Strengthening the rule of law through legal university education

Context

In 2009, Lao PDR adopted a Legal Sector Master Plan (LSMP) that establishes the framework to develop effective institutions in the entire legal sector as the foundation for the Rule of Law.

Furthermore, the Lao PDR’s 8th National Socio-Economic Development Plan (NSEDP) 2016–2020 aims to facilitate the graduation from Least Developed Country status by 2020 and to consolidate regional and international integration in the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community. Among the cross-cutting issues addressed by the NSEDP is the enhancement of the effectiveness of the public governance and administration. These goals highlight the need to develop a law system that is complete, harmonised, clear, reliable and accessible to everybody.

Positive trends have been triggered through the previous Luxembourg-funded project, Strengthening the Rule of Law through Legal University Education, in order to strengthen the higher education in the legal sector. However, complying with ASEAN standards and updating the curricula towards the evolution of the legal framework requires a constant effort for improving further the efficiency of the faculties.

Access to justice also needs to be further strengthened. As stated in the LSMP, there are “insufficient conditions to allow people access to justice by themselves or through lawyers or other guardians in all levels of the court proceedings and in all cases to secure the rights in obtaining legal assistance, especially for the poor and people having less opportunity”.

Specific objectives

Based on these challenges, the current project has two specific objectives:

• the reinforcement of the enabling environment for access to justice, which should lead to strengthened access to justice;
• the continuation of the strengthening of legal education and training, which should lead to improved legal higher education and strengthened institutional capacity.

Project beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries of the project are legal practitioners and civil servants active in the legal sector, civil servants of the Ministry of Justice, and academic staff, notably of the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Vientiane and the Faculty of Law and Administration of Champasak.