Capacity-building in Legislative Drafting: A Training Programme for Judges and Legal Professionals in Iraq
Project facts
- Funder: World Bank/Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
- Partners: Lexchange Ltd (The Hague), the Euro-Arab Institute Foundation for Education and Training (INSTEA) and the Regional Centre for Regulatory Quality (RCERQ)
- Project period: 2012
- For information mail to: office@nhc.nl
The Netherlands Helsinki Committee and Lexchange, commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, conducted a Worldbank funded seminar in Erbil, Kurdistan on 14-15 July 2012. The target audience were 12 judges from the Kurdish Shura Council. The Shura Council is the primary advisory body in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan.
When legislation is drafted the following problems are encountered: it is drafted on an ad-hoc basis without clear instructions on methodology, there is no coordination between stakeholders, public involvement is lacking, and resources and technical expertise concerning this area are insufficient.
This seminar was part of the OECD-MENA Governance Programme. The purpose of the tailor-made training programme is to build capacities of legal professional in Iraq to ensure coherent consistent and quality legislative drafting techniques that adhere to international good practices.
This seminar addressed legal systems as the framework for the development of legislation. The following elements were covered:
- Explaining relevance of legal systems and the interplay between law and policy
- Importance of national and international law as reference of building blocks for legislation
- How to approach legislative drafting, including addressing norms and taking into account context assessment
