| HIV and Health Law Project
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In 2009, IDLO initiated the HIV and Health Law Program 2009-2012, with IDLO core funds and financial support from the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID). The program goal is to protect and promote health through law by improving the legal and policy environment (laws, policies, practices, implementation), with an initial focus on HIV. Over the life of the program a broader focus on public health and law will evolve (see also Health Program).
IDLO currently has projects to strengthen the enabling legal and policy environment for HIV through the provision of quality HIV legal services, information and capacity building in the Asia Pacific region and particularly in China (Kunming and Beijing), Indonesia, PNG and Nepal.
| | Trade Law Project
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Public International Trade Law Course This IDLO-designed course examines the rules, operations and impact of the World Trade Organization’s multilateral trading system, and provides substantive guidance on the legal aspects of emerging issues on global trade and regional integration. IDLO and the WTO are holding the 11th Asia-Pacific Regional Public International Trade Law Course (PITLC) in Sydney, Australia, November 9-27, 2009. For more information. | | Investment Law Project
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The Strategy and Practice for Investment Growth course is designed to assist government officials and legal advisors working for national investment authorities meet the legal, practical and policy challenges linked to the need to:
• Attract the most beneficial type of investment
• Negotiate investment agreements
• Maintain and incorporate the investment into the national infrastructure
The course also covers the institutional and legal framework for reforming, modernizing and operating local small and medium enterprises. It provides participants with the skills necessary to negotiate and draft investment agreements, and solve investment disputes out of court.
IDLO offers the annual Strategy and Practice for Investment Growth course in English, French and Arabic from its offices in Rome and Cairo.
| | Microfinance Law and Regulation Project
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• Regional In-country Training Workshops: Participants develop and share their expertise on microfinance regulation. The 12 workshops created an international network of practitioners, sharing knowledge, experience and innovative ideas. Beneficiaries include local microfinance entities, NGOs, central banks, other bank regulators, think tanks, borrower groups and government law and policymakers • Post-Training Policy Dialogues: IDLO organizes post-training, cross-regional policy dialogues connecting policymakers and microfinance practitioners to share best practices and innovations.
• Summary Seminar in Rome: This event gathered selected alumni from throughout the world to create and implement in-country projects that strengthen microfinance legal and regulatory frameworks. • Institutional Strengthening Grants: IDLO provides grants to selected alumni who have successfully completed a microfinance regional training program. The grants are intended to perpetuate efforts to strengthen the country or region’s legal/regulatory structures and institutions.
| | Intellectual Property Project
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With funding from the Microsoft Corporation, IDLO has created the IDLO Intellectual Property Chair and is implementing an Intellectual Property Development Program. This program consists of four main elements:
• Insertion of modules on IP in most IDLO programs
• Designing, organizing and implementing one week country-specific training workshops on intellectual property and on the enforcement of IP rights
• Impact projects designed to disseminate international and country-specific knowledge on IP issues
• Dissemination of IP reference materials -- the IP Chair has created a substantial collection of reading materials on IP for distribution to IDLO course participants
Microsoft Corporation also provides general fellowships to IDLO’s regular and regional courses and specific fellowships to attend IDLO programs promoted through the Alumni Associations. | | Environmental and Natural Resources Law Projects
| Climate Change and Development: The Fundamental Role of Law
Climate Change is a major geo-political challenge. In December 2009, an unprecedented number of heads of state met at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Despite this personal attention and the resulting Copenhagen Accord, the divide between developed and developing nations has grown. It is critical that, through the next year on the road to Mexico, this divide be bridged.
Potential donor and recipient countries have confirmed that an enabling legal environment, underpinned by good governance, is a prerequisite for the vital contribution of developing countries to adopting a sustainable development pathway. Without the rule of law and good governance, developing countries will not realize the benefits of the international climate regime such as funding for adaptation or the development of a low-carbon economy by full participation in the carbon market. While donor countries contribute to a plethora of disparate climate initiatives, they note that insufficient attention is being given to the legal and governance foundations that link and support existing initiatives. More attention must be given to providing such support so that the promised climate change assistance can be absorbed.
The IDLO Legal Preparedness for Climate Change Initiative (LPCCI) aims to ensure the meaningful participation of developing countries in the mechanisms created by the international regime while supporting the development of a legal environment that promotes adaptation.
The LPCCI is a unique methodology that will systematically identify legal and governance barriers, recommend, and implement consensus-based solutions tailored uniquely for each recipient country for: adaptation, mitigation by participation in international mitigation schemes, and access to international climate funding.
IDLO is working towards the creation of the LPCCI Trust Fund, a multi-donor trust fund established with the express purpose of funding LPCCI activities. Download the Legal Preparedness for Climate Initiative FlyerNatural ResourcesThe current climate and energy crises are inducing important changes in the management of natural resources, which could have significant implications on the livelihoods of indigenous and local communities in developing countries. Avoiding Deforestation in Aceh: Land, Resource Rights and Local CommunitiesThis project is strengthening the institutional, policy, legal and regulatory framework relating to natural resource management, land use change and forestry, as well as protecting indigenous and local communities’ land and resource access and rights. WaterAccess to clean water is a human right. Yet more than 2.6 billion people—some 40 percent of the world’s population—lack basic sanitation facilities and more than 1.1 billion people have no access to a safe water supply. IDLO conducts Water Resource Management Programs, exploring the legal status of water as a fundamental resource for human life, agriculture, social, economic and ecologically sustainable development.
| | Land Law Project
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• Land Law Reform, January 2008 ( more info) • Rural Land Law and Access to Land for Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Madagascar - follow-up to 2007 Development Lawyers Course, June 2008 | | Legal and Judicial Reform & Administration of Justice Project
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Judicial reform projects in AfghanistanSince 2003, IDLO has completed three major judicial reform projects in Afghanistan. The current program places a greater emphasis on capacity-building, and has the overall goal of improving the quality, delivery and accessibility of justice services in Afghanistan. Specific activities include legal education and vocational training, as well as expanding legal aid services,and technical assistance to legislative and judicial institutions. Over the past five years, IDLO has worked in Afghanistan with more than 1,000 judges of the Supreme Court, 370 staff from the Attorney General's Office, 1,000 government and ministry officials and 500 law students. The training they recieved has increased their understanding and quality of performance in criminal law and procedures, juvenile law, family law, commercial and international trade law, constitutional law and legislative drafting. Judicial Reform Assistance in Western AfricaIn 2009, IDLO held a regional distance learning seminar on judicial reform and good governance for West African Francophone countries as a follow-up to a 2007 development lawyer course. Commercial Law Judicial Capacity BuildingIn partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and in collaboration with the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan, this project contributes to creating a business-enabling environment in Kyrgyzstan, and maximizes conditions for building long-lasting and efficient institutions that serve the population in a more effective manner. The project’s core activities include: • Institutional support to strengthen the Judicial Training Center • Training judges on commercial and civil-commercial matters • An apprenticeship of Kyrgyz judges with the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan and commercial courts of the Russian Federation • Developing and equipping a commercial law library in the Supreme Court • Preparing, disseminating and translating a benchbook relating to key pieces of the commercial law framework • Providing an IT system for access to the legislative database. Assistance to the Judicial Reform Project in LebanonIn February 2008, IDLO held a roundtable with leading representatives from the Lebanese judicial system on the potential for implementing long-awaited reforms of the country’s judicial infrastructure. This meeting brought together experts, including judicial leaders, academics, government ministers and diplomats, to identify the necessary improvements within the justice sector and to agree measures to tackle the political and practical challenges involved.
Priority programs for 2009 include: • Generating and diffusing international best practices among Lebanese judges • Coordinating and monitoring the implementing agencies, the donor community and the beneficiary institutions activities in support of the Lebanese Judiciary • Modernizing the Library of the Judiciary Study Institute by developing new systems of cataloguing, researching and computerizing books and manuals
Roundtable Rome, 27 February – 1 March 2008
Needs Assessment Missions Beirut, August and November 2008
Partners: The Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, the University of Beirut, the Council of State and Judicial Study Institute of Lebanon.
Economic, Commercial and Financial Law in Mauritania
Since 2002 IDLO has been working with the Mauritanian Ministry of Justice to support structural reform and economic stabilization.
IDLO is currently implementing a three-year program to strengthen the capacities of the judiciary in criminal, economic and financial law. This program answers the request of the Mauritanian government to reinforce the country’s institutional, regulatory and judiciary framework in order to increase its credibility, operational efficiency and effectiveness.
| | Governance Project
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Public Procurement
Well-designed procurement systems and laws advance developmental goals. By employing principles of economy, efficiency, transparency and accountability in their procurement processes, governments can contribute to the protection of public interest by ensuring that international public resources are used judiciously in the pursuit of social and economic development.
IDLO believes it is essential that the public officers in developing and transitional countries understand procurement policies, procedures and practices of aid development institutions.
| | Access to Justice Project
| Legal Empowerment Working Papers
This project involves the preparation of a series of qualitative and quantitative empirical, scholarly articles culminating in an edited volume on approaches to integrating justice and development in ways that benefit the poor and other disadvantaged populations. The volume will be part of the IDLO book series Lessons Learned: Narrative Accounts of Legal Reform in Developing and Transition Countries. Consistent with the animating question of this series, IDLO seeks to identify legal reform success stories and to try to understand what
accounts for such favorable outcomes. This program is being implemented by the IDLO unit for Research, Policy and Strategic Initiatives, and is being supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
| | Human Rights and Gender Projects
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Special Measures to Increase the Number of Women in National Parliaments (Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands)
The Pacific Islands region has the lowest percentage of women in national parliaments in the world. IDLO and the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat (PIFS) are working together on an initiative to increase the number of women in the national parliaments of countries in the Pacific. IDLO has funded and participated in consultation missions and workshops with PIFS in the Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea (PNG) in order to determine local support for increasing the number of women in parliament, as well as where legal technical assistance may be required in order to achieve this goal. The participating countries, which are Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Cook Islands, have produced national plans to increase the number of women in their national parliaments through special measures.
Partners: Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, UNIFEM, UNDP Pacific, the Inter-Parliamentarian Union, Cook Islands Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Anti-human Trafficking
Senegal is a country of origin, transit and final destination for human trafficking. Despite a specific national law and a bilateral agreement with Mali, Senegal’s legal system, like that of other countries in the region, suffers from serious shortcomings in the implementation of measures to prevent human trafficking and protect victims and witnesses.
In January 2008, IDLO began examining ways to tackle human trafficking through the legal and social protection of those most vulnerable, the repression of dealers and the provision of assistance to victims. The research was followed by field missions to further evaluate needs and consult with all stakeholders. IDLO organized roundtable events in order to write and revise an analytical report on strengthening the legal and institutional system to fight human trafficking as a whole, and to assist and rehabilitate its victims. The National Action Plan includes a public awareness campaign, the revision of the anti-trafficking legal framework and judicial training.
| | Legal Empowerment and Justice for the Poor
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A series of qualitative and quantitative scholarly articles on approaches to integrating justice and development in ways that benefit the poor and other disadvantaged populations. The articles will be published in an edited volume and on the IDLO website as an online working paper series.
| | Community Land Titling Initiative
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Action-oriented research in cooperation with local partners in Uganda, Liberia and Mozambique into how best to support communities to make use of existing community land titling procedures, and thereby increase the land tenure security of the rural poor. | | Enhancing Legal Empowerment Through Engagement with Customary Justice Systems
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A combination of research-related activities that aims to provide insights into how it may be possible to improve the functioning of customary justice systems and identify entry points for how they can be used as vehicles for the legal empowerment of the poor.
Activities include field research in Namibia by the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law Governance and Development at Leiden University, provision of 4-6 small grants for independent action-based research and a call for papers by academics or practitioners to be published in an edited volume.
| | Strengthening the Legal Framework for Girls in India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Liberia
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Research in cooperation with local partners in India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Liberia into the legal protection framework for girls in 7 key thematic areas: birth registration, access to education, access to property, child labor, child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of children and child marriage. This will be followed by pilot work by local partners responding to recommendations arising out of the research. | | Consumer Protection in the Microfinance Industry: Loan Agreements, Dispute Resolutions and Debt Collection Practices
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A comparative study of the state of consumer protection laws, regulations and administrative practices in relation to microfinance borrowing by the poor, many of whom are financially if not functionally illiterate. Survey of law and practice in 20 countries focusing on contracts for microfinance loans, microfinance dispute resolution mechanisms and debt collection practices; more in-depth research of these issues in Kenya, Egypt, Cameroon, India (Tamil Nadu) and Colombia. | | Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Communities with a Special Focus on the Agricultural Sector
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Selected communities in Kenya will be encouraged to learn about their legal rights to protect their traditional knowledge and to experiment with the development of new community-based mechanisms (such as a traditional knowledge commons) that will enable them to set the conditions under which they share such knowledge with non-traditional users. | | Lutte contre la Traite des Personnes au Sénégal (in French)
| Le Plan National d’Action de Lutte contre la Traite des Personnes, des femmes et des enfants en particulier est la réponse à une analyse globale du dispositif de lutte contre la traite des personnes, en lien avec les acteurs des secteurs public, privé et de la société civile au Sénégal. A l’issue de ce diagnostic, les représentants de chacune des entités impliquées dans la lutte contre le phénomène (institutions, pouvoir publics et religieux, associations de la société civile, Organisations Non Gouvernementales - ONGs -, Organisations Internationales) ont été conviés à la conception du Plan national d’action sous la direction méthodologique de l’OIDD. | | Strengthening the Functional Protection of Human Rights in Ethiopia
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Protecting human rights is paramount to democratic government, and institutions like national human rights commissions are vital to sustain emerging democracies. Ethiopia has enacted adequate human rights laws, but its inability to enforce them has perpetuated a culture of impunity regarding human rights violations.
Through its two year Project “Strengthening the Functional Protection of Human Rights in Ethiopia” funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), IDLO is working with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to enhance its institutional capacity to effectively and efficiently carry out its mandate. | | Integrating Human Rights and Environment into Training for High-Level Decision Makers in Vietnam: A Rights-Based Approach to Environmental Protection – Pilot project (Aug. 2009- July 2010)
| | | Improving Legal and Regulatory Efficiency for Water Resource Management in India (New Delhi, India, 10-14 August, 2010)
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