Scrambling to pack for evacuation from the violence exploding in Cairo, Egypt on August 14, 2013, I agonized about the prospective future of the ABA Rule of Law Initiative-Egypt (ROLI-Egypt) programs I was managing. My American colleague and I rushed before dawn to the airport, passing tear gas canisters, half-standing barricades, and burned cars that littered the streets from earlier clashes. Hours later the Egyptian government removed thousands of protesters from encampments in two public squares. Many soldiers, policemen, and protestors died that day.
We evacuated to Amman, Jordan, not knowing if we would come back. After two weeks we returned to a 7:00PM to 6:00AM curfew, during which the streets of Cairo, an urban entity of 20 million, were completely deserted, and the nightly gunfire of earlier weeks reduced.
General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi headed the transition government created after President Mohamed Morsi’s July 3 departure, and immediately started a campaign to stabilize Egypt. He cracked down on terrorist bombings, economic sabotage, and assassinations of government officials. The government declared the Muslim Brotherhood, which was composed of many Morsi supporters, a terrorist group and arrested, detained and prosecuted many of its members.
Sisi’s success in stabilizing much of Egypt led to his election as President in 2015. However, stability was not certain. The northern Sinai Peninsula remains a restive zone and theatre of terrorist groups. Occasional assassinations and terrorist bombings continue. Nevertheless, daily life in Egypt has largely returned to normal. At the same time though, Egypt continues to be a target of terrorism, and no one can predict whether further terrorist events will occur.
Over a roughly four-year period, beginning in 2012, I led the ROLI-Egypt Innovation in Legal Education (ILE) and the Interactive Teaching Training of Trainers (IAT TOT) programs. In the ILE we taught practical lawyering skills to young lawyers and law students. The skills training courses (CLE) included client interviewing, legal analysis, legal writing, contract drafting, negotiation, oral advocacy, and arbitration. We also created both the Arabic-language national moot arbitration and legal writing competitions for all of Egypt’s 13 public law schools and supported the start-up of three first generation Egyptian law student clinics. Some participating law students said these interactive experiences were the highlight of their law school careers. Additionally, we pioneered the use of on-line CLE classes and the use of social media in Egypt-based legal skills training.
The objective of the IAT TOT program was to make ROLI-Egypt training programs sustainable by institutionalizing continued Arabic language teaching after the conclusion of ROLI-Egypt’s participation, by training Egyptian instructors to use Interactive Teaching methods (IAT). In the ILE portion of the IAT TOT program, I trained approximately 60 Egyptian lawyers to use IAT methods in offering the majority of the practical skills courses in Arabic. I also trained approximately 100 Egyptian law school professors, including law clinic professors, to use IAT with their students.
Beginning in 2015, ROLI-Egypt also started delivering training programs to Egyptian judges and prosecutors. The judicial curriculum includes diverse topics such as judicial ethics, mediation, international treaties and intellectual property. The prosecutor curriculum includes topics such as use of forensic investigation, human trafficking, interviewing witnesses, domestic violence cases, and oral advocacy. These programs are currently expected to last for approximately three years and one year, respectively.
Through the IAT TOT program I trained approximately 50 Egyptian judges and, preliminarily, 17 prosecutors. Additional training is currently planned for fall 2016.
Despite revolution, violence, and then only mixed national stability, the ROLI Egypt office continued to design and deliver innovative legal education and training programs that impacted thousands of Egyptian legal professionals. Through institutionalization efforts such as the IAT TOT program, the seeds planted will bear fruit for generations of Egyptian judges, prosecutors, law professors, lawyers, and law students to come.
