A legal system is by definition a network of norms that together define rights and obligations of citizens, institutions and companies, providing the normative environment in which they can cooperate. In Africa, legal systems are growing more and more complex while they are continuously evolving to adapt to the ever-changing political, social and economic conditions.

Under these conditions, ensuring the quality of legislation and providing widespread access to updated legal information requires efficient legal information management. In particular, an efficient management of legal sources can highly contribute to timely and fair administration of justice, to inform citizens of their rights and duties, and to increase the accountability of public institutions in the delivery of public services. Thus, legal information management is at the basis of the rule of law and good democratic governance, and provides the basis for accountability and effective public management of resources. It is also critical for the promotion of human rights (civil, social, and political liberties, health, education, and security) and the support of anti-corruption strategies.

At the International Conference “African Legal Resources: Challenges and Opportunities of Legislative Informatics” (21-22 March 2007) organised by the UNDESA “Africa i-Parliament Action Plan” in collaboration with the National Assembly of Nigeria, the first draft of “Practical Drafting Recommendations for Africa” were presented ^"1 . The Final Declaration, adopted by the more than 20 delegations, “Invites African Parliaments to contribute to the elaboration of legislative drafting guidelines for Africa to promote better legislation and foster the harmonisation of legislation at continental level, which is a strategic objective of the Pan African Parliament”.

Delegations from the Pan African Parliament and the Parliaments of Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe. Officials from the SADC Parliamentary Forum, the European Parliament, the UK Parliament, the United States National Conference of State Legislatures, and representatives of the United Nations and of African and European universities also attended the Conference. [back]

The Africa Union mission to promote the economic and social integration, the Pan African Parliament (PAP) goal to foster harmonisation of legislation in Africa and the need to strengthen the democratic institutions and civil society require the support of effective tools for legal information management across Africa.

Legal systems, and in particular legislation, are getting more and more complex and each national Parliament has to coordinate and adopt legal texts that emanate from regional legislative assemblies (and quite soon from PAP), since its statute foresees legislative powers from the second term.

As a result legislative drafters have to deal with ever intricate bodies of law and the process of drafting consistent and coherent legislation is getting more complicated, as it is the task of the judiciary to uphold and apply valid law.

The duty to respect the law, and uphold the rule of law, has to be accompanied by the moral obligation to make the law clear, unambiguous and understandable to the citizens and the enterprises. If it is true that ignorance of the law is no excuse, it follows that obscure, ambiguous, or unnecessarily complex legislation should also be inexcusable.

Nowadays almost all documents are created in electronic form, and they are increasingly stored in electronic media. This brings new challenges and opportunities to the field of legislative drafting. Outdated skills, lack of standards for creating, organizing, using, retrieving and disposing of digital legal records can lead to serious problems and waste the unique opportunities brought about by information and communication technologies (ICTs).

For ICTs to contribute fully to the rule of law and to African integration, there is need to adopt common guidelines on the language and structure of legal documents. Compliance with such guidelines will facilitate not only cross-referencing and data retrieval, but also the implementation of shared standards for the markup of legal information, covering the whole life-cycle of legal documents. Thus, here is need to specifically agree on uniform drafting guidelines dealing with format and style, but also with the structural elements of legislation, to ensure that such elements can automatically be identified and processed by software applications.

The Recommendations aim to improve the quality of the law, to simplify the regulatory framework by harmonising the legal drafting best practices while respecting the peculiarities of the different traditions. Common guidelines don't at all mean homogenisation of the different legislation traditions or law-making decision processes. On the contrary, common guidelines will allow to strengthen the richness of the African legal cultures by promoting a common methodologies, tools, best practices for enhancing the opportunities to compare legislations and promote harmonisation that  respects the plurality of traditions.

The draft version of the Recommendations are available at: Legislative Drafting Guidelines .  

Goals

The adoption of Common Drafting Recommendations is a strategic condition to enable the utilisation of the potential of ICTs in disseminating information and in granting access without the barriers of time or space.

Developing Africa-wide shared standards for legal drafting will not only contribute the accessibility and understandability of laws in Africa, and facilitate integration and harmonisation of legislation in the African context, but will also allow the relevant role-players to exploit the immense potential of ICTs in the legal domain.

Objectives

Following the indications that emerged from the Conference in Abuja, the Workshop is aimed at finalising the African Drafting Recommendations by bringing together the best experts in legislative drafting from the three main African legislative traditions (English, French and Portuguese) in the spirit or safeguarding the differences while promoting harmonisation. These experts will be supported by specialists from European Parliaments and universities to discuss in detail the draft guidelines presented in Abuja and to make final recommendations.

The two-day workshop will be followed by a one-day meeting of the Editorial Board to finalise the African Drafting Recommendations (based on the recommendations of the Workshop). The Recommendations will then be made available online for a further revision by the participants of the Workshop before being finalised and delivered to the Pan African Parliament for a follow-up and possible adoption.

Another objective of the Workshop is to set up a permanent working group that will not only support the dissemination of the Recommendations and the related training activities, but also to manage the evolution of the Recommendations and develop new guidelines for related domains.

• ‎The “Practical Drafting Recommendations for Africa” is to be finalised. The Recommendations will cover the different legislative traditions and will define a set of principles and best practices in drafting, structuring, naming and referencing of legislation. The Recommendations are also aimed at promoting a convergence of practices that can facilitate and support the harmonisation efforts of the African Union and Pan African Parliament, as well as the Africa-integration agenda.
• A “Legislative Drafting Network of Excellence” is to be established to promote the development of training and expertise in the field of legislative drafting and related domains.

Under the auspices of the Pan African Parliament, the conference is jointly organised by “Africa i-Parliament” of the UNITED NATIONS Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in cooperation with the Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria (who will also be hosting the conference).

• The members of the International Organizing Committee are:
• Africa i-Parliament Action Plan – UNDESA
• Eastern African Legal Information Institute (EALII)
• European University Institute, Law Department, Fiesole, Italy (EUI)
• Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria (the Department of Public Law and the Centre for Human Rights)
• Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII)
• University of Bologna – Italy

Venue

The Legislative Drafting Workshop will be held on 10-11 December 2007 in Pretoria, South Africa, and it will be hosted by the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria on its Hatfield Campus.

Participants‎

The conference will be attended by invited expert drafters, legal academics, jurists and legal professionals from African legislative and judicial bodies, regional and ‎international organisations, as well as leading African and international academic and research institutions. Attendance to the workshop is by invitation only.

Language

‎The working language of the conference will be English.

Insurance - Liability

The conference organisers cannot be held liable for loss, injury or damage to any person or property or for any additional expenditure incurred due to changes, whatever the causes. Participants are advised to make their own arrangements for health and travel insurance.

Inquiries and requests for additional information regarding participation ‎should be addressed to:

Mr. Flavio Zeni
Chief Technical Adviser - Africa i-Parliament Action Plan
UNITED NATIONS Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
Nairobi, KENYA
Telephone : +254-20-2848 401/391
e-Mail: zeni@un.org.

Inquiries on substantive matters ‎should be addressed to: ‎

Professor CJ Botha
Department of Public Law
Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria - Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA
Telephone: +2712 420-2649 - Fax: +2712 420-2991
e-mail: cjbotha@up.ac.za

Professor Monica Palmirani
Associate Professor of Legal Informatics - Law Faculty
Alma Mater Studiorum Universita' di Bologna
C.I.R.S.F.I.D. - http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/
Tel. +39 051 277217 - Fax +39 051 260782
E-mail: palmirani@cirsfid.unibo.it

Professor Giovanni Sartor
Marie-Curie Professor of Legal informatics and Legal Theory
European University Institute, Law Department
San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), ITALY
Tel: +39-055-4685-528, Secretary: +39-055-4685-239, Fax: +39-055-4685-200
E-mail: giovanni.sartor@eui.eu
http://www.iue.it/LAW/People/Faculty/CVs/sartor.shtml