KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Despite violence and threats of violence, Afghan citizens, often at great personal risk, participated in presidential and provincial council elections Aug.

Eighteen committee and subcommittee chairs from four House Democracy Assistance Commission (HDAC) partner countries - Afghanistan, East Timor, Haiti and Liberia - participated in a week-long program on the function of committees within the U.S. House of Representatives. The program was sponsored in conjunction with NDI, the International Republic Institute and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Parliamentarians and staff members from eight countries on three continents gained new insights into budget oversight in a three-day World Bank Institute (WBI)-NDI seminar that focused, among other things, on the role of parliamentary budget offices in overseeing spending and aiding transparency.

High-level officials from nine legislatures around the world seeking to improve parliamentary research and administration in their lawmaking bodies came to Washington to participate in a two-week program put on by the House Democracy Assistance Commission (HDAC) in association with a number of organizations including the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

Mohammad Fahim Rostahi, a fourth-year student of political science and law at Kabul University, was impatient with the slow pace at which the government was developing its Code of Conduct. A parliamentary intern through a program run by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), he had been assigned to take minutes at the special committee appointed to draft the Code. Frustrated with the committee’s lengthy deliberations and lack of results, Fahim decided to draft his own Code.