In November, 2005, Mahmoud Sabra (a graduate of the Distance Course on Legislative Drafting, Country Contact for Egypt, and Advisory Committee member) organized a UNDP-funded workshop for members of the Algerian House of Representatives, Senate, and their staff. Mahmoud invited Lorna Seitz (ICLAD's Director of Research and Training and the Director of the Distance Drafting Program) to join him in presenting the problem-solving methodology.

The workshop was attended by more than 100 MPs and staff members. In deference to the "learning-by-doing" concept, the Algerian organizers selected three laws to analyze according to the problem-solving methodology during the workshop: the Law on Waters, the Law on the Handicapped, and the Law on the Promotion of Tourism. Use of the problem-solving methodology helped participants identify some of the reasons why existing laws are frequently under-implemented, and drew their attention to some issues requiring legislative clarification or elaboration. Workshop participants also benefited from presentations on recording and civil input processes from a Lebanese expert, Riyad Ghannam, and a Swiss expert, Alexandre Fuezessery.

Response to the workshop: The participants responded very favorably to the workshop. However, the five-day workshop was simply not long enough to enable participants to gain the skills needed to independently apply the problem-solving methodology to complex social problems. Due to time constrains, the necessity of clearly and explicitly delegating rulemaking authority, and techniques for overseeing ministerial activities on an on-going basis, received inadequate attention during the workshop.

Since the conclusion of this fast-paced workshop, ICLAD's Director of Research and Training has been working to clarify outcomes expectations for workshops of different lengths, and to establish follow-up plans to enable participants in brief, introductory workshops to obtain the support needed to gain an increasingly sophistocated understanding of the problem-solving method, and its potential, after workshop completion.

The need for on-going support: Participants in brief, in-country workshops would, minimally, benefit from editorial support and assistance throughout the course of their first attempts to comprehensively apply the problem-solving theory and methodology to guide the drafting of an intransitive law. Unfortunately, ICLAD does not currently have a large number of consultants who are fluent in either French or Arabic, so we are in a poor position to support on-going projects through a distance learning program, a distance editing/consultancy service, or a series of in-country workshops. In order to serve this need, as well as to provide legislative-strengthening assistance to drafters in other Arabic-speaking nations, we are looking into options for establishing a regional center in the middle east that can offer trainings in the problem-solving theory and methodology in Arabic, using regional examples.

Click here to access an overview of the workshop (in French).