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Legal Capacity Building and Advice for the Legislative Branch of Government in Somalia

The EU-funded project “Legal Capacity Building and Advice for the Legislative Branch of Government in Somalia” aims at supporting the national legislatures in Somalia by ensuring that their law-making processes are based on a culture of constitutionalism, rule of law and good governance principles, and fulfill international legislative drafting standards. The objective is to improve the overall quality of draft legislation in the Federal Republic of Somalia and to ensure that the legal framework guiding the Somali state-building process is more coherent and contradictions between national laws are reduced.

The project provides comparative legal advice and counsel for the administrative and legal decision-making processes of the Speakers’ Offices of the Somali Federal Parliament in relation to the application of the Rules of Procedure, facilitation of the Standing Committee meetings and management of the plenary meetings. In addition, the project team organizes regular trainings for the administrative staff of both Houses of the Somali Federal Parliament on administrative and parliamentary procedures to effectively assist the Speakers’ Offices with the administration and management of parliamentary processes.

The project also provides technical legal assistance and comparative legal research to relevant parliamentary committees in the Somali Federal Parliament on the development of draft legislation and organizes regular trainings for members of the Somali Federal Parliament on comparative constitutional law questions of relevance to selected law-making processes.

Moreover, the project offers specialised technical legal assistance for female members of the Somali Federal Parliament on the review of draft legislation so as to ensure the protection of women’s rights and to enhance the representation of women’s interests in the Somali law-making process. This project component is complemented with a targeted training program for female members of the Somali Federal Parliament on their role as legislators aimed to strengthen their legal knowledge and legislative drafting skills.

To effectively implement the different project components in Somalia, the project combines the comparative constitutional and public law expertise of the Foundation’s Research Fellows with the historical and contextual background knowledge of locally employed Somali Legal Advisors.