Members of the Senate on Tuesday started a three-day retreat to strategise how best they can align their day-to-day work with the revised constitution, which reduced the chamber’s legislative workload, allowing for more time to focus on oversight, among others.

Under the new constitution, the Senate can only revise the constitution, consider and approve organic laws, endorse bills approving international treaties and accession to international organizations and agreements related to status of persons, as well as pass laws relating to defence and national security.

The Upper Chamber of Parliament is also in charge of exercising government oversight; protecting fundamental principles of nation-building, including prevention of genocide, fighting Genocide denial, ideology and revisionism, promoting national unity, tenets of power-sharing, rule of law, and a pluralistic democratic government; and vetting senior appointees, among others.

The retreat comes just days ahead of the Senate’s next ordinary session which opens in June.

In the previous sessions, the Upper House had been more preoccupied with legislative work, leaving little time for other responsibilities.

Opening the retreat, Senate president Bernard Makuza said there was need for the August House to conduct their business in view of the country’s development aspirations as laid out in key blueprints such as Vision 2020 and the second Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRSII), as well as envisaged Vision 2050.

"The next four years will be very interesting,” he said, referring to the time left to the end of the Senate’s eight-year mandate. "Our mandate means that we also have to look at how the country is performing vis-à-vis the Sustainable Development Goals.”

He said the retreat aimed at positioning the Upper House to deliver on their revised mandate under the new constitution, which was overwhelmingly backed in a national referendum in December.

Members were also expected to use the retreat to propose amendments to the Senate’s internal rules and regulations.

"We are looking at laying more emphasis on consultative discussions and debates on key national issues,” Makuza said.

He also said the Senate will give more attention to research on important subjects, citing a planned study on the extent of genocide ideology targeting Rwanda and propagated abroad, which the Upper House is set to conduct for three months.

According to Fatou Harerimana, the Senate vice president in charge of legal affairs and government oversight, the Senate passed 210 draft laws since 2011, while it has also approved the appointments of 138 senior officials during the same period.

It is the Senate’s third retreat since its establishment in 2003.

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