News

The Swiss thinktank DCAF, or Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, recently released an update to its Gender and SSR Training Resource Package.

This latest release focuses on Penal Reform and Gender and marks the 11th component of the training package. DCAF's press release offers more details on the contents:

• Key terms and messages for training on penal reform and gender
• 11 training exercises, from 20 to 75 minutes, suitable for use in a training on penal reform and gender, or in a gender training session
• Topics and tips for facilitating discussions on penal reform and gender
• Case studies from Afghanistan, the Russian Federation and South Africa
• A list of additional training resources on penal reform and gender.
• Developed as a companion to the Gender and SSR Toolkit, the Gender and SSR Training Resource Package is a series of practical training materials to help trainers to integrate gender into SSR training, and to deliver effective gender training to security sector audiences.

For more information, please visit DCAF's publications page. ()

INPROL was recently notified of an upcoming lecture at Case Western University by Sir Christopher Greenwood, a judge on the International Court of Justice. The event will take place on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, from 4:30 to 5:30pm. Here's a short description from the Case website:

The decades since the Second World War have been the ‘Age of Human Rights’ and it is one of the proudest achievements of international law that this development has placed the rights and well-being of the individual at the heart of international law and relations in a way which would have been inconceivable not long ago. Yet within international law, human rights law is not alone in having the welfare of the individual as its priority; international humanitarian law has long sought to protect the individual from the worst excesses of war. Are these two bodies of law mutually exclusive ? Do they conflict or are they capable of of playing complementary roles ? Judge Greenwood will draw on his experience both as an academic and a practitioner in addressing these questions.

The event is free, open to the public and will also be webcast live. For more details, please see this page. ()

The Center for Complex Operations and the US Institute of Peace are co-sponsoring an event on March 5, 2010, on the relationship between Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR). The event agenda may be accessed here.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP at NDU's website. ()

A number of our INPROL members working in Haiti are still unaccounted for after the earthquake. We are hoping and praying for their safety. If you have been in touch with any of our INPROL colleagues in Haiti, please let INPROL know. Our thoughts go out to them, their families and all those who have been affected by this terrible disaster.

At this time, many of us feel helpless to assist. However, there is something we can all do right now. There is a massive humanitarian operation underway right now and funding is needed for rescue efforts and to provide healthcare, food, shelter and water to those affected by the earthquake. If you are based in the US, you can donate by texting Haiti, H-a-i-t-i, to 90999 and $10 will automatically be billed to your cell phone. For those outside the US, you can also donate to aid agencies working in Haiti right now. The following sites have links to some of them:

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/world/story/52530CC5AD9A5E99862576AA0068165D?OpenDocument ()

INPROL is pleased to announce the release of two new Consolidated Responses: "Establishing and Reforming Bar Associations in Post-Conflict States" and "International Standards that Relate to Detentions, Corrections, and Prisons." ()

The United Nations recently launched a new rule of law website, www.unrol.org. The site is maintained by the Rule of Law Unit in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, and describes itself as:

"a promotional and educational tool for practitioners and the general public. It seeks to inform users about the UN’s work in the field of rule of law, and its efforts to coordinate and strengthen system-wide approaches in this field. It is the central UN rule of law web-based resource, serving as a gateway to the rest of the UN’s related sites, and making information more widely accessible about UN rule of law issues and activities, and the various tools, documents and materials on the subject."

To learn more, you may visit the site at www.unrol.org. ()

*Update* - To view a video archive of the ASIL event, click here.

The American Society of International Law (ASIL) is hosting a "Women and Peacebuilding and Rule of Law" event at their Washington, DC headquarters on Wednesday, October 28, 2009, from 6:00pm to 8:30pm.

INPROL is proud to have partnered with ASIL on past programs and highly encourages our membership to attend this event. From the program description:

"Women are an important part of the peace building equation. Too often they are excluded or marginalized in the peace process. Limiting or excluding women in the peace building process not only leaves a critical resource untapped but also hinders a society's recovery. Women can be agents of change, advocates for justice and peace, and leaders in reestablishing rule of law.

Panelists at this event will discuss the critical role of women in peace building as well as comment on the recent UN Security Council report on Resolution 1820 on women, peace and security."

For more details, and to register for the event, please visit http://www.asil.org/activities_calendar.cfm?action=detail&rec=85. ()

INPROL is pleased to announce the publication of our sixth Consolidated Response of 2009, a literature review of rule of law lessons learned from the UN Mission in Kosovo. The literature discussing UNMIK’s involvement in rule of law related activities is substantial. Though each particular work emphasizes different aspects of UNMIK, there are a number of similar, or common themes, that tend to emerge in the overall body of work on the topic. This Consolidated Response identifies a number of these themes, excerpting quotes from the literature to illustrate them.

Many of these themes were discussed at the second annual INPROL meeting, held in July 2009. For more information about the event, and to view a video archive, please visit http://inprol.org/webcast.

To view the Consolidated Response, please visit http://www.inprol.org/views/cr. ()

INPROL has developed and published two new Consolidated Responses -- the first, in response to a query submitted by Barry Walsh, addresses the subject of transitioning from manual, hand-written court records to automated recording systems.

The second CR discusses assessments of administrative law systems and was initiated after INPROL received a query from Carsten Weber, chief of the ODIHR-OSCE Rule of Law unit.

Read both CRs by clicking here.

INPROL's Consolidated Responses are initiated by queries from members. If you have a topic or question related to rule of law, please visit the discussion forums to submit a query! ()

A video archive of the INPROL second annual meeting is now available at inprol.org/webcast, along with the agenda, list of attendees and other relevant documents. ()

INPROL co-director Scott Carlson has prepared a Consolidated Response (CR) entitled, "Intro to Civil Law Legal Systems." INPROL would like to thank the following members for their valuable contributions to the CR: William L. Sells, Barry Walsh, Alex Paredes-Penades, Bruce Zagaris, Timothy Keeton, Tom Chaseman, Rick Messick, Don Chisholm, Anabela Atanasi, John Nikita, and Rain Liivoja.

This Consolidated Response is designed to introduce professionals from outside the Civil Law realm to some of its core features, as well as draw distinctions with other legal traditions such as Common Law.

To view the new CR, please click here: http://www.inprol.org/node/4505.

Consolidated Responses are produced almost always as a direct result of queries submitted by members. To submit a query, please visit the discussion forums at http://www.inprol.org/discussions. ()

The second annual INPROL meeting will take place on Friday, July 17 at the United States Institute of Peace. The focus this year will be on a discussion of preliminary lessons learned from the experience of the UN Mission in Kosovo in establishing the justice and corrections systems in Kosovo. INPROL is supporting the Criminal Law and Judicial Advisory Section (CLJAS) of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations to develop these lessons. A recent query soliciting suggestions from INPROL members for published works that can be used to assist with this process can be accessed at this link: http://www.inprol.org/node/4469.

All INPROL members are invited to attend the event. For those who will be able to join us at USIP, please RSVP at http://inprol2009.eventbrite.com by July 10.

For those who are unable to attend in person, the entire event will be webcast live from 9:00am-12:30pm local time in Washington, D.C. Members will be able to view draft lessons learned documents, submit comments and pose questions for discussion via e-mail, as well as converse with fellow webcast viewers. If you wish to participate via webcast, the address will be http://inprol.org/webcast. ()

The May 2009 INPROL newsletter has been released; please view it here. ()

The U.S. Institute of Peace and the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) are pleased to announce the launch of constitutionmaking.org, a site intended to provide people engaged in constitutional drafting access to essential materials, insights, and expertise.  

Constitutionmaking.org was created by a team of scholars and drafters with the guiding principle that those writing constitutions should have access to (1) a variety of options for constitutional design and (2) analysis of the consequences of design choices.  To this end, the site features three basic components:

• OPTION REPORTS.  This section includes a series of reports on a wide-ranging set of topics that are central to historical and contemporary constitutions.  These reports provide sample provisions and information on trends and patterns in the use of different constitutional provisions.  The data and analysis for these reports come from an original set of data on the content of constitutions that the researchers have been collecting since 2005.

• CONSTITUTONAL REPOSITORY.  The site also includes a growing repository of constitutional texts.  The researchers have identified the major constitutional changes for each independent state since 1789 and have collected 95% of the documents associated with these amendments and replacements.  Some of these documents are under copyright, but the repository will include all publicly available materials. 

• FORUM.  A third component of constitutionmaking.org features regular commentary from scholars on issues and events surrounding constitutional design. The goal is the same as that for constitutionmaking.org more generally: to connect scholars and drafters.  We endeavor to bring to light two sorts of information: (1) reports of constitutional deliberation (and challenges therein) from various corners of the world, and (2) reports of noteworthy research on the subject. The ideas are serious but the tone is direct and lively.  Recent posts have covered recent constitutional activity in Bolivia, Venezuela, Thailand, and Burma.
  

The authors hope that constitutionmaking.org will grow as a place for discussion and interaction between experts engaged in constitution-making processes.

USIP ()