. In fact, it has in a sense defined a new stage of preventive diplomacy.”

So far the Task Force’s activities have been funded by grants made by donor countries in response to applications from PGA on a per crisis basis. To make the Task Force even more effective in the future, PGA is now seeking to create a permanent, revolving fund that would enable the peace-making teams to be dispatched without delay whenever a peace-threatening crisis occurs.