The Institute for Legal Support and Technical Assistance (ILSTA) of Luxembourg is extending its support for improvements in the Lao legal sector, including better training for public prosecutors.
ILSTA is a Luxembourg institute focusing on capacity building in the legal sector and works as a partner organisation for Luxembourg’s development cooperation arm.
A signing ceremony to conclude the cooperation agreement between the Office of the Supreme People’s Prosecutor of the Lao PDR (OSPP) and the Institute for Legal Support and Technical Assistance of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (ILSTA) took place in Vientiane on Monday morning.
The agreement was signed by the Director of the Planning and Foreign Cooperation Division under the OSPP, Ms Bounthai Pankeo, and the Institute for Legal Support and Technical Assistance’s Mr. Richard Philippart. The ceremony was also attended by the Deputy Supreme People’s Prosecutor of the Lao PDR, Mr. Saysana Khodphouthone, and Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of Luxembourg, Mr. Claude Jengten.
The cooperation project will run from 2016 to 2020, with a focus on providing training and upgrading legal experience among prosecutors and other involved legal sectors in Laos.
Among the areas of focus will be criminal law, human trafficking, cooperation in justice, drug suppression, corruption, child protection and other legal fields.
“The Lao government has agreed to cooperate towards the development of our human resources from now until 2020. This involves many important activities, especially upgrading the legal experience of Lao prosecutors,” Mr. Saysana said.
Meanwhile Mr. Jengten said he was delighted to commit ILSTA’s support to OSPP through professional training and capacity building for Lao prosecutors throughout the country. “It is the policy of ILSTA to respond directly, in partnership with national authorities, to the needs of training and capacity building in the governance sector.”
“ILSTA is proud, therefore, to support OSPP in its work and in its commitment to achieve the Lao government’s goal of becoming a state governed by the rule of law. To achieve this goal we need to ensure that human resource development will meet regional and international standards,” he said.
“The signing today commits us to work together more closely to pursue and achieve these common goals. In fact, as most of you are aware, this work has already started. In June this year, we opened our first English-for- law training programme, which gave more than 50 staff from OSPP the opportunity to improve their English language capacity in their field of work.”
“The English-for-law curriculum has been specifically developed for the legal sector and is benchmarked to international standards,” Mr. Jengten said.
“The professional training will continue over the coming five years in the first phase and will enable law professionals from OSPP to better address existing and new challenges and represent their organisation within ASEAN and internationally.”
Source: Vientiane Times
