Source: AFK Insider
It is becoming more dangerous to represent your country in Parliament. This is the biggest take away from the Inter-Parliamentary Union's annual report on violence against Members of Parliament, "Human Rights Abuses of MPs – 2014,' released earlier this month.

According to the report, 311 members of parliament experienced violence in a total of 41 countries. This marked a 13 percent increase over 2013. In addition to these troubling numbers internationally, the report called Africa the most dangerous region to in which one could be a lawmaker, with 38 percent of all violations.

Abuses against MPs were diverse. Of the 311 reported incidents, 71 percent come from opposition parties. While this is a substantial majority, an unexpected 26 percent come from within the ranks of the ruling party.

There is also a significant gender divide, as 89 percent of the reported abuses were against men, while 11 percent were against women.

Violence against MPs casts a long shadow across a country. Not only does violence make it difficult for MPs to stand up for the most basic human rights of their constituents, it threatens the very rule of law across the country.

Without the ability to adequately craft and vote on legislation, MPs also cannot work to improve services and infrastructure, doing vital damage to the business environment of individual states and lending to an environment dominated by arbitrary decisions in which investment cannot thrive.

So where is such violence found in Africa? Such abuses were detailed in 11 countries throughout the continent. This included Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Unfortunately, this demonstrates just how widespread the problem is, showing no discernible geographic limitations.

Of the countries where such abuses were found, there was a wide variance in the depth of the violence. For instance, just three countries in Africa accounted for 21.5 percent of all cases worldwide.The Democratic Republic of the Congo, far and away the continent's most dangerous place to be an MP, had 36 such incidents in the past year. Most of these incidents were "arbitrary invalidations of the parliamentary mandate," or more simply put, failing to recognize the results of elections without cause.

In one particularly egregious situation, opposition leader Eugene Diomi Ndongala was targeted beginning June of 2012, and has been a victim since.Ndongala has dealt with "a campaign of political and legal harassment aimed at removing him from the political process and at weakening the opposition.

"On the laundry list of incidents of harassment is arbitrary arrest with mistreatment, causing some to fear for his life, being held incommunicado while attempting to establish an opposition party platform,

Compromised Judiciary

politically-motivated judicial proceedings and the arbitrary lifting of his parliamentary immunity.

Ndongala's harassment allegedly stems from his public denunciation of "massive cases of electoral fraud" in the 2011 elections.While Ndongala's situation is extreme, it is in no way out of the ordinary in the many other abuses detailed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the DRC.

The DRC's 36 incidents of violence against MPs would be the largest number in the world, but for the detention of the same number of sitting Palestinian MPs by Israel, a far more complex situation than the "arbitrary invalidations" and campaigns of harassment present in the Congo.

The two other countries that round out the worst of the worst for MPs in Africa were Zambia and Eritrea, with 20 and 11 incidents respectively.While the problem in the DRC is one of systemic, extralegal abuse against opposition politicians, the Union's concern with Zambia stems from a particular law.

According to the IPU's Human Rights Program Manager Rogier Huizenga, "there are concerns about the use of the Public Order Act and the limitations that that brings along for the right to freedom of assembly."This concern was born out, as over the past year there were several incidents of violent disruption of opposition events under the pretext of an "anti-corruption fight" or "unlawful assembly.

"In the words of Martin Chungong, the Inter-Parliamentary Union's Secretary General, the statistics on MP violence "are extremely worrying as they show that all over the world MPs face serious harassment and sometimes even death, in a clear attempt to intimidate and silence critical voices and dissent.

"Nowhere is this more true than across Africa. Across the continent violence against MPs threatens fundamental human rights and the ability of lawmakers to make policy. If democratically elected individuals are unable to react to the needs of their constituents there is no limit to the damage that could be done to the rule of law.

In addition to tremendous human rights implications, the business environment of individual states that operate on arbitrary rule rather than the measured decisions of lawmaking bodies, is unknowable.