Volume 16, Issue 1

As an objective in international legal cooperation, interventions with the aim to enhance access to justice are a relatively new phenomenon that has famously been described as the ‘legal empowerment alternative’ which goes ‘beyond the rule of law orthodoxy’. Generally speaking, while traditional approaches primarily aim at promoting the rule of law ‘top–down’ by strengthening state structures and capacities, access to justice projects take a ‘bottom–up’ approach focusing on the empowerment of ‘users’ of justice systems. The overarching theory of change behind this approach is that empowered citizens are better able to participate in decision-making processes at the grassroots level, helping build greater trust and confidence in the justice system and public institutions, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected situations. Focusing on the provision of legal aid services, this article outlines the international normative framework, depicts the various practical approaches, and reflects some findings resulting from a recent evaluation commissioned by the German Federal Foreign Office on its engagement in enhancing access to justice, drawing from examples in Palestine, Ukraine, and Pakistan.

This article examines the enforcement process of the international rule of law benchmarks by the Government of Kosovo through their internalization into domestic legislation. Particular attention is paid to the legal benchmarks established in the Rule of Law Checklist adopted by the Venice Commission, which, among others, provides guidelines on the extent of delegation of the legislative powers from parliament to the government. More specifically, this article presents a legal analysis of legal measures taken by the Government of Kosovo to enforce legal benchmarks of the Rule of Law Checklist of the Venice Commission into domestic legislation. This has been done through the evaluation of compliance with its sub-legal acts with specific laws and abrogation of sub-legal acts that lacked specific legal authorization, and therefore did not comply with rule of law benchmarks. Overall, this article seeks to demonstrate the distinct practical value of the rule of law elements in the development processes, given the indispensable role of stable and predictable legal processes in the functioning of institutions.

Qianhai, an innovation park in Shenzhen, seeks to become a global centre of innovation. The lessons that the Qianhai’s law teach us could apply to other special economic and innovation zones worldwide. Yet, problems with its legal design plague the US$4.5 billion project. Some of these include weak and abstract rulemaking as well as a lack of objectives and devolved authorities. Fixing the existing law governing the Qianhai region will require a Hong Kong-Shenzhen Agreement (giving Hong Kong a greater stake and say in the region), privatizing the Qianhai Authority, revising Hong Kong law to allow for easier and more profitable university spin-outs, retargeting the subsidies used in the region, and fixing the innovation agencies in the region (most notably Hong Kong’s).

‘Small states’ is a term of art with no fixed or official definition. It usually refers to countries that are small in land mass and/or population size. There are vast differences, however, among small states. Small Island Developing States (SIDSs) differ in many respects from more affluent small states; a common policy objective among the majority of small states (both developed and developing) is pursuing strategies to capture the economic growth and benefits of the digital economy. This article examines how small states can set frameworks for establishing digital infrastructure, the so-called ‘first pillar’ of the digital economy. Robust and inexpensive information and communications technology (ICT) is the sine qua non of the digital economy. Funding, ownership, control and competition with regard to digital infrastructure are common problems across all small states. This article considers the manner in which three small states approach the first pillar: the Kingdom of Tonga, a SIDS with a lower middle-income level; the Republic of the Seychelles, a SIDS with middle to high-income island nation and the State of Qatar, a high-income small state. For SIDS, we find that majority government ownership of ICT infrastructure is the critical success factor.

In 2018, the African Union adopted the Agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) with the aim of creating a common market for goods and services that would serve over 1.3 billion people in Africa. This is a paradigm shift towards a deeper continental integration in Africa whereby AfCFTA would be one of the biggest multilateral trading areas in the world. Although AfCFTA pursues sustainable development goals that embed reducing carbon dioxide emissions in line with international legal instruments on sustainability which applies to Member States of the WTO too, the legal provisions of AfCFTA and WTO that link trade and CET appear rather weak. This article provides a comparative analysis of AfCFTA and WTO legal frameworks with a focus on relationships, challenges and opportunities that incentivise clean energy transition (CET) as part of their sustainability agenda. The article contributes to the discourse on the interplay between regional trade and global trade laws in relation to climate change and sustainable development. As no previous study has compared the legal dynamics of the WTO and AfCFTA in relation to CET, the article provides a novel contribution to the efforts of unlocking the development potential of AfCFTA while enhancing global and regional multilateral trading systems.

Regulatory processes and debates are often informed by competition assessments issued by antitrust agencies, who advocate against potentially anticompetitive governmental regulations. While these opinions are usually not binding for regulators, the participation of antitrust agencies may have significant influence over the outcome of regulatory processes. This article examines whether antitrust agencies use their competition assessments to link regulation and development. The research addresses two research questions: first, do antitrust agencies consider development, directly or indirectly, as a guiding criterion in their competition assessments of regulatory projects? And second, what does development mean for these agencies in the context of competition assessments? A case study approach was used to answer the research questions, analyzing the cases of three countries of Latin America: Argentina, Colombia, and El Salvador. Based on the examination of over 300 competition assessments published by the antitrust agencies and on the semi-structured interviews of antitrust agencies’ former and current officials, we report four main findings: (i) the studied agencies frequently used the term “development” in their competition assessments to explain the policy context, the objectives of the regulatory proposals, and the potential benefits of competitive markets.; (ii) the meaning of “development” that prevailed among the three cases studies corresponds to a narrow understanding of “economic development” (e.g. a synonym of economic growth); (iii) the case of Colombia stands out because some of the competition assessments explicitly recognize the importance of broader conceptions of development, including sustainability; and, (iv) competition advocacy was used by the studied agencies to link regulation and development through their reports and recommendations on regulatory projects.

This article examines the Nusantara capital city project and its sociological impact on individuals and groups’ rights in the East Kalimantan regions of Penajam Paser Utara (PPU) and Kutai Kartanegara. The Nusantara Act was enacted to legalize the building of this mega-project and was finalized within a period of only 43 days. Thus, the legitimation of the Act is contentious. It is predicted that there will be widespread political, cultural, environmental and economic effects that will be likely to affect society in general and marginalized groups in particular. It raises two important questions, “what are the public rights that could potentially be breached by the Nusantara development project?” and “Is it possible to identify the influence of national and local elites on the process of promoting and legitimizing the Nusantara Act?” This article describes the concept of Nusantara as stipulated in the Act, which is linked to human rights values that are specifically related to the right to development. Based on the mentioned framework, this article finds evidence of autocratic practices in terms of the government’s efforts to acquire land for the project. It has been found that these dictatorial practices have been exacerbated by ‘cooperation’ with extractive industries and local elites. As a result, indigenous groups and the local communities in the area have suffered a loss of autonomy and land rights due to lack of legal protection within the Act.

The IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, intervened to recommend strongly that Laos adopt a system of computerized registration of secured transactions for movable assets into a new Civil Code. Central to the IFC’s preference for its digital system was the assertion that it would immediately raise Laos’ ranking in the Doing Business indicator prepared by the World Bank Group. A higher ranking would, in turn, significantly increase the amount of inward foreign investment in Laos. This article examines the issues raised by the IFC’s involvement in two categories. The first part focuses on concerns about the substance of the IFC’s interventions, namely the fact that the IFC paid little attention to Lao legal tradition, implementation, and social reality. The second part focuses on the reform process and the fact that the IFC placed undue pressure on the government to adopt its favored approach.