The workshop helped to build the technical capacity of legal advisors and legal drafters on drafting electoral laws in compliance with constitutional principles and international law
On 30-31 August, Max Planck Foundation research fellows delivered a workshop to build the technical capacity of around forty legal drafters, legal advisors, and researchers of the Bureau for Legislation and Opinion in Jordan. The technical content of the workshop related to ensuring that electoral laws complied with the rule of law. The workshop emphasised ways in which to ensure that electoral laws complied with constitutional principles and international law.
The workshop was formally inaugurated by HE Mr Musa Almaaytah, Minister of Political and Parliamentary Affairs, HE Dr Florian Reindel, Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to Jordan, Dr Fedaa al-Hmoud, President of the Bureau for Legislation and Opinion and the Head of Project at the Foundation.
HE Mr Musa Almaaytah said in his opening words that this workshop was of great importance and extremely timely in analysing Jordan’s progress towards comprehensive reform, especially regarding electoral law reform and the development of political parties. Dr Reindel highlighted that the German Embassy and the German Federal Foreign Office were proud of supporting the Foundation in providing technical trainings to legal drafters at the Bureau. Responding to Dr Reindel, Dr Fedaa al-Hmoud thanked the German Federal Foreign Office for their support in building the capacities of legal drafters with comparative and technical expertise provided by the Foundation. She emphasised the positive cooperation with the Foundation and reiterated that the technical support offered by Foundation experts to legal drafters of the Bureau was very important for strengthening the quality of legislation in Jordan.
Research Fellows in Amman presented on specific topics related to the state of the art in drafting electoral laws in addition to a Tunisian expert joining from Tunis to discuss ways to ensure that gender equality was guaranteed in elections and electoral laws, with a focus on the experience of legislative drafting and reform in Tunisia. Several topics were presented, including an overview of electoral system reform in the MENA region, specific features of the Jordanian electoral system and its laws, the role of electoral management bodies, gender equality in drafting electoral laws, and voter eligibility criteria. Presentations were followed by an exercise aimed at incorporating principles of gender equality in electoral laws, in which participants were asked to prepare the framework of a law in accordance with the tools and techniques that were presented throughout the workshop.
The workshop was covered and reported in domestic news updates on two Jordanian television, which also aired interviews with the various institutional representatives – please see here for the JRTV report and here for Roya TV’s report on YouTube.
The workshop forms part of the project component aimed at building the capacity of legal drafters and legal advisors of the Bureau for Legislation and Opinion (Diwan al-Tashri’ wa’l-Ra’i), under the Foundation project, “Strengthening Legislative Compliance and Constitutional Interpretation in Jordan”, generously supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.