The International Consortium for Law and Development (ICLAD) builds on the foundations laid by the Boston University Program on Legislative Drafting for Democratic Social Change. ICLAD is a loose confederation of people in many countries -- ministry drafters, parliamentary staff, civil society organizations, and universities -- who seek to establish programs to strengthen their national legislative drafting capacity and law-making institutions.

Increasingly, development practitioners have become aware that good governance and development require excellent law-making, including drafting effectively implementable legislation. Worldwide, historically-imposed socio-economic institutions condemn most developing and transitional countries' inhabitants to poverty and vulnerability. To change these institutions, government has no choice but to use the law and the legal system. Most international assistance programs focus their efforts on improving countries' judicial and administrative functions. In these programs, amending or drafting new laws to transform exisiting institutions remains marginalized.

In contrast, ICLAD seeks to equip country nationals with legislative drafting theory and methodology, as well as techniques, to enable them to use law to transform existing dysfunctional institutions.

In concrete terms:

• ICLAD will continue and extend the BU program to provide training at the national and local levels to strengthen the legislative drafting capacity of country nationals. In particular, it will help country nationals to equip ministry personnel, parliamentary staff members, university faculty, and leaders of organizations of civil society with the tools they need to ground laws on facts and logic -- reason informed by experience. Working with interested persons from many countries, ICLAD will incorporate and further develop several aspects of the BU Program: the four month residence program; in-country and regional workshops; and the distance learning program.

• ICLAD will strengthen and coordinate country-based research efforts to deepen legislative theory and improve its problem-solving methodology. It will encourage country-nationals to monitor and evaluate their use of legislative theory as a guide to improving it as a tool for designing effective laws.

• Working closely with country nationals, ICLAD will support self-reliant, in-country training and research initiatives through consultation on substantive issues and fundraising assistance.

• ICLAD will facilitate the exchange of ideas and information about experiences in the use of law to transform existing dysfunctional institutions by establishing an electronic bulletin board, holding international conferences, and publishing an on-line journal.