Parliamentary, government, civil society experts explore how to make good laws at ODIHR round table in Warsaw

Good practices in lawmaking, including public consultation and a balanced relationship between legislative and executive bodies, were the focus of a roundtable discussion hosted by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on 19 and 20 June 2017 in Warsaw.

The event brought together 24 experts from parliaments, governments and civil society organizations from a number of OSCE participating States in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

“In many countries, lawmaking processes suffer from a lack of transparency and public involvement, a lack of proper policymaking and planning, and from an unbalanced relationship between parliament and the executive,” said Alice Thomas, Chief of the ODIHR Legislative Support Unit. “However, we have also seen many parliaments, governments and civil society organizations work together to develop successful responses to these challenges and ODIHR hopes to capture and disseminate these emerging good practices.”

The participants were professionals who are routinely involved in the technical side of lawmaking in their countries, including drafting, reviewing draft legislation and consulting with the public.

“The discussions at this event showed that many OSCE countries grapple with similar problems in the lawmaking process,” said Nikoloz Samkharadze, Chief of Staff of the Speaker's Office at the Georgian Parliament. “I particularly appreciated the opportunity to discuss how the capacity of parliaments to develop and scrutinize policies and legislation could and should be improved. I also shared some positive examples of public participation that had emerged from Georgia’s recent constitutional reform process.”

Problems with individual laws, such as poor implementation or non-compliance with human rights standards, can often be traced back to systemic shortcomings in how legislation is made. To help OSCE participating States create better laws through a better legislative process, ODIHR has conducted complex assessments of lawmaking processes in most of the countries represented at the event, including Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova. Recommendations and good practice examples arising from the event will inform ODIHR’s future activities in strengthening democratic lawmaking.