Civil Society Organisation (CSO) leaders under the banner of National Advocacy Platform (Nap) have called for the review and amendment of the Constitution so that it may provide for the involvement of Parliament before a Cabinet minister or representative signs any international protocol or treaty.<\/p>\n
The Constitution mandates the Minister of Foreign Affairs to simply inform Parliament about the international instruments that he or she has signed or ratified on behalf of Malawi.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Consultative Committee Chairperson, Robert Mkwezalamba, said any internationally ratified instrument is supposed to form part of the law but Parliament, which makes the laws, is sidelined.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we are saying it [the process of ratification] shouldn\u2019t stop at informing Parliament. Parliament has to be central because these international instruments come with budgetary obligations to implement different tasks that a country has to undertake. So, Parliament passes the budget and enacts the laws,\u201d Mkwezalamba said.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Nap engaged legislators to drum up support for the review of the Constitution and Standing Orders to offer room for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to be accountable international instruments.<\/p>\n
Chairperson of the Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament, Maxwell Thyolera, said the minister responsible has failed to inform Parliament about instruments it has ratified \u201cfor a long time\u201d.<\/p>\n
Thyolera said the country should accept that the Constitution has flaws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Civil Society Organisation (CSO) leaders under the banner of National Advocacy Platform (Nap) have called for the review and amendment of the Constitution so that it may provide for the involvement of Parliament before a Cabinet minister or representative signs any international protocol or treaty. The Constitution mandates the Minister of Foreign Affairs to simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66637,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66633\/revisions\/66637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}