1 Oaktree Gardens
Qoaling Road
Old Europa  
 
 P. O. Box 1388
Maseru 100
Lesotho

Phone:
+266 22 314463
  
Fax:
+266 22 322791  

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Welcome To The Official Website of Lesotho Democracy Programme

The Lesotho Democracy Programme is a joint initiative of the Transformation Resource Centre and the South African Institute of International Affairs. It is funded by the Royal Danish Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa.

The rationale for the establishment of the Lesotho Democracy Programme (LDP) rests principally on the weak and fragmented nature of Lesotho’s civil society and its lack of formal and informal channels for interacting with parliament. The Programme would serve a number of purposes.

It constitutes a forum and network for the gathering, exchange and dissemination of information relevant to the strengthening of civil society/parliamentary relations in Lesotho.

It serves as a focal point to capacitate the often disparate elements of civil society to discuss matters relevant to democracy in Lesotho. For example, one of the issues emerging from the country research was the need for civil society groups to co-ordinate their efforts and to ‘shadow’ parliament’s activities. The LDP will constitute a framework for civil society groupings to report back, co-ordinate and develop policy and strategy with respect to parliamentary engagement.

LDP constitutes a forum to which MPs and other leaders will be invited to inform civil society of parliament’s activities, its forthcoming programme, green and white papers and any bills that may be coming before parliament. It will thus be an ideal programme to monitor and input into parliamentary reform process.

Fourth, the LDP will serve as a platform for the local media to interact with civil society on matters pertaining to parliament, development and governance and to conduct interviews and press releases.

Fifth, the LDP could serve as the forum for donors and civil society projects to meet, co-ordinate, report back and plan projects, particularly relating to governance, development and democracy.

LDP web page to profiles and advertise the activities of the Programme and on which to post documents, reports and issues of democratic public interest.

The constructive uses to which civil society groupings put the LDP would be largely driven by the LDP management and CSOs themselves, however, the following activities will be central to the Programme.