ABA Rule of Law Initiative Program Book 2010

Introduction

Twenty years ago, with the support of prominent U.S. jurists and lawyers, visionary members of the American Bar Association (ABA) created the Central and Eastern Europe Law Initiative (CEELI). With just $450,000 in grants and two staffers, we began our rule of law programming by performing legislative reviews and assisting with the drafting of constitutions for seven countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

In those early years, our successes included assisting Albania in adopting its first democratic constitution, helping to reintroduce the first jury trials in Russia since Tsarist times and taking a leading role in cataloguing war crimes in Kosovo—research later used to prosecute Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.

Inspired by CEELI’s significant impact in the region, the ABA established the Asia Law Initiative in 1998, and the Africa Law Initiative and the Latin America and Caribbean Law Initiative in 2000. In 2007, these regional initiatives, along with the newly created Middle East and North Africa Law Initiative, were consolidated into the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI).

Today, we operate a wide array of legal technical assistance programs, including in areas such as judicial reform, criminal law reform, women’s rights, legal education reform, anti-corruption, legal profession reform and human rights. ABA ROLI has grown to a program with more than $30 million in grants in 2010, and nearly 500 people worldwide.

However, we don’t reach our goals alone. ABA ROLI partners with host country governments, professional associations, law schools, universities, and a range of civil society and other organizations to accomplish reforms that create stronger and sustainable legal institutions and that build local capacity to promote a better understanding of, and respect for, the rule of law.

Over the years, ABA ROLI has played a role in a number of firsts through our programs—the first national public defender system in Armenia, the first independent, self-regulating bar association in Georgia and the first court-annexed mediation programs in Jordan and in Mexico. We worked with partners to establish the first small claims courts in the Philippines, to create the first network for female legal professionals in the Middle East and to support Liberia’s first judicial training center.

We have established important partnerships with foreign bar associations, including the All China Lawyers Association, and assisted legal professionals in Ecuador in their transition from an inquisitorial to an adversarial justice system. And, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we are helping to combat that country’s rape epidemic and impunity for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes. 

These programs and the others presented in this publication illustrate our continuing belief that rule of law promotion is the most effective longterm antidote to the most pressing problems facing the world today, including poverty, conflict, endemic corruption and a disregard for human rights. This year, as we celebrate 20 years of rule of law programming, my colleagues and I hope you find these materials useful in advancing the rule of law around the world.