Curriculum Details
Policy Teams
These peer-to-peer sessions form the core of the Workshop experience and provide an opportunity for brainstorming together in new ways about pressing policy challenges. Each participant will bring a recent policy experience to the group for discussion. Participants will be mentored by renowned faculty members selected by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School who will facilitate thematic discussions and encourage interactive learning by drawing from participants’ first-hand experiences. This small-group format allows participants to engage on a one-on-one basis with their peers and specialist faculty members, as well as to share ideas and receive feedback on their work. Participants will be assigned to a group and paired with a partner.
Team Presentation
Presenting a policy initiative is a crucial professional skill, whether one is addressing a senior colleague, a minister, a group of stakeholders or a public setting. Each participant will strengthen this skill by giving a short presentation of a policy issue to their Workshop team.
Plenary Sessions
The plenary sessions of the Workshop will feature presentations, lectures or panel discussions by accomplished experts from various fields who will provide participants with insight into the policy spheres at various levels and the underlying concepts of the rule of law. They will also serve as an overview of the most effective thinking about the rule of law as a foundation for making informed political choices and building sustainable policy.
TIJ-IGLP Workshop Streams
Interactive mini-courses are offered by the IGLP faculty to review current scholarly developments and engage in case-based learning while engaging with global TIJ-IGLP Workshop participants. Each participant will choose the following 14 streams based on their interests and preferences.
In this Stream, we will look at the evolution of the corporation as an institution and explore some of its complex contributions to the organization and governance of social, economic and political life across the globe from the 16th century to the present. We will explore the corporation as a governance institution in contemporary global ordering, with a particular focus on the relations between global corporate structures and the local political, economic and social arrangements in small and medium sized nations in the developing world.
Effective criminal justice reform thinking and implementation requires deep appreciation of national contextual realities as well as meaningful adaptation of what has proven to work well across national boundaries. In this stream we will develop an analytical framework to examine reform projects from multiple lenses: historical, sociological, institutional, legal, geographical and knowledge/data focused. We will evaluate reform as not only as a technocratic domain but equally as a political phenomenon and strategy. Informed by select international literature, our collaborative learning method will emphasize vital actual experiential insights from our diverse faculty as well as seasoned participants.
Much of the discussion surrounding China’s One-Belt-One-Road program (OBOR) has focused on China’s objectives, whether it will attain those objectives, and problems that have arisen in specific participating countries. This stream will assume that OBOR will continue, and will ignore how, or whether, OBOR benefits China. We will focus instead on identifying conditions that might allow participating countries to benefit from OBOR, based on their specific circumstances and what we have observed so far about how OBOR functions. Participants will gain an overall picture of OBOR to date, and will share experiences that their own countries may have had. We will then engage in practical exercises designed to identify conditions under which recipient countries can ensure that OBOR works to their benefit.
This stream will explore the forces which structure the global regulatory terrain. We will consider the tension between global, regional or bilateral trade regimes and the policy space for national regulation; as well as the vastly unequal power of different national regulators, all of whom affect economic life beyond their borders in ways they have and have not anticipated. We aim to help participants map, navigate and alter the complex global regulatory terrain affecting their economic development objectives. We will compare the regulatory experience of nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America as they engage the global economy while pursuing national development objectives.
This stream will explore the relationship between violence and human rights law and advocacy. Human rights are often imagined as placing limits on violence. But they are also used to legitimate violence and to facilitate the exercise of violent power by individuals and states. We will explore this relationship by considering different forms of violence—spectacular, structural, slow, and revolutionary – and the role of human rights both in attending to and normalizing that violence. We will consider several case studies around issues such as the environment, trafficking, and religion, with a particular focus on the experiences of South and Southeast Asia.
This stream investigates legal reform strategies geared towards inducing economic growth and social welfare. We will explore the role of law in economic and social theories of development, the global and intellectual context that channels the range of development reform, and recent shifts in development theory and state practice. We will focus particular attention on choices: alternate legal arrangements which may open alternate trajectories for development with different patterns of inequality or social justice.
This Stream investigates policy and legal reform questions surrounding work in an interconnected, globalized economy. Considering a case study around forced labor, we will examine the context in which forced labor arises, the ways it is connected to the organization of work in transnational supply chains, and the many actors – from local to global – who are touched by or implicated in these practices. State and interstate policy is typically designed with an eye toward several, sometimes competing, objectives: promoting economic development as well as social welfare and the protection of workers’ rights. We will explore the multifaceted role of law in relation to these complex policy objectives in the context of labor, with a particular focus on law’s distributive effects on different actors. Looking at recent trends in legal advocacy and policy at both domestic and global levels, we will consider the range of tools available to address forced labor and other bad labor practices, with special attention to the ability of those tools to attend to structural inequalities.
The iconic “World Map” has conditioned the way international lawyers and national policy makers visualize the relationship between political authority and global space. Yet, that geopolitical picture is losing real-world traction. When the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945, New York was the only megacity on the earth with a population of over 10 million. By the year 2030, two-thirds of humanity and three-quarters of the globe’s corporations will be located in 40 megacities. International order is rematerializing beyond what modern cartography has long insisted is the map of geopolitical and geo-economic reality. This interdisciplinary stream seeks to conceptualise and visualise the unfolding materialism and inscription of international order today.
Poverty is becoming more complex than the absence of basic resources. Today it often means living at the margins of social organization; in a world of precarious employment, global inequality and the increasing securitization of daily life. This stream will explore the political economy and ethnographic realities of this “new poverty” and the polices, macro and micro, which affect it and try to deal with it. To sharpen our focus, we will begin by examining contemporary policies aimed at achieving the social inclusion of young criminals in Latin America (often poor young racialized males involved in, for example, drug trafficking and mobile phone theft) and the assumptions, mechanics and unexpected outcomes of such policies.
This stream will focus on the relationships among science, technology, and political power in contemporary policy making. The modern state’s capacity to produce and use scientific knowledge is significant both in the production and maintenance of political order and in shaping or justifying the choices faced by policy elites. We will focus on the role of scientific knowledge in policy-making oriented to environmental “sustainability.”
This stream will examine the role of private law – both nationally and transnationally – in structuring global political and economic affairs. We are particularly interested in the political choices embedded in private law regimes as they affect inequality and opportunities for development. We will also consider the relationship between formal or official entitlement schemes and the unofficial and often informal world of customary law and social norms for the economic life of both the global poor and the global elite.
The legal terrain for trade has undergone a series of reorientations over the last decades, from multilateral to bilateral, to regional – and now to a complex and variegated set of overlapping regimes. We will consider the political – and economic – stakes involved for nations with various perspectives and economic strategies as they engage the regime. Our aim is to help clarify the choices embedded in current regions and options for their productive contestation and change.
The institutional and doctrinal arrangements we have called “international law” for a century or more seem increasingly irrelevant to global economic and political life. Yet law – legal arguments, legal professionals, legal institutions, rules and practices – are everywhere in today’s globalized world. This stream will explore the rise and fall of a specifically “international” law, focused on the specific institutions of the UN system. What were its promises, its consequences, its dark sides? And what can be its future?
This stream will explore the ways in which governance is performed in contemporary policy work. We will focus on the role of law in governance as a site of choice rather than a ready-made solution to significant policy challenges. The limits of law, the unintended consequences of law and the importance of legal arrangements which may be difficult to perceive – private, informal, foreign – will all be considered. We will focus on the understanding what constitutions can and cannot do against corruption.
TIJ-IGLP Problems Lab
This unique hands-on learning experience will focus on how innovation, technology and law could become driving forces behind sustainable development. Problem Labs will provide a constructive space for brainstorming on how to tackle regional socio-political and economic challenges with “Design Thinking” methodology. In small groups, participants will navigate through the complexity of public policy processes by drawing insights from experts and case studies to formulate more effective human-centric solutions. This non-linear problem-solving exercise will allow participants to step outside the box, thereby becoming more attuned to different needs of stakeholders and end-users in the policy sphere. Ultimately, participants will be selected to “pitch” their solutions at the International Forum.
Problem Labs will be incorporated into the 2020 TIJ-IGLP Workshops’ curriculum design with three key underlying goals:
- To provide a space for constructive dialogue on how to approach and think critically about complex socio-political and economic issues, and how they impede the promotion of the rule of law and sustainable development in the region; and
- To introduce a creative problem-solving tool that allows emerging leaders to draw insights from regional case studies/experiences and step outside the box to create practical human-centric solutions; and
- To shift from present-day policy making mindset to longer-term strategic foresight framework in order to prepare for and embrace uncertainties, ambiguities and alternative futures, as well as derive timely, sustainable and effective solutions.
Each Problem Lab seeks to illustrate the inter-workings of the various stages and aspects of public policy challenges, ranging from the implementation of a project to coordination between institutions/stakeholders and the design of a national reform agenda. This component aims to confront participants with real-life situation drawn from case studies, thereby allowing participants to collaborate while mobilizing skillsets and knowledge from different disciplines to come up with viable solutions.
Frameworks : Strategic Foresight and Design Thinking
This year’s Problem Labs aim to answer the following essential questions:
- How do we proactively manage the unforeseen challenges of the future that could arise from the dynamics of change in economic, political, social, cultural and technological developments?
- How do we strategically identify the right insights today in order to inform decision-making to prepare our societies for the volatile, uncertain and ambiguous future?
- How do we create lasting policy solutions that truly meet the needs of concerned population(s) at hand?
Ever more interdependencies and complex interactions between the economic, environmental, technological, or socio-political dimensions of society cloud the predictability of future events. This serves to intensify the uncertainty of the root causes, drivers and consequences of human action. Most of tomorrow’s opportunities and threats remain unknown, and it is often unclear what skills, resources, institutions, and policies are required to appropriately cope with them. As such, policymakers are increasingly forced to assess their landscapes in a more systematic and strategic manner. They must think ahead in order to reduce “surprises,” increase the room for maneuver, and improve the overall resiliency and sustainability of policy solutions to withstand the test of time.
Against this backdrop, Problem Labs intend to equip participants with a systematic framework of conceptualizing driving forces of change before developing policies and long-term roadmaps. It draws on two innovative approaches: Strategic Foresight and Design Thinking. While Strategic Foresight focuses on extended time horizons, giving policymakers a broader understanding of how different futures might possibly look like. Design Thinking emphasizes the user’s perspective, allowing policymakers to become more attuned its nuances and better tailor solutions to satisfy the needs of targeted population. This combination will offer participants a distinct lens to tackle emerging challenges in a more structured, strategic and proactive manner.
Selected Topics for the TIJ-IGLP Workshop
1. Access to Justice
- Access to justice is a fundamental human right. An estimated four billion people around the world live outside the protection of the law, mostly because they are poor or marginalized within their societies.
- Access to information is a powerful tool that holds great potential in promoting the rule of law and the attainment of other fundamental human rights. ICT and technology are critical tools to enhance access to the law, and ultimately access to justice, and provide an opportunity to reach millions of people using fast and often more economical technology.
- Legal empowerment—the ability of people to understand and use the law for themselves—enables even those who are most vulnerable and marginalized to achieve justice, meet their basic needs, hold authorities to account, protect their interests and participate in economic activities in an inclusive manner.
2. Gender-based Violence
- According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 3 women around the world have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. Gender-based violence (GBV) remains to be prevalent in the region, thereby making it one of the deadliest forms of violence, which kills more people than armed conflict. Yet, it is dramatically overlooked by governments and policymakers.
- Even though the number indicating violence against women is already high, the tendency is that the number is underestimated. Women and girls who experience GBV may choose not to report to the police due to fear of stigmatization and due to the existing hindrance that may deter their access to formal justice system such as lack of financial resources or lack of the officer’s understanding and sensitivity towards victims of such violence.
- The figures of violence against women do not only reflect how rampant it is but also the health effects encompassing physical, psychological, and sexual wellbeing of women who are victims of intimate partner violence.
3. Social Reintegration
- Criminal recidivism rate continues to be very high in the region. Many offenders, even after serving repeated prison sentences, fail to desist form crime and successfully reintegrate into the community. In this sense, imprisonment is incapable of addressing the offenders’ social reintegration issues. Even when effective prison programs have helped offenders to achieve progress during detention, that progress is often lost because of lack of follow-up supervision and assistance after release.
- On the other hand, prisoners often face discrimination and social stigma after their release, thereby limiting their educational and employment opportunities, as well as their ability to live decent lives.
- In order to lower recidivism rate and social/economic costs, it is essential for policymakers to focus on the design and implementation of a holistic reintegration and rehabilitation approach that involves all stakeholders—be it state authorities, communities, families and friends.
4. Anti-corruption
- Poor governance and corruption are a major bottleneck for sustainable development in the region. Corruption is one of the key drivers of the growing inequality, persistent poverty and the exclusion of the most vulnerable from the benefits of economic growth.
- Government transparency not only generates accountability, but also leads to reduction in corruption, bribery and other malfeasance. It allows for the dissemination of information, and helps citizens form meaningful and informed policy decisions. Greater public participation is crucial for a well-functioning and efficient democracy in that it is positively correlated with government transparency.
- As a part of anti-corruption efforts, it is essential to promote open government and empower grassroots communities to increase transparency and accountability at the local level and improve service delivery.
TIJ International Forum
Participants will receive the opportunity during a preparatory breakout session to derive and synthesize their discussions and findings to identify key themes with regards to the possible approaches in mainstreaming the rule of law into practical policy initiatives. Selected participants from each Problem Labs will be invited to present their outcomes during the “Solutions Pitch for Regional Challenges” at the TIJ International Forum, which concludes the Workshop on 12 June 2020.
Key topics covered in these presentations include the importance of the rule of law in enhancing the operational environmental across all sectors and how it can be incorporated to guide business transactions and decision-making at all levels. The presentations will feature policy recommendations covering innovative solutions for the practical application of the rule of law. Representatives will be encouraged to select a mode of presentation they think is the most suitable for the content they wish to present.