Report of the International Workshop on Legislative Drafting in Africa(Organized by Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan, an Initiative of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in conjunction with the Faculty of Law, University of the Pretoria10-11 December 2007(Pretoria, South Africa)

EMHDR participated in the International Workshop on Legislative Drafting in Africa which was held on 10-11 December 2007 at the Faculty of Law, University of the Pretoria.

The workshop brought about parliamentarians, experts, scholars and practitioners from across more than 20 African and European countries. Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan, one of the main organizers of the workshop is a four-year UNDESA-initiative based in Nairobi and working on the promotion effective legislative drafting guidelines for African parliaments, including the Pan-African Parliament. It also aims at strengthening the role of African parliaments in fostering democracy and good governance through knowledge and information management.

As such, the aim of the workshop was to agree on a uniform drafting guidelines dealing with the structural elements of legislation so that such elements can be automatically indentified and processed. The workshop aspired to provide a set of guidelines for marking up legal and parliamentary documents with appropriate technical policies and specifications. Different institutions such as the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and European Parliament as well other African and European national parliaments have endorsed their support in different ways – such as, for example, by sending representatives of offering technical and other support. 

The proposed guidelines were at an earlier stage distributed to all workshop participants by email and online discussion on those guidelines has been ongoing in the last couple of weeks at the website of the International Workshop managed by the Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan (http://www.akomantoso.org/). The discussions, comments and suggestions aimed at improving the text of the guidelines were refined during the two-day workshop. The guidelines were developed by three experts: Professor Christo Botha, Department of Public Law, University of Pretoria; Professor Monica Palmirani, University of Bologna; and Professor Giovani Sartor, European University Institute.   

The workshop was launched on Monday morning, 10 December 2007 by an introductory remark of Professor Botha, who welcomed workshop participants on behalf of the organizers and the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, the host institution. This was followed by a keynote address of Mr Morad Boularaf, Deputy Clerk of the Pan African Parliament. In the rest of the sessions that followed in the remaining hours of the two-day workshop, participants conducted intense discussions on how to enhance the guidelines. Finally, a non-binding recommendatory set of Legislative Drafting Guidelines for African Parliaments was unanimously developed by all workshop participants. The guidelines are to refined in the next few days by a small group of experts who shall finally dispatch the guidelines to all African national parliaments and the Pan African Parliament in Midrand, South Africa.

 

EMDHR was represented in the workshop by Mr. Daniel R Mekonnen, member of the General Council of the EMDHR. One of the most interesting aspects of the workshop was that it created a platform for EMDHR to discuss prospects of cooperation and create networks with different African and European experts and professionals on legislative drafting. It was a platform in which the sad sate of affairs of some Eritrean parliamentarians and the Eritrean parliament (the National Assembly) by itself was explained to workshop participants. For example, in the session of 12 December 2007, Eritrea was mentioned as one of only two African countries which do not have official representatives in the Pan African Parliament. These two countries are Morocco and Eritrea. Morocco’s failure has its own historical explanation. Eritrea’s failure to have official representatives in the Pan African Parliament was attributed to the fact that the country has never had any sort of parliament since the Pan African Parliament was established in 2004. It was also noted the transitional Eritrean “parliament” (which was established in 1993) was convened for the last time in February 2002. Since then, Eritrea has remained the only African country without a functioning parliament and a result the country is still not represented in the Pan African Parliament. This was one of the sad examples of repressive governance in Eritrea, as communicated by Mr. Mekonnen to workshop participants. 

Apart from African parliamentarians and experts involved in parliamentary legislative drafting, the workshop was also attended by representatives of parliaments, ministries of justice and experts of legislative drafting from Italy, the UK, Portugal and the Netherlands.  

The participation of Mr Mekonnen as a representative of EMDHR was fully sponsored by the joint cooperation of UNDESA and UNDP, South Africa office.  

EMDHR gratefully acknowledges the generous financial assistance accorded to it by the sponsors of the event.  

EMDHR

Communications Management

Pretoria 13 December 2007