Developing & Maintaining a Constitutional Law Portal
Introduction:
Employing all three powers (legislation, oversight, and accountability), the Legislative Authority has long played a pivotal role in the Palestinian legal and constitutional apparatus. However, a major setback has been caused by the internal Palestinian political divide, resulting in institutional and individual dysfunctions across public institutions. Besides a pressing need for rehabilitation and training, institutional frameworks should now be rebuilt. A public debate will also be launched to address past and current key challenges to operations of public authorities in Palestine.
To step up participation in this discussion and submit conclusions to relevant policy- and decision-makers, public debate will not be restricted to open forums or indoor workshops. To this avail, the Institute of Law (IoL) has worked towards creating mechanisms to ensure an enhanced public participation in public and legislative decision- and policy-making processes. The IoL envisaged mechanisms are designed to promote community participation in policies relating to specialised legal themes of public interest. To this end, the IoL will construct an online legal portal, with a particular focus on constitutional aspects and functions of all the three powers. In the first year of its activity, the legal portal will concentrate on and provide conceptual links across functions of the Legislative Authority. Through the portal, a legal mobilisation will be in place with a view to address target topics. Informed research, policy papers, and position papers will be compiled on current and new legal themes within the Palestinian legal system. Deficient legal aspects of this system will also be explored.
Overall objective:
As an addition to the existing Al-Muqtafi databases, the IoL is planning to build a web-based interactive legal resource portal that will enhance the delivery of legal services. The overall objective of the portal is based on the notion of public participation. By combining three compartments: legal knowledge, research and ICT tools, the IoL team will provide reliable information about the Palestinian political and legal system and at the same time have the scope to obtain necessary feedback on these issues
Specific objectives:
- To engage the beneficiaries in the decision-making process by providing them with the necessary tools and platform to discuss, analyse and provide feedback about the Palestinian political and constitutional issues using the appropriate ICT tools.
- To raise the capacity of the justice sector in providing legal services using cutting edge technologies
Status of the project:
Ongoing
Donor:
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS)
Team:
- Mahmoud Alawneh – Director
- Razan Barghouti- Researcher
- Ala Hamad- Researcher
- Ahmad Hamo
- Abed Hamarsheh
- Design and Development of the Portal