The Max Planck Foundation held its first workshop with the Parliamentary Legislative Department of the Iraqi Parliament under the GFFO-funded project titled ‘Democratising the legislative process in Iraq’ in Baghdad, Iraq, from 27 to 29 February 2024. The workshop focused on legislative drafting. Foundation staff addressed principles of legislative drafting, structuring and dividing the legislative text, linguistic considerations, legislative drafting processes and procedures under civil law and common law systems, and the use of modern technologies in legislative drafting.
The workshop kickstarted in the Iraqi Parliament on 27 February, where, following the opening session, the first session featured presentations by five Iraqi experts, including from within the PLD, on diverse aspects of the legislative process in Iraq. This was followed by a discussion with a broader audience that included Members of Parliament, PLD staff, representatives from the different drafting units within Iraq’s institutions (Presidency, Council of Ministers, State Council), former members of the Judiciary and academics. The second and third days of the workshop were delivered by the Foundation to members of the PLD. Discussions centred on the importance of drafting instructions and their role in turning policy ideas into effective laws, in addition to questions of structure, formatting and language. Comparative examples from both civil law and common law jurisdictions in relation to legislative drafting processes were further drawn upon and discussed.
The workshop represented the first exchange with the PLD and will be built upon in upcoming activities that will target specific aspects of the legislative process, allowing the PLD to further benefit from comparative experiences and case studies.
Project activities are set to continue until late 2025.