VIEW FROM THE ACTING SECRETARY-GENERAL & DIRECTOR OF FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION


THE ROLE OF PARLIAMENTS IN PROTECTING OUR RIGHTS


View from the Acting Secretary- General & Director of Finance and Administration


In any democratic society, our rights are something that we often take for granted in our everyday lives and so when these rights are restricted, or even taken away, then we realise the importance of our rights.


At the 800th anniversary of the signing of the


Magna Carta at Runnymede, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP emphasized the history, importance and relevance of the ancient charter that established key rights for the people. “The limits of executive power, guaranteed access to justice, the belief that there should be something called the rule of law, that there shouldn’t be imprisonment without trial, Magna Carta introduced the idea that we should write these things down and live by them. That might sound like a small thing to us today. But back then it was revolutionary, altering forever the balance of power between the governed and the government. […] Magna Carta takes on further relevance today. For centuries, it has been quoted to help promote human rights and alleviate suffering all around the world.”1


Mr Joe Omorodion Acting Secretary-General & Director of Finance and Administration of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association


from child protection to immigration rights. Many of our rights are laid out in international treaties and conventions, including the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Commonwealth Charter. In relation to our rights, the Commonwealth Charter states that members are committed to: “equality and respect for the protection and promotion of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, for all without discrimination on any grounds as the foundations of peaceful, just and stable societies. We note that these rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated and cannot be implemented selectively. We are implacably opposed to all forms of discrimination, whether rooted in gender, race, colour, creed, political belief or other grounds.”3


The Commonwealth Charter, adopted in December 2012, stands both as an example of the ongoing influence of the original Magna Carta and the continued relevance of a written charter of rights, responsibilities and values in the 21st


century.


Magna Carta is widely recognised as a key historical document across the globe, and it continues to be seen as an enduring symbol of freedom and the rule of law.


One example of the document’s enduring international importance is the purchase by the Australian government in 1952 of a 1297 Magna Carta from an English private school for £12,500. This manuscript is now displayed prominently in Australia’s Parliament building in Canberra, not far from Magna Carta Place and its monument to the document, erected in 1997. Elsewhere across the Commonwealth, Magna Carta has been vaunted as an important document for individual political rights. It was publicly praised by Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) during his famous trial for his life at Pretoria in 1964 and looked to by women campaigning for female suffrage in the Bahamas in the 1960s.2


Parliaments across the Commonwealth are based on protecting our democratic rights and freedoms and developing new legislation and protections to ensure that our rights are not restricted in many different areas – from the freedoms of the media to voting rights,


76 | The Parliamentarian | 2015: Issue Two Kenya?


We continue to experience challenges to our rights from many different sources: from international terrorists abducting civilians; to attacks on press freedom through restrictive reporting; to human dignity in form of modern-day slavery, the protection and implementation of our rights has been continuously provoked. However, the protection of our rights does not come without responsibility. Citizens and parliamentarians both have an equal role in protecting our rights and have a responsibility in ensuring that systems are in place to guarantee those rights and that all in society are actively participating in the active promotion of our rights. Parliamentarians must be free to express their own rights and freedoms, otherwise how can they defend, represent and promote the rights of those who elect them?


Many parliamentarians around the Commonwealth find their rights as elected representatives being challenged and they have been prevented from exercising their mandate through many different methods including, for example, the extreme measures of politically motivated bankruptcy proceedings and the revocation of a


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