Democratization Sergei Ostav, a member of ODIHR’s Panel on Freedom of Assembly, is interviewed during a roundtable in Tashkent, 15 July. (OSCE/Murad Makhmudov) violence interventions for first-line police officers, planned for 2011. Strengthening Parliaments Democratic governance requires effective, pluralistic and representative parliaments. In recognition of this, a key priority for ODIHR in 2010 was providing assistance to parliaments in OSCE participating States based on expressed needs. Such assistance typically works to increase the capacity of legislators to carry out their functions, using adequate rules and procedures, and supported by a professional and modern parliamentary secretariat. Assistance provided is based on know-how collected, including by OSCE field operations, which have been implementing effective programmes in this area. The ODIHR programme in this realm recognizes that networking and sharing ideas and knowledge on how to best strengthen parliaments is crucial for the delivery of effective assistance. The OSCE’s field operations have accumulated considerable experience and expertise in this area, and ODIHR is working to increase synergies and knowledge-sharing among these programmes by supporting meetings among participants and conducting research based on ad hoc queries for 30 ODIHR Annual Report 2010 information. In 2010, ODIHR partnered with a new international, multi-organization project to develop an interactive website for parliamentary strengthening, Agora (www.agora-parl. org), which contains a library of documents, calendars, an expert roster and practice notes on the issue of parliamentary development. In so doing, ODIHR will highlight and share the work done by the OSCE in this area, as well as maximize the website’s usefulness and relevance for OSCE staff and officials and others working in OSCE participating States. Over the year, ODIHR assisted Agora in developing a Russian version of the site, and will be using Agora’s networking tools to connect the different OSCE field operations working to strengthen parliaments by building up an online community of practice and expertise. ODIHR also worked in co-operation with the OSCE field operations to train parliamentary staff, adding value to OSCE regional training initiatives. In South-Eastern Europe, ODIHR contributed its own expertise to a regional seminar of parliamentary staffers on Parliamentary Oversight and Independent Institutions in Tirana, Albania, on 21 and 22 December, during which staff at parliaments from across SouthEastern Europe discussed how parliaments’