Mission Statement

"A judicial and legal center that conducts research, holds dialogues, facilitates sharing of experiences, provides technical assistance to support the judiciary and enhance its independence, supports the rest of the justice system, and aims to protect public freedoms and rights, supports civil society and economic competitiveness, undertake projects, and spread legal awareness in the Arab States."

Background

In September 2003, the Kingdom of Bahrain, in cooperation with the United States, hosted the first Arab Judicial Forum. The American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) organized the event. The three-day event brought together high-level government officials and nongovernmental reformers active in the judicial arena from fifteen Arab countries, the Palestinian Authority, the United Kingdom and the United States to discuss essential elements of sound judicial systems, identify common issues and develop plans for ongoing programs to address those issues.

On February 12-13, 2005, judges, lawyers, Ministry of Justice officials, and NGO leaders from Algeria, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, and Yemen, as well as from the U.S. and France gathered at the Dead Sea, Jordan, to discuss the formation of a regional entity to address the judicial development issues raised at the Arab Judicial Forum in 2003. At this meeting, the distinguished group of justice sector representatives developed the vision for the Arab Council for Legal and Judicial Studies (ACLJS), which will endeavor to support judicial reform in the Arab world through the sharing of information and best practices, training and workshops, and raising public awareness of these issues. Some of the key recommendations raised in 2003 that resurfaced in this second meeting were the need for an objective judicial selection, the importance of providing specialized judicial training, guaranteeing judicial immunity to protect judges from intervention by the executive power in their duties and the importance of judges in protecting human rights. The need to have an independent judiciary was heavily stressed.

The three main goals of the ACLJS are:

• to support professional development and independence of the judiciary through training
• to facilitate interaction and coordination among judicial system institutions
• to support the transparency of judicial systems and procedures.

A Jordan-based not-for-profit will be created to manage the entity. At the close of this meeting the group divided into three working committees responsible for different aspects of developing this regional entity.

Activities

Promoting the Role of the Judiciary in the Middle East and North Africa Region. On June 27-29, 2006, the Arab Council for Judicial and Legal Studies (ACJLS) held its Inaugural Conference on “Promoting the Role of the Judiciary in the Middle East and North Africa Region,” in Amman, Jordan. The event was held under the patronage of the Jordanian Ministry of Justice. Over 70 participants from 11 MENA countries representing governmental, nongovernmental and civil society organizations were in attendance. The participants included former justice ministers, judicial council leaders, and other high level judicial actors. The conference was a three day event designed to introduce the participants to the ACJLS and focus on the topics of Building Public Trust in the Judiciary, Court Management, Judicial Training and Development and Public and Media Outreach.

Judicial Education Methodology Workshop

On March 30-31, 2007, the ACJLS held a Workshop on “Judicial Education Methodology.”  The workshop was designed to introduce the selected participants to some of the interactive training methodologies, as well as train them in such techniques.  Thirteen seasoned judicial trainers from five Arab countries representing the judiciary, judicial training institutes and academia participated in the event as well as two experienced judicial trainers from the United States who guided the sessions and presented and assisted participants with the interactive exercises. The workshop was highly interactive and specifically focused on examining the different methods of interactive adult learning, their characteristic, and steps to be followed when developing programs in terms of assessing needs, developing learning goals and objectives, developing course content and structure, and evaluation methods and strategies.  

Court Management – Fundamentals and Best Practices, in Algiers, Algeria, with over 40 regional participants.

With support from the Algerian Ecole Supérieure de la Magistrature, the ACJLS and ABA conducted this program for over 40 participants including judges, prosecutors and senior court staff with working knowledge and experience in court management from nine Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen. The two-day workshop introduced and enhanced the participants’ knowledge of the fundamentals of court management, international standards, recent international and regional developments and best practices, and court performance standards and how they can be applied to enhance the court systems in the MENA region.

E-Commerce Fundamentals and Regional Perspective.

The ACJLS held its second training event in Manama, Bahrain, on September 11-12, 2007 with the sponsorship of the Bahraini Ministry of Justice and in partnership with the United States Department of Commerce, Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP). The workshop, “E-Commerce- Fundamentals and Regional Perspectives,” brought together participants from throughout the Middle East and North Africa along with numerous distinguished international and regional specialists to serve as faculty. Over seventy senior legal professionals including senior Ministry of Justice officials, judges and other judicial leaders, attorneys and academics from 11 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) were in attendance. The workshop examined current trends and best practices in E-Commerce and the Challenges with Technology & the Law, Electronic Commerce and the Methods of Contracting and Transactions Online, a Comparative Overview of International Legal Framework and Electronic Contracting, E-Authentication Risk and Fraud, Cybercrime and Cyberfraud, Dispute Resolution- ADR, E-arbitration and online dispute resolution, several case studies, and a conclusive discussion on the regional perspectives and challenges.

Justice Sector Monitoring-Creating Benchmarks for Judicial Performance in the Arab World.

The ACJLS implemented its third technical workshop on “Justice Sector Monitoring” in Amman, Jordan on December 13-15, 2006. The event was held with support from and under the patronage of the Jordanian Ministry of Justice, with Minister of Justice HE Sharif Zu’bi. More than 23 participants from 11 Arab countries representing the judiciary, judicial training institutes, academia, the private sector, and several former ministers took part in this intensive workshop. Expert faculty members from the U.S., Singapore, the World Bank, UNDP, Jordan, and the Council of Europe led the workshop and presented on specific topics dealing with the development and implementation of justice sector monitoring systems. The workshop was a three-day event designed with the general objective of introducing participants to the fundamentals, international standards and best practices regarding justice sector monitoring and enhancing their knowledge of such issues. The workshop was specifically designed to provide participants with the opportunity to begin developing draft regional benchmarks.

On February 25-26, 2007, a working group, consisting of fifteen participants from seven Arab countries from the first workshop, took part in an intensive follow-on meeting.  This meeting was guided by two of the international experts from the first workshop.  The working group identified indicators and benchmarks to measure court performance with regard to those general areas chosen in the first workshop and further refined in this meeting.  The working group also focused on identifying the type of statistics and information required and means to collect. The workshop results shall be further revised and used in ACJLS future activities.

Policy Dialogue on Access to Justice: Legal Aid and its Future in the Arab World.

The ACJLS held its first policy dialogue event on Access to Justice on January 30-31, 2007, at the Dead Sea, Jordan. This event focused more specifically on legal aid mechanisms, both state sponsored and civil society led. The Minister of Justice, HE Sharif Zu’bi, inaugurated the event, and spoke to the importance of this topic for the region. More than 20 participants from 10 MENA countries attended, representing bar associations, judges, Ministry of Justice and NGOs representative. Expert faculty from the U.S., Singapore, both representing the Legal Aid Bureau as well as the Law Society’s civil society legal aid efforts, as well as regional NGO and government representatives led the workshop. The two day event was designed to introduce the participants to the concept of legal aid and access to justice, presenting international and regional models as well as discussing problems specific to the region.

Based on feedback from this workshop, a second policy dialogue event on Access to Justice was organized on March 2-3, 2007, focusing on “Access to Justice: Legal Aid - Legal Clinics and Community Mediation Efforts.” Twenty seven (27) participants from 3 Arab countries of the Levant region representing the judiciary, ministries of justice, academia, the private sector and civil society organizations took part in this event. Five international and two regional experts from the U.S. and Palestine with practical experience administering these types of programs presented on their experiences and guided the Dialogue. Additionally, the event provided participants with a forum to engage in candid dialogue and examine and survey the national and regional environment, the challenges facing the development, implementation and sustainability of legal aid clinics in the Arab world, the feasibility of instituting and operating such programs, and integrating community mediation in the region.

The data and results of the two policy dialogue series will be included in the upcoming ACJLS White Paper on Access to Justice and Legal Aid in the MENA region.

Upcoming Events

The ACJLS will be implementing a new set of initiatives in Fall 2007.

The ACLJS is part of a larger Middle East Legal Reform Initiative supported by the American Bar Association with funding form the U.S. State Department Middle East Partnership Initiative.

For more information on the ACJLS, please contact Callie Danehey <cdanehey@staff.abanet.org>.