Strengthening rule of law requires coherence, continuity, stability, time to grow and the most kind of special attention to local realities in order to yield the desired outcomes. True to this belief, CILC always aims to connect new projects to existing achievements and to bring together practitioners from complementary fields of expertise. So is the case in the most recent activity of our Nuffic funded project “Legal Review: Analysis and evaluation of proposed draft and existing laws and regulations within the framework of legislative drafting”.
This short training programme was developed at the specific request of the Ministry of Finance in Indonesia, as a direct consequence of a similar previous programme CILC had delivered in 2011 and 2012 for the Indonesian Ministry of Justice. This time, the programme targets twenty legislative drafters and other civil servants from the Ministry of Finance to enhance their capacity to draft and review laws and regulations and to give participants insight into the Dutch system and other European models.
In the period of 1 – 4 April 2014, we organised a follow-up training in Jakarta to the three-week course which took place in The Hague in November 2013. This follow-session included a review of the “Assessment Guidelines for proposed Ministry of Finance Regulations and Decrees”, prepared by the training beneficiaries after the course of 2013.
This follow-up session was, however, designed to also bring together participants from the Sekretariat Negara (Setneg) and representatives of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights programme of 2011/12 with their colleagues from the Ministry of Finance who benefit from our current project. In the form of the joint seminar on “Policy and Legislation: effects and side-effects, costs and benefits”, we created a first opportunity for these practitioners to share and discuss their experiences and challenges and to build sustainable communication lines at operational level. Even though some of the participants were already acquainted with each other, they had never worked together as a team. On this occasion they expressed an understanding and appreciation for the fact that drafting laws requires team work not only within their own departments, but as an overall approach among relevant ministries and that sharing knowledge with colleagues is a good way of ensuring sustainable training results.