By Liapeng Raliengoane
MASERU – The last day of the capacity building workshop for Members of Parliament (MPs), facilitated by the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) saw a discussion on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) issues affecting adolescents and young people.
Amongst issues discussed towards legalization of abortion: they pointed out that a major challenge is that abortion is still a taboo in the country due to several cultural and religious issues. That some MPs had already consulted their fellow communities capacitating them on abortion, how and why some females may have to go through it, making an example of a minor girl child who is raped and needs to abort because her body is not yet ready for pregnancy.
SADC-PF Lesotho Sexual and Reproductive Health service and Rights officer ‘Mammehela Matamane disclosed that SADC-PF is implementing the Swedish- funded SRHR, HIV and AIDS Governance Project in collaboration with SADC national Parliaments in view of enhancing SRHR and the democratic drive through parliamentary interventions such as legislative, budgetary, oversight and representative value of SADC citizens and communities in Southern Africa.
She revealed that Lesotho Parliament as one of the SADC member Parliaments, has established a collaborative framework for an effective partnership to be nurtured between parliament and other partners in view of assisting parliamentarians in delivering the project’s outcomes and accomplishing the related objectives.
Matamane also said MPs were capacitated to understand the existing policy gaps and thus identify the legislative interventions required to comprehensively address the national SRHR and HIV/AIDS response, among others.
In his closing remarks, the Clerk to the National Senate Advocate Tšeliso Molise commended all who attended this workshop which was aimed at enlightening MPs on the powers they have in scrutinizing the budget of this country every financial year.
“The thoughtful deliberation for these two days has been an eye opener for MPs and will form the ground work for the setting up of an effective Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), which will provide independence and non-partisan analysis cycle of the budget,” he indicated.
“As it has been rightly pointed out by SAfAIDS, lack of resources affects quality access to SRHR and HIV/AIDS despite policies and laws enacted to address SRHR related issues, It is therefore time for us all to make sure that we address this critical issue which will not only remedy access to SRHR but issues like prioritization, corruption and failure to perform by government officials where funds have been allocated,” Advocate Molise further highlighted.
He said Civil Society Organizations paly a fundamental role in making sure that the MPs properly discharge their role by making them accountable to the citizens so that the needs of the most vulnerable groups are addressed and in this case adolescents and young people.