Matra South Training Programme Legislation

Project description

This training project for civil servants working for the administration of justice in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia is meant to enhance their insights and skills in legislative drafting, in order for them to lead and inspire the modernisation of the judicial systems and the legislative frameworks of their home countries, building from the Dutch experience. In 2013 the programme consisted of two training sessions for twenty one participants: a ten-day training week in the Netherlands and a five-day workshop in Morocco. Through these trainings, we brought together practitioners from the five target countries and the Netherlands, to share good practices, to learn from each other and to make participants familiar with the Dutch institutional models and practices. As law-making is not only a technical exercise, but also very much dependent on good communication, we offered in cooperation with the Netherlands Debating Institute an interactive module on debating techniques in the training. All the knowledge gained in the Netherlands was subsequently tested through practice and reviewed during the follow-up session in Morocco.

Interesting outcomes of this project to date include the following: Tunisian participants consider initiating an association of legislative drafters to mirror the Dutch quality assessment model in Tunisia. Participants from Jordan are actively promoting the use of the Table of Eleven, a tool developed for the Netherlands Ministry of Justice to support the quality of the legislative process.