 Good afternoon, everyone. I hope that you're all well. Thank you all for joining me in various locations, whether you're tuned in from Fiji, the Pacific region, or around the world. Your time is invaluable. And we thank you for choosing to spend it here with us this afternoon. Now, on behalf of International Ideas Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, I'd like to welcome you all to the third webinar of the Democratic Development in Melanesia webinar series for 2023. We would also like to welcome our panelists and to you as well, our participants. Now, as part of International Ideas Asia and the Pacific Regional Program's work plan for 2023, these webinars aim to provide opportunities to citizens of the Melanesian region to take part in substantive discussion surrounding democracy in Melanesia. Also intended that through the webinar, citizens of Melanesian countries who participate may gain knowledge on the subject matter and on the experiences of other countries. This will, in turn, enhance debates on institutional and procedural improvements in their respective democracies. Now, this third webinar titled Democratic Development in Melanesia webinar series, Citizens Watching Parliament. Now, democracy is receding in Asia and the Pacific, while authoritarianism solidifies. Only 54% of people in the region live in a democracy, and almost 85% of those live in one that is weak or backsliding. Even high and mid-performing democracies such as Australia, Japan, and Taiwan are suffering democratic erosion. Although highly diverse, common elements erode democracy are inter alia, rising ethno-nationalism, military intervention in political processes, patronage politics, and executive advertisement. This negative trend is tearing the social contract apart in many countries, with the demand for increased accountability and an overhaul of the political system in countries as varied as Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The Melanesian region in the Pacific has its own share of democratic erosion. Populous movements have gained traction by attacking democratic institutions and norms and the prevalence of fake news and digital disinformation has created a need for citizens to act as counterbalance to these trends. Watching Parliament give citizens a chance to see their representatives in action and understand how decisions are made. It also provides an opportunity for citizens to voice their concerns and opinions on issues that affect them directly. This feedback can help shape policy decisions and ensure that the government is working towards the betterment of society. Now, before we jump into our webinar today, just a few house rules, this webinar will have three speakers who will deliver their presentation first, and then the audience will have 30 minutes after the speakers have presented to ask their questions. Now, the audience has reminded our participants, that's that being you, I remind you that you can use the raise hand feature to ask questions. You can also post your questions in the chat feature. We'd also like to remind you to please keep your mic off during the webinar and to only turn it on when it comes to asking questions during the Q&A section. Now, before we proceed any further, please note that this session is being recorded. I also have a disclaimer from International Idea. The statements, views, or opinions expressed in the presentation do not necessarily represent the institutional position of International Idea. It's Board of Advisors or its Council of Member States. Now, if you haven't already done so, I'd like to humbly request that everyone please put their mics on mute as I introduce our first speaker for today. Our first speaker for today is Mr. James Kahn. Mr. Kahn is currently serving as the Vice President of Citizens Congress Watch or CCW, a Parliamentary Monitoring Organization, based with a strong focus on legislative transparency and accountability. CCW is dedicated to promoting ethical practices and integrity among parliamentarians in the Taiwan Legislative When. Mr. Kahn, or James, has been actively involved in overseeing the internal evaluation of parliamentarians within CCW, ensuring that they uphold the highest standards of performance. Due to his extensive knowledge of the Taiwan Legislative When, he's also served as a private consult for the revamping of the Legislative When website. In recent years, he's represented the organization in implementing Taiwan's first open parliament action plan under the principles of the Open Government Partnership, or OGP. Furthermore, James has actively engaged in international collaborations, aiming to strengthen connections and foster knowledge sharing among oversight organizations in Asia. With a master's degree in political science from Tsuchiao University, and prior experience as a project researcher for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, he has conducted research in Taiwan's democratic resilience and parliamentary dynamics. His participation as an international election observer for the Asian Network for Free Elections has provided James with valuable insights and to electoral processes across the Asia region. By combining his expertise in parliamentary monitoring and commitment to democratic principle, he strives to contribute to the advancement of transparent and accountable governance. Ladies and gentlemen, first speaker for this webinar this afternoon, Mr. James Khan. Thank you, Emilia. And it's a very honor to be invited to have this chance to share our working to the Melanisha friends. So first things, I want to share my screen with me for two seconds. Can everyone see the screen? Okay. So my name's James Khan. Thank you all again to join this webinar with me. I'm Robbie Sem, the citizen Congress watch and we are the Taiwan organizations. Of course, we are non-government organizations and let's start our intro. So CCW was founded at 2007. We composed with 48 organizations. All of them are NGOs and or MPOs. The goals are to oversee the Congress, the parliament, which is our legislative union, eliminate inadequate MPs and improve Congress cultures. And we also urge our parliament to be more serving public, more welfare, more transparency, more efficiency and more integrity. So why we stopped establishing CCW was the background. So 2007, 15 years ago, Taiwan's legislative union was characterized by the lack of accountability and transparency. The candidates before they become the MP, they made a numerous promise before the elections. But once it's a very common sense, those promise seems to vanish. They didn't do anything after they'd be elected. So most of the MPs, they skip the meeting. They don't go to the parliament. And the lack of the oversight of the national budget, this is their duty, but they didn't go to deliberations. And the versions of the law, the bill that was passed was controlled by the small group of the whips. Also, the general public had limited understanding of the discussions during the parliament. So as that time there was no live broadcasts and the release of written records was significantly delayed. More than three months or six months, we can see the outcome of the records. So actually the whole entire legislative process seems like a black box, lacking of transparency and public scrutiny. So how do we face that background? So CCW is funding fathers, most of them are scholars or professors in the school. So we have a task for the students. Why don't we using evaluation as a means to achieve the goal of monitoring our parliament? So we use the evaluation systems. It's very easily and can quickly draw the attention of the general public and the members of parliament. We will award those MPs who perform us well with the parliament and we will give that outstanding MPs award. For those who do not perform us that well, let's give the meeting or never deliberations. We will give them the label we won't say they are bad. Instead we will say they are under observations. So make sure every public can watch them carefully next session. So I will introduce our evaluation indicators but it's more than 51 right now, 51 indicators. So it's just briefly introductions. So if you are interested, let's schedule. We can have a one-on-one explanations. And also there's a QR code. It's our official website for CCW. You can see more data, every indicators, every outcomes right now you can see in our website. So I give you three seconds. You can use your cell phone to scan this QR code. One, two, three. Okay, I'll go to the next page. So this is our evaluation indicator. So the basic performance, you have to go to the General Assembly or the committee. This is attendance. But the attendance actually is not meaning so much. So we just give them a proportion only 10%. Why? Because they can sign the name and then go. They don't have to stay in the parliament. After they sign, they can go back to their home, back to their office and don't deliberations. So we're more focused on their committee performance because committee is the most spending time in deliberations of the budget and the bill. So in committing deliberations, we give them 20%. Bill, budget deliberation also 20%. And also the bill, how much primary statutory bills they have posed how did they do some budget cut or freeze because this is the duty to watch the national budgets. But it must be reasonable. They cannot just say, oh, I don't like this government's this department. So I cut their budget. They have some reasonable. So they can have this for scores. So basic performance, we have 100. And there's a citizen evaluation of the inquiring performance. We will invite the citizens to give their ledges, their MPs when they are inquiring or a question to the government, they can give them grades. We have four indicators, professional value positions, problem solving skill and their attitude. So this is 20%. So you can see the basic plus the citizen evaluation is 100. So those on the list in still observed, that means they are fail of here, 100 score less than 16. That means they are fail by the score. So we will give them the outcome is still be observed. Also, we have another bonus indicators. Is there information disclosed by themselves because some of the information we cannot see in our website in the legislative yen, like benefit, a voice, and employment of the assistance, what, how many assistance they have. Is there any related by themselves? Okay, so another is, is their proposal of the act is public interest or righteousness? If they do so, we will give them extra points about the budget. Did they did a good job at the budget? And did they have any special deeds? We will give the extra point also. So there's another indicators for the bonus. Also, if they're doing something wrong, we can minus them. So in this part, when the bill or the budget proposal have been checked is violation of the basic human rights or a major public interest, we will give them minus. Of course, if they have some litigation cases, it may be being causes. So also, impropriated behavior inside or outside a legislative yen, like, I don't know, have you heard that? Taiwan's MPs, they're very easily to fight each other to throw something in the meetings. So that kind of things happen, we will minus their grade. So this is a very briefly introduction about our indicators. So did it really have any impact on our parliament? You can see, this is the data graph of attendance and interpolations every session since we have the evaluation start. So this is the seven parliament one sessions is the first time we started to evaluations. I already say that most of them they will come and sign their name. That means they have attendance, but they didn't do any deliberations or stay in the parliament for working, for meeting. They just sign and go. So you can see most of the sessions, the attendance rate is more than 90 average. But you can see the interpolation rates only 44% when we saw in the first time we have an evaluation. So in the seven parliament, it's about 50 to 60. But after election, because we have the name list of watching list and we urge the people don't vote to that MPs don't come to work and vote to the MPs we have give them the award. So some of them did a good job. They cannot reelection again. So in the eight parliament, it's about 60 to 70%. Once again, there is another election. We do the same things in the ninth parliament. You can see there's a big improvement. It's more than 90% some of them, but okay, still another election come. Right now it's the 10 parliament. You can see that most of the MPs they have to interpolations is more than 90. Why? Because they know there's organizations we're monitoring them or watching them. Not only signatures, they have to perform us questions to deliberations. That means they know someone's watching them. Someone will helping the public to overcome or just oversight them watching them. Okay, this is the outstanding legislator. We will have a ceremony give them rewards. And this is a campaign banner. When they got the awards, they were using in the next elections. So this is the legislator MPs that run elections. They will say, oh, they're the outstanding MPs rewarded by CCW. This is another example. This is also, and this one, he says, he constituency take the outstanding MPs from CCW. Actually it's work for them when they are campaign. So they were, they were urging or they were happy to get this reward by CCW. So what I want to talking about is, yes, democracy is very important, but it's not just about voting on election day, but about fulfilling civic responsibility every day. So of course the voting process very crucial. This is a fundament of the democracy system. But what happens after voting? Can we keep accounts that MPs or the politicians, more accountability, more integrity? We cannot just in the process of the voting. After voting, it's time to study the work of overseeing the parliament, make them responsible, make them accountability. So to continuously achieve this goal, we are not only use the evaluations, we do something else. We will have the press conference urging like this one is no delay of the national budget deliberations. Also we will visiting their chairman of the legislative union to promote the transparency and citizen participation. Also we do the agenda forecast weekly because the agenda already opens, but it's very hard to see or it's very hard to understand. So we will translate to more friendly topic or friendly words to the public then they can understand what is the agenda schedule next week. Also we do the education promotions. We go to the university to teach them what is important to monitoring the Congress or the parliament and how they can monitor it, how they can do that. Also you can see that there's a students playing the board game. What's this board game? Actually we develop this due to the complicated about the legislative process. It's very hard to understanding what's situation right now in the parliament. So we use this board game to help assist the students understanding the procedures of the legislative process and participant can get a better understanding by playing this board game. Also not only doing domestic, we want to do more international organizations collaborations. So what is PMO? Actually PMO is parliamentary monitoring organizations. We call PMO. So this year, just for this year's in the March, we host the international forum. Actually it's co-host with the NDI and WFD. So we invite seven PMOs from around the world to Taiwan share their experience. And this early June, we signed an MOU with the Japanese PMO group. They called the Japanese Bandim Yaptom to initiate the establishment of the Asia network. But because today, I think it's not only the Asians, we can go to the Pacific regions. So after my speech today, I hope there is someone or some organizations are have interesting willing to join us this network, collaborate with us. So this is the March 14 to 15, we signed declarations. You can see the represent from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Argentina, and Kosovo. This is the Japan's PMO Bandim Yaptom. They come to Taiwan, sign MOU with us. So this is my end of the presentation. True democracy begins after a vote are cased. We understand voting process is very important. So we also monitoring the election day, do some research. But that's only one day or one month during the whole terms of our MPs. After voting, we need to keep watching them, keep them more accountability, more integrity. That is what the true democracy. Thank you very much, I was sure to hear. Thank you very much, Mr. Khan, for that insightful presentation. I know that I wasn't the only one who enjoyed it thoroughly. Now I can appreciate that that may be a few of you who have questions, but as mentioned before, we'll address these after all three of our speakers have presented. Now in the meantime, you may go ahead and pose these questions in the chat feature if you haven't already done so. And we'll address these later on in the webinar. Now from Taiwan, we head to Fiji for our second speaker, Ms. Lucia Lagilevo. Ms. Lagilevo graduated from the University of the South Pacific in 2014 with a Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts majoring in journalism. She joined Washington Lawyers in 2015 before joining the Citizens Constitutional Forum in 2018 as a policy and research officer. One year later, she became their program manager, a role that she has flourished in to date. And it's no wonder she has a passion for international law, human rights, democracy and development work. And as such, has received training on human rights standards, instruments, mechanisms and frameworks that are available internationally and locally. She's contributed national submissions on legislative reforms, reflecting on good governance principles and democratic processes and values of monitoring and evaluating the impact of human rights activities, public participation and policy development. While working for CCF, she's been involved in the program design of project activities focused on supporting democratic processes and civic engagement. In particular, being the conceptualization of activities within CCF's parliamentary support project, particularly in the capacity building of communities on parliamentary engagement advocacy and civic education. She has also been heavily involved in carrying out CCF's trainings and workshops on parliamentary processes, human rights, constitution, freedom of speech, UN Universal Periodic Review framework. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is just to name a few. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing our second speaker for today, Ms. Lucia Langilevo. Buonovinaca to everyone joining us this afternoon. I hope you can hear me clearly. Before I begin, I would just like to take this moment to thank International Idea for this much needed webinar. And I'd also like to acknowledge our colleagues on the panel. To start off, I'd like to just state a disclaimer as well from CCF. So the information that we're about to share is information shared in the context of parliamentary engagements and processes prior to the 2022 elections. Now, a little bit about the Citizens' Constitutional Forum. We are a non-governmental organization locally based in Suva, Fiji. The CCF has more than 20 years of experience in community education and advocacy in Fiji's constitution, democracy, human rights, and multiculturalism. We work locally as well as regionally and internationally with our partners to amplify the protection of human rights, the rule of law, and democratic processes. CCF is not aligned with any political party. Now, when CCF was prompted on this webinar, we understood that our role in this webinar would be to talk a bit more on our parliament project that was supported by the United Nations that was supported by the United Nations Development Program. We were able to carry out this project with the purpose of expanding parliament outreach and citizen engagement. We had two significant roles in this project, the first being information aggregation and dissemination, which is simply sharing information with citizens of Fiji as well as members of civil society organizations. The second role was to help or to support citizen engagement with parliamentary processes. And we're really thankful to the United Nations Development Program for enabling this important project. I'd also like to share some of the highlights of that project. Also, apologies, I am not sharing a PowerPoint slide because I'd like to have a direct engagement with the participants. However, if you would like more information on information that you would like to share, please feel free to contact CCF. Back to the highlights of the parliament project. We carried out certain activities under this project. First one of the activities was the parliamentary engagement advocacy and civic education. We had this done through divisional workshops around Fiji. We had four divisional workshops, which focused on members of the civil society organizations as well as members of marginalized communities, youths, women, persons living with disabilities. And we looked at sessions on how parliament works, parliamentary standing committees, successful legislative reform purposes, processes, budget cycles. When we were looking at budget cycles, we shared information on the frameworks, processes and institutions involved in the budget cycle in Fiji. We also had sessions on drafting budget submissions. And just on these workshops, we were able to have participants draft their budget submissions, which were then submitted to the budget division of the then Ministry of Economy, which is now known as the Ministry of Finance. We were also able to contribute to the Maritime Travellers' Rights submission in Fiji. And so these workshops helped the participants become more aware of the parliamentary processes as well as getting to understand why citizens need to be aware of these parliamentary processes and where exactly they can engage as citizens with their elected representatives in parliament. We had about 117 participants in total that participated in this civic education workshop alone. Apart from the workshops, we also had advocacy materials. So the advocacy materials included information, general information on parliamentary processes, such as how laws are made, parliamentary standing committees, what are standing orders, because we hear so much about parliamentary standing orders on TV and the parliament coverages that are aired live on social media as well as Waleisi. And so it was important for us to give a bit more friendly detailed information about these parliamentary information. We also made infographics on the parliamentary calendar through a bookmarks. And these were shared with our participants. Another highlight of the project was the dissemination of parliamentary information. So quite apart from the advocacy materials, we were also able to share order papers for parliamentary sittings. So when these were communicated to us by parliament, we would share this with our network and then our networks were encouraged to share that to their own networks. And we saw this as an important measure because not everyone receives the order papers. Not everyone is focused on social media in terms of the information given out on parliamentary processes. So that was just an additional way of sharing what was going on on parliament. Another aspect to dissemination or sharing of parliamentary information were the budget processes. So with the support of UNDP through this project, we were able to put out a information sheet on the national budget process and why it was important for citizens to and where citizens could engage. Basically just giving them a picture of how the whole budget cycle works every year. We also faced a few challenges while we were monitoring parliament. Because of the nature of the work that CCF does, apart from sharing information on parliamentary processes, CCF is also monitoring on how parliament performs and whether it is in line with democratic processes, whether it does protect human rights and follows a rule of law. So some of the challenges we faced in the project were concerns raised by some civil society organizations on our advocacy and parliamentary engagement. One of the reasons, and it's important, we believe that it's important to understand the concerns that are raised by civil society in terms of parliamentary engagement. So for us, some of the concerns raised by CSOs were to do with how there was a gap between the parliament and members of the public or civil society organizations. And just to remind our viewers, our audience today that I'm speaking on engagements with parliament before the 2022 general elections. The concerns raised were on the note that it was this civil society organizations received discouraging responses by the former Fiji government whenever they would lobby and advocate on matters affecting communities and citizens. And these were very prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic through the first and second waves in Fiji. So with that experience, the concerns came up that questioning the essence of this project. But CCF was able to carry on with the project and was also able to liaise with our partners in terms of the significance of this project, especially that it was important for the people of the country to understand the processes of parliament. Another challenge that we faced with monitoring parliament was the developing political context in Fiji. It was something that CCF had to consider while carrying out activities under this project as well as while planning for the future. We had to understand the developing context as well as inform the participants or the target groups of this project on how well they can best engage their parliamentary members through, you know, through the process of the development of the political context. Another challenge that we faced was the impact of COVID-19. Because the project was implemented from 2020 until the end of 2021, those two years were very critical in Fiji because we had undergone Fiji underwent the first and second wave of COVID-19. It did have some major impact on our activities, especially with our parliamentary excursions. We had hoped to carry out these excursions and other activities, but because of the pandemic, the impact, as well as the protocols that we had to respect, we were not able to carry out some of these in-person or face-to-face activities. But regardless of those, we were able to adapt. So, you know, something that CCF thrives on is being adaptive whenever we are met with challenges. And so again, with the support of UNDP, we were able to carry out other activities in place of the parliament excursions. Another challenge I would like to share as well, while we were carrying out this project, was in terms of carrying out the civic education bid. Because the project went on from 2020 to 2021, there were times when there were curfews, as well as containment areas to protect people from the spread of the pandemic. So, CCF waited out those periods, and when it was safe for the organization to continue carrying out civic education, we were able to do so with the support of UNDP. And some of the key messages, we were able to share how CCF was able to share key messages to citizens. We were able to do these through infographics. I believe I've shared this before, infographics on parliamentary processes, budget processes, how laws are made. We were also able to carry out short interviews, short videos of our participants from the parliamentary engagement workshops. And many of these short videos captured how much our participants, how much our participants found it important to be taught about parliamentary processes, to know about where citizens can engage. Because it was something they were able to take back to their communities. And because of that, we CCF continued to receive requests from communities to carry out these curriculums, to carry out these workshops in their own communities. And we hope to continue this work with some support. We were also able to share key messages on parliamentary processes through other CCF events and activities, even though we were not, even though the activities weren't from these parliament support projects, we intentionally shared these information on parliamentary processes with participants of other events. We found it important to continue sharing this information on parliamentary process and engagements in our other projects, in our other activities, because there is a great need by our citizens to understand these processes. One of, I'll give an example. Some of our participants indicated that they were not aware that they were, they were able to send an open letter to parliament highlighting their, their challenges or their issues in parliament. Simple avenues such as those were not known by our participants who are members of the public. And it just tells us how much is not known by our communities. It just tells us how much more work is needed in Fiji. And we hope that our, our partners, CSOs and other CSOs out there would be able to continue in sharing these educational information on parliamentary processes so that we're able to increase and strengthen public participation in policy making decisions, as well as in parliamentary processes. One of the, one of the questions we were also asked to present on was how does CCF raise concerns on the parliament actions. I think I, I believe I had also mentioned this previously. The nature of CCF and the work that we do in terms of monitoring parliamentary, parliamentary, parliamentary, parliamentary leaders in the processes. It's sort of contradictory to the, the project that we had carried out under the parliamentary support project. But, you know, as I have said, initially we are not aligned to any political party. So, and because of the mandate that CCF carries, we continued with our, with raising concerns on parliamentary actions. So some of the ways that we continued to raise concerns on parliamentary actions was engaging through parliamentary standing committees. The CCF, we echo issues raised with us by our communities as well as through research to the parliamentary standing committees when there's a call for public consultations on a review of an existing law or a particular bill that's concerning an entirely new piece of legislation. We also participate in ministerial public consultations. It takes the, it takes the same form as engaging with parliamentary standing committees, but in this case it's with separate ministries. We also engage in collective advocacy measures, and this is through our networks and alliances, such as the NGO Coalition for Human Rights, the CSO Alliance for COVID-19 Humanitarian Support, and the Universal Periodic Review CSO Working Group. So through these networks, we are able to continuously raise our concerns and advocate on improving parliament actions. And that brings me to the end of my information sharing and CCF's work with parliamentary process. Benakar. Thank you very much, Ms. Kalanilevu. Thank you very much for your amazing presentation, but also for the work that you've done and that you continue to do. We're very appreciative, Benakar. I would like to take this opportunity to re-remind everyone that if you have questions, you may post these questions in the chat feature, which will be addressed later on in the webinar. The last but certainly not least, our third and final speaker for today, Mr. William Nassac. Mr. Nassac is the current chairman of the Vanuatu Association for the Non-Government Organization. In March, he was elected as chairman of the National Human Rights Councils for Vanuatu, and in 2016, he completed his contract as the director general of the Ministry of Youth Development, Sports and Training. Prior to that, he was the director general for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Livestock and Biosecurity for the first two years of his contract. He has a wealth of knowledge in both the government and NGO space, and we look forward to hearing his thoughts on democratic development in Melanesia, specifically citizens watching parliament. Mr. Nassac, over to you. Thank you very much for the introduction. I would like to acknowledge the two previous speakers. I think from James Ken and the one recently, I think their experience has been very valuable, I think, especially monitoring the parliamentarians and what happens in parliament. I think Vanuatu can actually learn a lot. I have a presentation which is like huge. Just give me a second while I try to get it on board. Mr. Willem, do you want me to share a presentation? Yes, please. I think I got the wrong thing on board. Okay. Could you just stop sharing and just let me look for that presentation? Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. I think with this presentation, I think I just want to say that Van Gogh hasn't been very active in its duties in the recent past. I think Van Gogh has gone through a lot in trying to reorganize itself. And what has happened is that in my two years, as being the chairman of Van Gogh, it has been basically to actually strengthen the internal structure of Van Gogh. And I am proud to say that we will be launching our strategy plan soon, which is in the second of August. And that would actually show the government and as a donor is another organization, the direction that actually Van Gogh actually wants to take. And one particular thing that I'm proud to say is that within our strategy plan is to look at how we can hold the government more accountable for the budget that it actually passes in Parliament. And how we intend to do this is to, we would like to produce reports. I think in the past, we have been doing a little bit reporting to the public, but it has been basically on past budgets. It is not on recent ones. I think we always get budget from the past and then we try to go out and tell the public on how it has been the process and all this. And usually the information we give to the public is outdated. Unfortunately in Van Gogh, NGOs and the public are not part of the government process in dealing with, in trying to approve budgets in Parliament. The process of budgets for the government is basically done by the government. And the only time the public is aware of the Parliament, of the budget that is passed is when it is passed in Parliament and it is made to a public document. I think what the Van Gogh and its partners would like to do is to assist the ombudsman and the office general and with pools of local and regional expense to independently evaluate and produce reports on certain government expenses that have been identified. But why we say this is that now and then the government would usually come up with a certain issue that it has with budget that has been spent. But it is basically politically motivated. It is done by a particular minister in the past that decision has been made to spend certain budget and then the next government which comes in, he sees the budget that has been spent and then they come up with a commission of inquiry and to investigate. And I would like to see that change. I would like to see that if there is a commission of inquiry that is being carried out. It is not just a report that is done and produced and people know about it. But what happens to the report? Is it just shell? And working with the ombudsman. The ombudsman is the mandate, has the mandate to investigate and prosecute people if they break the law. The auditor general sits in the parliamentary accounts committee in parliament. And that is where he has the mandate in order to look at all the budgets within the government. And that actually if working alongside them, that will enable us to have this pool of people where if a report is produced and it is made into parliament, we could actually have the report and also ensure what law is broken so that whoever is wrong is held responsible. It's because I have seen in the past up until today is that most reports are done, but nobody is held accountable. People say that there is something wrong but there is nothing actually done. And that is how I want to see Van Gogh come out in the future. I think apart from we talking about parliament, I think we also have to mention also that well the parliament passes the budget and then it is the public servants who actually go out and actually implement. I think to be more to hold the people in parliament accountable, they bust the budget but the actual spending of the budget is done by the public servants. And then I think decisions that are made by the public servants, I think as an NGO, we should be able to evaluate those expenditure and if there is any concern by the public on certain projects or certain spending, we should be able to have the resources to actually do an independent report to actually verify whether the concerns of the public is genuine or is it just a misunderstanding or lack of the information that has been given to that the public has been passing. Because I have found out that in Vanuatu, most times the public hardly looks at the facts, but they tend to deal a lot with speculations. And that is what makes it very difficult is that in the end when you take what is the actual fact and you tell people, people are already corrupted with the speculations and they think that whatever you present as fact is not the actual truth. And I like the way James has been talking about how they hold people accountable. I think with Vanuatu to hold, the parliament is accountable to their duties in parliament. I think we have to use the right to information that we actually have in parliament at the moment and that to enable the parliament to give us that information. I think that would make Vanuatu, the NGOs much more be able to provide the report that the people want to see whether the people they elect into parliament are actually going there to do what they were elected to do or are they just ticking the attendance seats and not attending. I think there is a lot that Vanuatu has to do and I am very grateful for this webinar. I think it has opened my eyes to a lot more than the NGO can do and hold people in parliament that we vote for accountable. I think what Vanuatu can actually do is awareness to the public and to ensure that what the government passes into budget is translated to the people. I think one thing people that they are lacking NGOs need to explain to the public and also is that the amount of money that is passed in parliament each year is not what people always think that it is the budget that is passed for development. I think that is one thing that has been lacking on the NGO to actually tell the people most of the time what the government actually passes is expenditure and spending on this expenditure they create services that the public can actually take advantage of to create businesses that they can actually help the economy economically. I think that is one thing that I have to say that Vanuatu has a lot more to do and with this two years I think Vanuatu is trying to find its footing and I think the government has also changed a lot of his to put Vanuatu within its board and that has enabled Vanuatu to have a voice in each of the government with policies and I think what we need to do as Vanuatu at the moment is to actually strengthen to have the procedures in place so that we can hold the government much more accountable with its budget and also to ensure that what we do is effective and has results by using local and regional experts and having the resources to carry out the report that is that is independent and is credible so that when it is taken up by the government to see where it has gone wrong it can take it and trust it that it has come from independently and it is done by experts who know what they're doing and with that I thank you very much for allowing me the time to share what Vanuatu has done to hold the government accountable in Vanuatu. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Mr. Nassake and thank you so much for that amazing presentation. We thank you so much for your time. We'd also like to thank our other two speakers, Mr. James Kahn and Ms. Lucia Langelevo. Now we have 30 minutes for our question and answer session and I'd like to encourage all of you to use this opportunity to answer our panelists questions or if you'd like them to elaborate on something that they might have spoken about a little bit earlier. Now if there's a specific person that you'd like to address this question to please indicate so or otherwise you may let the panelists know that it's an open question to all three of them. Now with that being said there was a question that was raised during the presentation. Mr. Kahn's presentation from Barbara Ruin. Mr. Kahn I know that you already answered the question and answer session but I was hoping that for the benefit of those people who were able to see your answer a little later on if you could maybe share your answers with the group. Now her questions were and she had two of them were efforts part of the Taiwan OGP implementation of the National Action Plan and her second question was what is the membership criteria and what is the process for parliamentary monitoring organizations. Okay. Thank you Amelia. Thank you for this. These two questions very crucial and important. So for Taiwan's OGP Action Plan actually is finally initiated by the Civil Society in Taiwan and we directly go to talk to our chairman in the parliamentaries. So it's separate for the government and open parliament. It's actually the two action plan. So for the parliament side because CCW we have very extensive monitoring experience. So we combine with the open cultures like open actually means open data format. So we combine these two idea monitoring and open data. So this will facilitate Taiwan Civil Society. Those who understand the parliament what is the most important information that did not release or is in their documents hard to reach out like it's in the PDF forums it's hard to use because you can only see the pictures using them for text mining. So combine these two idea we urge the parliament to release more data from open source or some monitoring site we cannot reach out by this OGP Action Plan. So far we have the first OGP Action Plan for 2020 to 2024 the four years term. And now it's the last I think the last six months but right now we already down more than 80% but the 20% we left we have to negotiate with the MPs and the caucus right now so we have some struggles but we're still trying to figure that but actually we've done a lot of efforts about open the data and open the forum. And the question number two I would say everyone or anyone or any organizations you can start monitoring right now but however because it should be avoid about the self the conflict of interest and also the principle of the self-discipline so for CCW's example if someone is currently in the hold of positions in the political party which party has the representative in the parliament we think that is a conflict in the interest and also you are the relative with the MPs or you are the sub-ordinates like you are the staff no matter in the parliament or in her family you are the staff of the MPs so you are not actually you can monitoring but we cannot understand what your side so we avoid these kind of members to join our evaluations to avoid the principle of the conflict of interest also this is not in the chat room yes how to run the organization it is very important about the money the funding so we will use the funding for the society about the Taiwan's domestic but from donations we cannot accept any donation from the party from the parliament even they agree our idea they want to supporters we cannot say yes we cannot accept any donation from the public so this is my response everyone can monitor but if you want to go the public report you want to announce the report make sure there is no interest conflict thank you very much Mr Khan I have a question for Lucia in your opinion what do you think would be the way forward in terms of the new parliamentarians in Fiji when it comes to strengthening citizens' engagement thank you for the question Amalia I believe there is a few factors that the new parliamentarians in Fiji need to take on board from lessons learned in the past years having a lack of engagement with citizens having a lack of awareness on what is actually being experienced on the ground and I say that with knowledge received and information received from members of the communities in places where CCF has worked in so one recommendation would be to engage more with CSOs and community leaders in terms of sharing and equipping them with knowledge on parliamentary processes and skills for effective and diplomatic advocacy and through these avenues CSOs and community leaders can then assist parliamentarians to inform other communities other citizens on how best they can engage with parliamentarians as I have shared before one of the ways CCF did this was through the parliamentary advocacy engagement workshops and as I have mentioned before there is still a greater need on the ground for more information sessions such as these it's also important for projects such as the one that CCF had implemented it's important to discuss with implementing partners on challenges that may be faced when trying to carry out activities when trying to work with parliamentarians because we have to remember that the focus is to build the capacity of citizens build the capacity of communities to understand parliamentary processes better to understand why it is important for them to engage with parliamentarians with parliamentarians parliamentarians we would encourage parliamentarians to also to also make engagements more accessible one example could be the parliamentary standing committees we have not seen a lot of advocacy in terms of the purpose of these parliamentary standing committees and how members of the public can actually participate in consultations right down to the language that you can use when you are participating in these consultations a lot of the times these engagement processes tend to be they tend to scare people because of how formal they may seem and so you know communities have these preconceived ideas that you know these consultations are not for me maybe it's just best that our community leaders attended and speak on our behalf when really you know it's a public consultation anyone and everyone can attend and participate in it so parliamentarians really need to work on making these engagements more accessible and more known to the public in various languages various venues and various modes as well we I also want to share one of our excursions we had to the New Zealand parliament a few years back and it was very encouraging on how they carry out their consultations they're very welcoming on how creative members of the public can make submissions to these standing committees we were told that they've received submissions from members of the public and so far as a poem being read and so far as artwork being shared you know not everyone can speak in the same language as parliamentarians do on a daily basis so it's really important for parliamentarians to extend and expand how they engage with members of the public I hope I've made sense thank you thank you very much Lucia now we have another question that's been posed in our question and not so forum and it's from Ratu Eirone Le Duadina because this wasn't posed to one particular person I'm assuming that this is a question that's being posed to all three of you so the question was institutionalising discrimination loss criminalising homosexuality and anti-traumatic disadvantage of lesbians gay men and bisexual people and against transgender people who may be heterosexual and act as an official incitement to or justification for violence against them whether they're in custody, in prison, on the street or in the home now they are interested to know from your perspectives if there has been any shifts in this area and if there has been any monitoring from your respective organisations ensuring each country's responsibility to the protection and safety of all its citizens as there are still five countries within our region that still decriminalise gender diverse people and relations now Lucia since you were the last one to answer a question I'm going to ask if you could answer this question first and then maybe James we can get your thoughts before we allow William to answer last if that's okay for CCF we as I have said before we do continue to monitor the protection of human rights specifically in terms of discrimination as mentioned by Ms Ronda and this is done through our universal periodic review working group locally which Rainbow Pride Foundation is a member of but it is also an important area that CCF would need to specifically hone into in terms of our parliamentary monitoring we also we've also been made aware by some of our partners that they are carrying out research in terms of in terms of gender discrimination in terms of discriminating marginalized members of marginalized communities but yes I mean like I've said it's it's a really important area that CCF would need to take on board in terms of parliamentary monitoring and I guess I'd leave it at that and I hope to discuss more on this with you Ms Ronda so that we can get works underway thank you thank you very much Lysa sorry James if I could please get your thoughts on that now okay for this questions for I just explain our indicators actually this kind of law is violated with the human right right so if CCW saw this actions or the proposal the bill was sent into the parliament actually will have a press conference to say this is violated with the human right for so right now in Taiwan actually this act didn't not exist they we have a very strong LGBT sense for our law right now but still it's not very common or actually it's realized people in Taiwan environment have this kind of sense but no matter for our organization because we are the parliament watching organization right monitoring organizations we don't we cannot understanding every topic of the issue happen right now but for our expected is we will invite the organizations who are the expert in this area for example this kind of issue is really happened in our parliament we will have have a press conference and we will invite the representative from LGBT or the NGO from the women for just this kind of organizations join our press conference we can say what's happening in parliament right now and then we will leave the microphone to them they can explain more what this act happens what this act if the past what the results so for me we have many kind of this experience we are the monitoring organizations when we saw what this act is appropriate it's violate with the human rights we will invite another NGO to join us so because CCW is not one organization actually we have 40 a members in our pie so we will invite different areas expert representative or organization to share the experience for environment for the LGBT for the woman for the child many kind of the issue so we don't have an expert for every issues but we can be the platform we can be the one invite everyone to discussions their opinion during the parliament thank you thank you very much James William would you is there anything that you'd like to contribute to this conversation I would like to say I would like to say this that as a the umbrella organization for NGOs within the country is partner to the government and it's part of the government to ensure that each NGO actually tries to implement the government policies and try to fill the gap which the government can and on this particular topic I would have to say that within my country they are important topics which we are dealing with like climate change women gender people with disability and we also looking at employment for them I think people I would like to say that when this issue becomes of importance to the country my country will be we'll put it on as an agenda and talk about it and the NGO has people of this with them and we will ensure that their rights as is looked at thank you thank you very much William okay so it is now roughly 20 past one is there anyone who has a question that they'd like to share to the chat group or to the question and answer portal alright if not I'd like to pose one last question to the panelists now Mr. Khan James you shared on a slide earlier that democracy is not just about voting on election day but about fulfilling civic responsibilities every day and that to achieve this goal it's about the evaluation system now in your experience what was some of the learnings that you found during the founding of the systems that may be helpful to people like William and to others in the region who would like to start a system or kind of start a kind of watch system like this and their countries okay so from our experience if you say something someone is bad it's very dangerous it's very challenging even though we are saying they are bad just in the name of observe list it's a challenge but it can wear the public so in our experience when we first time to give them this kind of title CCW our organization just be sued by those MPs because all the information is from the parliament we did not create any information but on the other side if you give the rewards to the MPs they are very happy to get the rewards and they will focus on your indicators and do the right things in the right directions so from my opinion each countries have different situations and environment especially the parliament what kind of information you can get it's very different so I think without sufficient resource right now just make sure the attendance interpolations or the budget or the proposal of the bills if you give this quantitative data then you can first time have the score it's very easy for some organizations in Taiwan they are also monitoring they don't do a lot of work like CCW do but they also publish the quantitative data I think only part time jobs you can find from the students of the university they can calculate and then you can publish so it's not spend a lot of money you don't have a big budget but it's the first step that people aware that we can do this monitoring and we can have this method we can have these tools after the first step we can discussions which direction we want our MPs to go so you can get more indicators and then you can have the 10 indicators and there is a 51 thank you so much James thank you everyone for your time today especially to our panelists especially Miss Longy-Lewo and Miss Nawaak for your wonderful insights I will give you a few seconds to gather your thoughts so you can deliver your closing remarks we are talking about individual ordinary citizens monitoring but rather an organized one sorry that we are not talking about individual ordinary citizens monitoring but rather an organized one like CCW I hope that clarifies I'd now like to ask Mr. William Nawaak to please give his closing remarks thank you very much for international aid and I would like to ask Mr. William Nawaak to actually put forward I think on this particular topic I would have to say that as organizations who take the voices of the citizens I think we have a big responsibility and then I would have to say the insight that I have received from both James and my colleague from Fiji I think it actually gives us an idea on where it wants to go and its directions to hold its parliament much more parliamentarians more accountable I think it is a duty of the civil society to hold the people we vote into parliament to ensure that the people we vote in parliament are accountable to the citizens that actually vote in parliament and I know that Van Gogh has a lot more work to do and I am glad that organizations like International idea and James and Bianco and all the others around the regions are there to help us and I am looking forward to improving the directions where we can be proud of what they do with helping to monitor the parliament Van Gogh, thank you very much Thank you very much Mr. Nassar We wish you and Van Gogh all the very best for the future and we look forward to hearing great things from you and your organization Ms. Langelevo if I may would you like to give your closing remarks now Ms. Langelevo, thank you very much Just a few words from from implementing that project on parliamentary support it is important for us to understand the current knowledge that citizens have on parliamentary processes works such as those carried out by James Kahn and his organization is really important and it is something that I believe organizations in the country would benefit from and we look forward to more discussions with James Kahn in the future as well as learning from the experiences of our colleague William Nassar and just absorbing the lessons learned from these organizations and how best that could also maybe work in Fiji also we would like to highlight that implementing parliamentary monitoring or support projects in Fiji is for the purpose of encouraging CSOs and members of the public in engaging with parliamentarians and it would be more meaningful and effective if that is done in collaboration with parliament as an institution as well as members of the parliament there's still a lot of work needed on the ground SCCF has seen from our community engagements as well as the community workshops and the responses that we've received through this project so we hope to do more work in this area thank you very much Miss Langeleve for your time today we sincerely appreciate all the information and the knowledge that you shared with us and we would like to thank you as well for all of the work that you and SCCF do thank you very much and we can't wait to see the great work that you and the organization will be doing for the future Mr. Khan if I could please ask you for your closing remarks now sorry this is I want to say it's very honored and have a great learning from the SCCF and bank goals thank you your sharing and actually we are looking forward more participation from the from your regions so it's an honor to have a more dialogue with you SCCF and the bank goals in the future so actually we have an idea and it's already realized we will have a cooperation with the PMO in Argentina we will have a workshop online started from the September to this end of the year so we understand that the nature of the parliamentary because the different about the government system electoral system political environment but we believe that principle remain is the same is the universal value like openness transparency accountability integrity so we want to collaborations all the interesting group you don't have to be the parliamentary organizations every CSO or every individual persons you have this interesting about the parliamentary monitoring you want to start up you want to the first step please join us we will announce the how to apply to join this network to join this workshop and then we will have an in-person meeting I think it's the end of the year maybe not in Taiwan maybe in the Bangkok or in the so we can see each other and try to find each country is the suitable monitoring indicators monitoring way and in 2024 we can have another forum to share our experience thank you very much thank you very much Mr Khan thank you very much for the incredible work that you're doing it's been a wonderful learning experience and we look forward to that you're doing being a catalyst for other countries to kind of do the same now I know that I already thanked our panelists but again on behalf of international idea PG and international idea Asia and the Pacific regional offices we'd like to thank all of our speakers and especially you our audience for joining this live event it is our sincere hope that through the discussions today that you that we have the knowledge about the issues in the region that if you've enjoyed this webinar then we'd like to strongly encourage you to look up for the dates of our next webinar so that we can kind of participate and learn and grow together until then from international idea PG and the team we'll see you next time with Amanda