16 Jun 2025

The Speaker of the National Assembly has stressed the importance of enhancing the capabilities of Members of Parliament (MPs).

Mr Dithapelo Keorapetse stated yesterday when meeting the United Nations Fund Population (UNFPA) head of office in Botswana, Ms Tlangelani Shilubane-Pieterson, that such was essential for enhancing the quality of Parliament debates, strengthening oversight roles, and to improve law and policy-making.

He said the 13^th Parliament was unique as it was the first since last year’s power change, and comprised mostly of new members.

Furthermore, he said Parliament was pursuing a transformative agenda and was seeking to attain a high performance culture, defined by the independence from the executive and well-resourced to executive its mandate.

However, Mr Keorapetse said most of the experienced members of the ruling party were in the executive, thus creating a backbench made mostly of new members.

He also said women representation in Parliament had declined, with five out of six women in Parliament having responsibilities which excluded them from oversight parliamentary committees.

“We are on this journey as the 13^th parliament, our aim is to strengthen democratic culture,” adding that the country was rated as the only country in Sub Saharan Africa to have had uninterrupted multi-party democracy.

However, he said the country’s sole blemish was one party rule, which resulted in complacency, regression in democracy, hence part of the 13th parliament agenda would be to consolidate democracy through developing strong democratic institutions.

He said efforts to capacitate Members of Parliament and support staff were needed to enable them to fulfil their mandate, adding that resource mobilisation had taken centre stage. On other issues, he said the Botswana government believed in the UN systems despite its imperfections, adding that the country remained committed to multilateralism.

However, Ms Shilubane-Pieterson commended the government for its articulation and stance on the human rights agenda approach, saying it was something they would continuously seek ways to support.

She said the UNFPA agenda was to support member states to achieve universal access to sexual reproductive health, adding that their key priority areas were around ending maternal deaths, saying Botswana was one of the countries in higher upper income status with higher maternal deaths.

Another area, she said, was on ending the unmet need for family planning and ending gender- based violence , as well as ending new HIV infections.

Hence Ms Shilubane-Pieterson said UNFPA was committed to supporting Parliament on areas which fall under its mandate. ENDS