Overview

Regional Workshop

Overview

A training workshop is being convened for the APKN Group on Legislation Processes to:

• explore the opportunities provided by the ILTAM methodology in developing responsive legislation;
• to engage East African Community (EAC) Legislators and legislative drafters and EAC health experts, and others, in a self-reliant learning process of drafting and assessing evidence-based legislation, with specific reference to the health sector in EAC.
• Agree on a common work plan for the APKN working Group on Legislation Processes to be tabled at the next APKN Plenary

Rationale

Law constitutes a government’s primary tool for achieving people-oriented  development and good governance. And yet the quality of legislation in Africa is not yet supported  by evidence for the greater part of it. Despite being independent most  countries are still shaped by institutions defined by  repetitive patterns of behavior that are frequently perpetuated by laws inherited from their colonial past. None of these methods being utilized currently  require the drafter to justify a bill by providing evidence as to the country-specific realities in which the targeted social problem arises.

Usually, a government assigns a lawyer to draft a bill’s detailed substantive provisions. Just as a client relies on an architect to detail plans and specifications for the builder to implement, in the same way a government policy-maker relies on a drafter to provide details of a bill that works – that is, whose prescriptions induce their prescribed behaviours, and which behaviours will ameliorate the targeted social problem.

For complex historical reasons, drafters generally deny that they have any responsibility for the bill’s substance. As their primary task, they claim they must focus on the bill’s form: Do the words and sentences of the bill convey its message clearly, unambiguously, precisely, and understandably? Too often, this claim justifies using either of four drafting methods:

• copying a law from some other country – regardless of the differences in that other country’s circumstances;
• putting compromises reached between competing interest group into words – regardless of their probable social impact;
• using criminal law as the sole legislative device to transform unwanted behaviours; or
• drafting in vague, unenforceable terms.

None of these  methodologies reliably produce legislation that works. In recent years there has been a move towards evidence-based Policy Making, i.e., public policy informed by rigorously established objective evidence can help parliaments in making better informed decisions about legislative proposals, programmes, and projects by putting the best research results at the heart of policy development. This approach stands in contrast to opinion-based policy, which relies heavily on the untested views of individuals or groups, often inspired by ideological standpoints or speculative conjecture.

To increase legislative productivity it is necessary to streamline the internal drafting processes, establish legislative priorities and a legislative agenda, and allocate legislative drafting resources to effectively address the priorities and carry out the agenda. To address the pervasive ills of underdevelopment – poverty, vulnerability, poor governance – Government has small choice but to seek to transform problematic institutions and the behaviours that constitute them. To transform institutions, Government’s and Parliament’s most powerful tools consist of law and the legal order. The world around, however, to accomplish institutional change, relatively few countries have used law successfully.  Almost everywhere, promising to transform the institutions that perpetuate their countries’ social problems, governments enact laws that do not ‘work’.

Managing effectively and openly proposed laws and their accompanying amendments is an essential requirement for modern legislatures in carrying out their law making responsibilities. Access to these documents through a process that is open serves to legitimize the authority of the parliament and provides one of the most important means of ensuring respect for the rule of law. In order to be able to benefit from the opportunities that an open and transparent legislative process can deliver, parliaments need to build certain technical and policy skills and capacities. That becomes the basis of the proposed training workshop, a part of a series of capacity building activities on the legislation processes scheduled for APKN.

Goals

As part of its support to APKN, the Africa i- Parliament Action Plan is jointly organising a capacity building workshop with the East Africa Legislative Assembly for MPs and Drafters from African Parliaments to empower participants to draft bills justified by relevant facts, logically organized in research reports. To do that, they will learn how to translate policy into effectively implemented laws by using institutionalist legislative theory and methodology (‘ILTAM’), as well as essential drafting techniques.

Objectives of the Workshop

The Workshop will provide a platform for Members of Parliament and Parliamentary staff to engage with a methodology for evidence based legislative drafting. More specifically the Workshop aims to:

• identify the key steps to Evidence Based Legislative Drafting;
• explore case scenarios leading to drafting good legislation;
• expose participants to APKN e-services and define their role in contributing to the services;
• draft the future work plan for the APKN Legislation Working Group.

Participants

Approximately 45 participants will attend the training. The will include EALA Members of Parliament from the General Purposes Committee, MPs from the East Africa National Assemblies and Staff of Parliament from EA and other regions of Africa.

The five-day training workshop will be structured around: training sessions; presentations and working group discussions; consultative sessions; and presentation of the conclusions and recommendations.

Structure

The goal is also to create a conducive environment for collaboration among peers and a platform for an informed discussion and to provide participants with the opportunity to seek clarifications and opinions from experts and colleagues.

The training is based on the Institutional Legislative Theory and Methodology theory and methodology that has received wide acceptance.  It was first put forward some thirty years ago, a couple of decades before the recent evidence-based drafting movement.  The Manual, now eight years old, has been translated and published in Chinese, Arabic, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian, Sinhalese, and several other languages. That Manual and the institutional legislative theory and methodology it teaches has served as the basis for legislative drafting workshops in more than twenty countries. ICLAD has developed a specific learning-by-doing learning process that will be used in the workshop.

Expected Outcomes

The expected outcomes of the training will be:

• An appreciation of the evidence-based methodology for drafting legislation by East African Community (EAC) Legislators and legislative drafters with specific reference to the health sector in EAC.
• A work plan for the APKN Legislation Processes working Group up to the Plenary Meeting of APKN in October 2010.
• An endorsement for the development of e-learning module on “evidence-based legislative drafting”.

Logistics

Languages

The working language of the Training workshop will be English

Venue

The Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala, Uganda

Organisation

The workshop is jointly organized by East Africa Legislative Assembly and the Africa i-Parliament Action Plan (UN/DESA), under the aegis of the Africa Parliamentary Knowledge Network. The International Consortium for Law and Development (ICLAD www.iclad-law.org) will cooperate with these organizations in designing and carrying out the planned curriculum.

Insurance - Liability

The conference organizers can not be held liable for loss, injury or damage to any person or property or for any additional expenditure incurred due to changes, whatever the causes. Participants are advised to make their own arrangements for health and travel insurance.

Contact Persons:

Ms Cecilia Rudo Matanga
Programme Officer
Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan
UNDESA
Nairobi - Kenya
Mobile: +254-718568154
Telephone: +254-20-374 9892/3
Fax : +254-20-374 9894
Email: cecilia@parliaments.info