Legislators want to solve an endless list of social problems but have limited time and resources.
In one country in the Asia-Pacific region, legislators had to decide how to tackle a wide range of difficult problems: environmental degradation, inadequate water management, corruption in public procurement, and ineffective criminal procedures and bankruptcy rules. Partnering with ICLAD to build a legislative strengthening program, legislators gained tools to prioritize their ongoing legislative agenda. Their program focuses legislative resources on the most important problems and optimizes the way legislators invest limited resources.

Despite legislators' best efforts to produce good laws, social problems frequently remain unsolved.
Legislators in a Middle Eastern country determined that adults must stop exploiting children and forcing them into illegal activities. Yet three years after the new child welfare law took effect, children faced greater risks than before. ICLAD's resources for assessing legislation helped legislators to discover why the law had failed-and how to get the facts they needed to ensure that new laws would solve social problems.

Once implemented, laws rarely receive legislative oversight—even when outdated or ineffective.
Local fisheries represented a key to food security in one African country. Yet over-fishing continued, even in areas where fish spawned, as entire species of fish verged on extinction. How could this happen when the code contained provisions on fisheries management? ICLAD's research approach revealed that the law, over 70 years old, had come from the colonial-era government. The law did not address officials in the modern ministries, and legislators did not provide oversight-so no one managed the fisheries. ICLAD builds legislative capacity to provide effective oversight as officials implement the law.