20 parliamentary staff from the legal, committee and research divisions of the parliament participated in a 5-day Legislative Drafting Seminar on 17-21 May 2021, as part of the INTER PARES Partnership with the Parliament of The Gambia.
"I like the deliberations on how bills especially private member's bill are treated elsewhere and I hope to apply some of those good practices in my case where necessary."
- A participant in the Seminar
The seminar was designed to familiarise experts and staff from the Parliament of the Gambia with basic concepts related to effective law-making and motivate them to reflect on how these can be applied in their context.
The 1st part of the (daily) session exposed participants to specific concepts and addressed their questions, and was led by Dr Maria Mousmouti, internationally prominent expert on legislative drafting. Dr Mousmouti is also teacher and scholar at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, UK and Executive Director, Centre for European Constitutional Law, Greece.
The practitioners’ session (2nd part of the daily session) built on the first part of the daily sessions through examples of parliamentary practice from the parliaments of the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland and the Slovak Republic. The Irish Houses of the Oireachtas is the main EU Member State Partner of the National Assembly of The Gambia in providing support to the development of its legal department and with regards to parliamentary management strengthening.
Participants also followed the e-learning course on Legislative Drafting at their own time during the course week and took part in three intensive group work and practical exercise sessions .
This hybrid seminar (with online and on-site participation) covered the following topics:
- The challenge of good legislation and the role of Parliaments
- Principles and tools for designing effective laws
- Parliaments and ex ante scrutiny of legislation
- Parliaments and ex-post scrutiny of legislation
Delegated legislation and amendments The INTER PARES Partnership with the National Assembly of The Gambia continues its programming and activities remotely at this time and we will update our partnership page as we progress in the next few months.