Oct102024
Lectures & Panels International Actors and Rule of Law Reform in the Global South: Lessons from Ethiopia
Join us for a panel discussion, featuring Abduletif Kedir Idris, Abadir Ibrahim, and Ida Ordor to explore the role of international actors in rule of law reform in the global south.
Event Overview
Can international actors play a meaningful role in ensuring human rights or in building a stable constitutional democracy?
In many ways, the two speakers, Abduletif Kedir Idris and Abadir M. Ibrahim, spent their careers answering this question in the affirmative in their human rights advocacy in Ethiopia. After their country embarked on what many saw as a transition to democracy in 2018, they joined a group of about 200 Ethiopians, mostly lawyers and legal academics who formed the Legal and Justice Affairs Advisory Council, to take on the task of overhauling the entire legal system. In their presentation, based on a book manuscript on the reform process, they will contend that while international actors can play a determinative role, the mechanism through which they do so is only tangentially connected with how well democracy, human rights, or rule of law, projects are designed. Emphasizing the need to avoid “mixing spices without a recipe,” they will discuss some generalizable lessons from Ethiopia.
The respondent, Ada Ordor is a leading expert and educator in the field of law and development and has studied and written on the application of this field in Africa and in connection with women’s rights and the nonprofit sector.
The discussion will be moderated by Salma Waheedi, Lecturer on Law and Executive Director of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World.
Lunch will be provided.
This event is sponsored by the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the Harvard African Law Association, the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and HLS Advocates for Human Rights.