DEVELOPMENT LAW SERVICE
LEGAL OFFICE
Report of the
Auto-Evaluation of Programme 313
Legal Assistance to Member Nations
2000-2005
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
ROME, JANUARY 2006
List of charts and tables
Chart 1 – Geographical distribution of legal assistance projects, 2000-2005
Chart 2 – Legal assistance projects by subject matter, 2000-2005
Chart 3 – Rating LEGN guidance and supervision (results of international consultants’
questionnaires)
Chart 4 – Rating LEGN administrative support (results of international consultants’
questionnaires)
Chart 5 – Rating the contribution of national consultants (results of international consultants’
questionnaires)
Chart 6 – Rating the collaboration of counterparts (results of international consultants’
questionnaires)
Chart 7 – Rating the quality of reports (results of FAORs’ and national respondents’
questionnaires)
Chart 8 – Rating the usefulness of outputs (results of FAORs’ and national respondents’
questionnaires)
Chart 9 – Identifying whether there was any follow-up to the legal assistance provided (results
of FAORs’ and national respondents’ questionnaires)
Chart 10 – Rating how useful FAOLEX is (results of FAOLEX users’ questionnaires)
Chart 11 – Rating how user-friendly the search features are (results of FAOLEX users’
questionnaires)
Chart 12 – Identifying how often users find what they are looking for (results of FAOLEX
users’ questionnaires)
Chart 13 – Language coverage of legal papers and publications, 2000-2005
Chart 14 – Number of studies by subject matter, 2000-2005
Table I – Delivery of legal assistance project services, 2003-2005 (in $)
Table II – FAOLEX and ECOLEX costs, 2000-2005
Table III – FAOLEX staff costs in 2005 (in $)
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Table of contents
LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES ..................................................................................................................... 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................... 5
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS ....................................................................................................... 11
A.
C.
D.
E.
F.
1.
OVERALL ................................................................................................................................................. 11
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE .......................................................................................................................... 11
PUBLICATIONS ......................................................................................................................................... 12
FAOLEX ................................................................................................................................................ 12
INFORMATION .......................................................................................................................................... 12
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 13
1.1. METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................................................... 13
1.2. RESOURCES OF THE PROGRAMME ............................................................................................................... 14
1.3. PROGRAMME DESIGN.................................................................................................................................. 15
1.3.1. Law-making ....................................................................................................................................... 15
1.3.2. The role of FAO ................................................................................................................................. 16
1.4. RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS ........................................................................................................................... 18
2.
PROGRAMME ENTITY 313S1 (PROVISION OF TECHNICAL ADVICE) .................................... 19
2.1. DESIGN ....................................................................................................................................................... 19
2.1.1. Relation to objectives......................................................................................................................... 19
2.1.2. Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 20
2.1.3. Sources of funding ............................................................................................................................. 23
2.2. IMPLEMENTATION ...................................................................................................................................... 25
2.2.1. Human resources ............................................................................................................................... 27
2.2.2 Quality of output ................................................................................................................................. 34
2.2.3. Cost effectiveness ............................................................................................................................... 35
2.3. IMPACT....................................................................................................................................................... 36
2.3.1. Lack of follow-up ............................................................................................................................... 37
2.3.2. Acceptance of recommendations ....................................................................................................... 38
2.3.3. Suggestions for follow-up .................................................................................................................. 39
2.4. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................. 39
3.
PROGRAMME ENTITY 313P1 (COLLECTION AND DISSEMINATION OF LEGAL
INFORMATION)................................................................................................................................................ 39
3.1. FAOLEX ................................................................................................................................................... 40
3.1.1 Design ................................................................................................................................................. 40
3.1.2 Merger with ECOLEX ........................................................................................................................ 41
3.1.3 Implementation ................................................................................................................................... 41
3.2. PUBLICATIONS............................................................................................................................................ 44
3.2.1. Design ................................................................................................................................................ 44
3.2.2. Implementation .................................................................................................................................. 45
3.2.3. Recommendations .............................................................................................................................. 48
3.3. DATABASE-DRIVEN INFORMATION PRODUCTS ............................................................................................ 49
4.
PROGRAMME ENTITY 313A1 (SUPPORT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A REGULATORY
FRAMEWORK FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE) ................................................................................... 50
3
5.
CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................... 51
5.1. IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES ........................................................................................................................... 51
5.1.1. Cost-effectiveness .............................................................................................................................. 51
5.1.2. Use of short-term staff ....................................................................................................................... 52
5.1.3. Comparative advantage ..................................................................................................................... 53
5.1.4. Prioritization ..................................................................................................................................... 53
5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................................... 54
5.2.1. Actions that can be taken without significant financial cost .............................................................. 54
5.2.2. Structural changes between 313 and 124 .......................................................................................... 55
5.2.3. Adjustment of work in 313 ................................................................................................................. 55
ANNEX I .............................................................................................................................................................. 57
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS MADE BY PBEE IN THE 1999 EVALUATION OF TCP PROJECTS WITH
LEGISLATIVE COMPONENT AND STATUS OF THEIR IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................ 57
ANNEX II ............................................................................................................................................................ 59
LEGN PUBLICATIONS, 2000-2005 .................................................................................................................... 59
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Executive summary
1. The programme
Programme 313, Legal Assistance to Member Nations, includes three programme entities
focussing on technical advice, information and normative development. It essentially covers
the work of the Development Law Service (LEGN). The rest of the Legal Office falls under
Programme 124, Legal Services. However, there is a significant level of operational
interaction between the two programmes.
2. The evaluation
The auto-evaluation was conducted on the basis of a review of reports, questionnaires and
other documents, as well as interviews with legal and non-legal colleagues and partner
organizations. Questionnaires were sent to FAO Representatives, national counterparts, legal
consultants and website visitors.
3. Programme resources
The financial resources of the programme in 2005 were $1 940 000 including $320 000 in
income from projects. As compared to 2000, this represents a slight increase in dollar terms
but a decline in real terms, with a resulting reduction in professional staff from nine to seven
and of general service staff from five and a half to five. In part this has been compensated by
the use of APOs, of whom there were two in 2000 and five in 2005, and by an increase in the
use of non-staff personnel, in particular under author’s contracts.
The effect of resource constraints has been a distortion of professional staff utilization in
order to maximize salary reimbursement from projects, an understaffing of the legislative
database (FAOLEX) and an inability to provide small advisory services or to participate in
technical and professional meetings.
4. Programme entity 313S1 (Provision of Technical Advice)
a. Programme entity design
The justification behind the provision of technical advice on legal issues derives from the
value of well-crafted laws in implementing policy and from the power of poorly crafted laws
to cause harm. The Legal Office has developed a methodology for how to analyse needs
carefully, to involve official counterparts and stakeholders in the search for solutions and to
assist them in devising well-conceived and well-drafted legislative responses.
Funding for technical advice comes largely from TCP with occasional inputs from the World
Bank and other sources. The use of TCP has allowed technical advice to be maintained at a
consistent level of delivery. TCP limitations on the use of international consultants, on project
duration and on follow-up assistance have however created problems in delivering the most
effective advice.
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b. Implementation
Over the whole period 2000-2005, 251 active projects were identified, of which 25 percent
were in plants, the largest area, and 37 percent in Africa, the most active region. In addition,
new areas of advice, such as trade and biotechnology, have emerged.
Project output generally consists of reports and drafts of laws and regulations, and
occasionally international agreements and other texts. The main weakness in outputs is the
failure to include regulations in certain legislative projects. Frequently it is assumed that
governments will prepare regulations in time on their own, but much modern legislation
requires regulations of similar complexity and urgency to the basic legislation. Since it is
difficult to obtain approval of a follow-up TCP project for regulations, it is recommended that
the provision of regulations be routinely included in TCP legislative projects.
The quality of the output remains very high by all measures (review, interviews,
questionnaires). It is generally considered responsive to needs. The time frame for adoption of
legislation is too long to measure the actual rate of implementation of project
recommendations provided in the review period, but government satisfaction appears to be
very high. Ultimate impact is also not measurable through this evaluation, but past experience
suggests that acceptable recommendations will have a favourable impact in a good proportion
of cases and there is no indication that current projects will have a significantly different
outcome.
c. Project personnel issues
Given the nature of the work, the quality of the outputs is practically indistinguishable from
the quality of the project personnel, which includes FAO legal and non-legal officers, as well
as international and national consultants. The work of all except national consultants was
highly appreciated by colleagues, governments and FAO Representatives. The performance of
national consultants varied greatly.
Apart from performance, other specific problems were identified with respect to each
category of legal personnel. Legal officers have undertaken to provide more advisory and
supervisory services than they are capable of delivering. This arises partly from the need to
obtain salary reimbursement, but more significantly from the difficulty of obtaining TCP
approval for the use of international consultants. More missions are increasingly scheduled in
order to piece together useful outputs from a combination of national and other consultants
and staff. As a result, missions have sometimes been too short for proper consultation and
analysis, as well as creating a stressful schedule for the legal officers and leaving gaps in
home-office coverage. Short missions were in fact one of the few complaints concerning FAO
legal officers received from FAO Representatives and national authorities.
Consultants have been discouraged by FAO contractual policies, so that the availability of
specifically qualified, reliable consultants has now fallen below project needs. Remuneration
is not competitive, especially for TCDC consultants and more recently with the elimination of
international consultancy contracts, which were tax-exempt in a number of countries.
Consultants do, on the other hand, appreciate the supervision and support received from
LEGN, complaining only of administrative problems and of the curtailment of headquarters
briefings which used to be standard procedure.
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National consultants are included in almost all projects now, and their role is increasingly
important in the final project output. Unfortunately it has proven very difficult to influence
recruitment of national legal consultants, so they sometimes are not recruited in time in
relation to international personnel, or they are not always qualified or sometimes they are not
aware that they are working for FAO and not for their usual employer. This places the burden
of providing those consultants’ outputs on the international staff, whose inputs may be
programmed for an insufficient period to fill the gap. In practice it is almost impossible to
change a national consultant in mid-project.
Recommendations with respect to project personnel issues are to reduce drastically the
number of projects containing staff missions while increasing the average length of missions.
This implies either greater use of international consultants, if they can be approved, or
reducing the number of projects to those where a significant commitment of staff resources is
justified. International consultants should be briefed at headquarters more often than they are.
Efforts need to be made to ensure that both national and international consultants’
remuneration is competitive. Where national consultants are not recruited or do not perform,
project revisions to increase international inputs need to be requested as soon as the problem
appears.
d. Conclusion on technical advice
The technical advice of LEGN is unique in its range and quality and widely respected. It is
considered an essential part of FAO’s technical advice by the other divisions with which
LEGN works and by the member countries. With decreased resources and increased
bureaucratic burdens, the same delivery cannot be assured. Where the conditions for
providing appropriate legal advice do not exist, it will generally be better not to undertake a
project.
The consequence could be a failure to offer the full range of subject-matter, legal system and
linguistic expertise. This is regrettable, but it is recommended as preferable to sacrificing the
quality of services and the Organization’s reputation.
5. Programme entity 313P1 (Collection and Dissemination of Legal Information)
This programme entity has two major outputs, FAOLEX and publications.
a. FAOLEX
FAOLEX is an online database of food and agriculture legislation worldwide. It is in the
process of merging with ECOLEX in partnership with IUCN and UNEP.
In the period of evaluation, FAOLEX grew from 5 000 to 45 000 online texts, all of which
have been indexed and abstracted. Many other records are updated every year. All this has
been accomplished by a G-7 database manager supported by a P-2 legal officer (one-third
time) and a G-2 clerk (half time). Technical authors under PSA agreements perform most of
the selection, indexing, abstracting and entering of texts at a total cost ranging from $150 000
to $190 000 per year.
FAOLEX is highly appreciated by users, who report a good rate of success in finding what
they are looking for. They sometimes find the search cumbersome, but as several reported, it
7
is no worse than other FAO databases. The quality of the abstracts should be improved and
the search function should include a shortcut for users who already know what they are
seeking. The shortcut is due for installation in the near future. The abstracts will be difficult to
improve because they are frequently based on texts in difficult-to-translate languages.
Nonetheless it is recommended that priority be given to improving the existing ones.
A greater problem for FAOLEX in the long run is its limited staffing. The technical authors
are not staff members and cannot be given supervisory tasks. A full-time staff member is
required to carry out routine supervision and administration and to replace the manager in her
absence. It is recommended that the half-time database clerk be assigned full time to
FAOLEX.
The merger with ECOLEX has gone very slowly, in part because of incompatible computer
systems between FAO and IUCN, in part because of the lack of participation by UNEP.
IUCN has now agreed to adopt FAO’s software; it remains to be seen if this will speed up
data entry into the combined system and if UNEP will make a more substantial contribution.
If neither eventuates, FAOLEX may be stronger alone than as part of ECOLEX.
b. Publications
Publications are designed to disseminate information on food and agricultural law (e.g. forest
law in different regions), to analyse significant developments (e.g. intellectual property rights
in plant genetic resources) and to guide lawyers and development professionals concerned
with the review and reform of legislation (e.g. guidelines for the development of national food
laws). LEGN publications appear as legislative studies, which are printed and available
online, and as legal papers online, which are web-based only. In 2000-2005, 20 legislative
studies and 43 papers online prepared by LEGN staff and other contributors appeared, as well
as two other papers “of legal interest” by or with substantial contributions by LEGN officers.
According to interviews and questionnaires, publications are usually well regarded especially
for their subject matters and for how they draw on field experience, both of which are
practically unique to FAO. There are some problems with final editing which can be dealt
with through avoiding the rush to publish at the end of a biennium.
The evaluation did not succeed in determining the distribution of online or printed
publications although it seems clear from reader response that the availability of online
publications has greatly increased readership.
The evaluation identified a strong demand for guidelines and manuals for legislation. In light
of the impossibility of responsibly meeting all requests for technical advice, this suggests that
guidelines and manuals would be a cost-effective complement to technical advice.
c. Database-driven information products
Web-based publications or specialized databases are still at the beginning stages. During the
period under review they included water law and standards (with WHO), FISHLEX and
WATERLEX. They have turned out to be quite complex and labour-intensive, but as
contrasted with printed publications they are much more economical for material that must be
frequently revised.
8
6. Programme entity 313A1 (Support to the Development of a Regulatory Framework
for Food and Agriculture)
This entity has proved impossible to evaluate because so much of its output is already
included under publications and some of it can be viewed as technical advice.
Interdepartmental collaboration, typically but not exclusively through PAIAs, is a distinct area
of activities. The PAIAs have generally not performed except with extra-budgetary funds.
As noted above, it is recommended that greater effort be devoted to producing guidelines and
manuals, and this is the programme entity that should produce them. This role will become
more important as time goes by. LEGN will also be called upon to service governing bodies
of FAO agreements, especially where its technical experience is relevant, and this entity will
host that activity.
7. Conclusion and recommendations
The Development Law Service offers a unique and highly appreciated service in support of
food and agricultural legislation. It is one of the FAO programmes with the clearest
comparative advantage. It also is suffering one of the deepest reductions in its most important
resource, the staff. This is a loss that will cause long-term damage, forcing the neglect of
important areas and requiring years to repair even if resources should grow in the future.
The most urgent recommendation that emerges from the review is the maintenance of
financial resources at least at the level of the 2004-2005 biennium. There are no serious costcutting measures that can be identified. The staff is already stretched beyond the breaking
point – one legal officer has already transferred to avoid excessive travel – and the efficiency
of short, frequent missions is proving less than hoped. The supervision of APOs is suffering.
FAOLEX has insufficient staff in relation to non-staff collaborators. Any reduction will not
only exacerbate these situations, but it will also eliminate areas of competence.
There are some recommendations that can be carried out by LEGN and the Legal Office as a
whole. If the budget is significantly reduced, of course, implementing these recommendations
will be futile.
a. Structural changes between 313 and 124
The legal officers of LEGA have made extremely valuable contributions as technical advisors
in the field programme of LEGN. Equally, one of the LEGN officers has spent two-thirds of
her time on LEGA work and on the overall Legal Office budget management. Whereas the
technical advice provided by LEGA is reimbursed under normal procedures, the LEGA work
performed by LEGN is not. In the future, it may be that some of LEGA’s work with FAO
treaty bodies can be efficiently performed by LEGN officers with the appropriate technical
experience. For that to function well, the time spent on LEGA work by LEGN officers will
need to be compensated by regular programme contributions from LEGA officers.
This will require clear understanding of responsibilities, time required and scheduling
requirements of both LEGA and LEGN obligations. If this can be worked out and adhered to,
9
there should be gains in staff flexibility and in work satisfaction among those with interests in
the work of both services.
b. Adjustment of work in 313
There is a pressing need for the reduction of the advisory duties of LEGN staff. Because of
both the stress of frequent voyages and the observed loss of quality in abbreviated missions, it
is suggested that the number of projects in which staff are involved as advisors be reduced
and the shortfall be made up for with an increased use of international consultants, but the
obstacles to doing so will have to be relaxed. In the alternative, some requests for assistance
will have to be dropped.
With a reduction in project income, staff will inevitably be reduced. The consequence should
be a narrower range of technical advice because of less subject-matter and linguistic breadth
in the staff, but a maintenance of the quality of technical advice.
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Summary of recommendations
A.
Overall
1. Budget resources – The most urgent recommendation that emerges from the review is the
maintenance of financial resources at least at the level of the 2004-2005 biennium.
2. Supervision of APOs – It is recommended that two legal officers be responsible for each
APO and that careful attention be paid to accompanying and supervising APOs in their
early missions.
3. Use of short-term staff and APOs – It is not recommended that short-term staff (PSAs)
and APOs be used to replace missing regular programme professional and general service
staff.
C.
Technical assistance
4. Selective programming – Excessive programming of staff time should be avoided. The
Service as a whole has to turn down projects that it cannot carry out properly. This means,
in particular, that where an international consultant is required for a TCP proposal and
approval cannot be obtained, the proposal should be allowed to die.
5. Complementary assistance – It is recommended that if the conditions (staff time and
professional interest, ability to use consultants or to find partnership consultants) for the
delivery of technical assistance that fits the capacities and priorities of LEGN do not exist,
a project not be pursued and as far as possible, helpful materials and references be offered
instead.
6. Prioritization – If the resource problem cannot be solved, the recommended course is to
retain the quality at the cost of reducing the quantity and, necessarily, the scope of
technical assistance. This is also recommended in order to avoid a serious problem of
overwork of the legal officers.
7. Regulations – It is recommended that TCP projects be designed where possible to provide
for both law and regulations, and that where necessary the regulations be drafted
contemporaneously with the law.
8. National consultancies – When the failure of a national consultancy threatens, LEGN
must develop the habit of reacting immediately by increasing the provision for staff or
international consultants.
9. Briefings – It is recommended that the frequency of briefings for consultants be increased.
There should be a serious briefing before a first mission for a new consultant and before a
new subject matter for an experienced consultant.
10. Consultancy contracts – It is recommended that higher remuneration be sought for
consultants affected by the taxability of PSA remuneration.
11
11. Partnership contracts – It is recommended that approval be sought for recruitment of
highly qualified TCDC experts under standard FAO international consultants’ contracts.
D.
Publications
12. Manuals and guides – Well-crafted guidelines and manuals can be a cost-effective
complement to the technical assistance programme and their increased development and
use should be explored.
13. Interns’ contribution – It is recommended that the contribution of interns and research
assistants to manuals and guidelines be limited in favour of the experience of LEGN and
its senior consultants.
14. Mailing list – An email list to inform readers of new publications is recommended.
15. Submission deadline – It is recommended that a deadline be established in LEGN for each
publication in order to avoid the year-end editing rush.
E.
FAOLEX
16. Financial resources – As an overall recommendation, FAOLEX is a unique and valuable
service that needs all the resources that can be provided.
17. Staff – It is strongly recommended at least that the half-time general service staff member
be assigned full-time to FAOLEX.
18. Editing – It is recommended that editors be hired on contract to revise the abstracts by
language groups, and that $10 000-20 000 a year be made available for this purpose.
19. ECOLEX – It is recommended that a decision be taken to withdraw from ECOLEX if
conditions for sharing costs and tasks are not met.
20. Partnerships – It is recommended that other database collaborations continue to be
explored, whether or not ECOLEX continues.
F.
Information
21. Specialized databases – Experiments need to continue with specialized databases and
web-based publications.
22. Access to reports – There should be a reports file in the registry.
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1.
Introduction
Programme 313, Legal Assistance to Member Nations, “is designed to improve the legal and
institutional framework for agricultural development and natural resource management in
Member Nations.” (PWB 2000-2001; cf. “in countries” PWB 2006-2007). In 2000 the
programme was divided into two programme entities for the first time, Collection and
Dissemination of Legal Information (PE313P1, now 3BP10) and Provision of Technical
Advice (PE313S1, now 3BS05). In the 2002-2003 biennium a third programme entity,
Support to the Development of a Regulatory Framework for Food and Agriculture (PE313A1,
now 3BA06), was added.
The programme essentially includes the Development Law Service (LEGN) of the Legal
Office. The rest of the Legal Office, comprising the Office of Legal Counsel and the General
Legal Affairs Service (LEGA), falls under programme 124 (Legal Services). Some common
costs are shared by the two programmes and there is considerable interchange of staff for
particular assignments.
This report intends to assess the activities that have been carried out by the Development Law
Service during the last six years, in the areas of legal assistance and normative work.
Although some reference is made to the common activities between LEGN and LEGA1, these
are not assessed in detail because programme 124 has not yet been evaluated.
1.1. Methodology
The evaluation team, consisting of four LEGN staff members, drafted the terms of reference
with the participation of the whole Service and under the supervision of PBEE. The selfevaluation was then carried out with the assistance of Lawrence Christy and Ariella
D’Andrea, FAO consultants.
Following the preliminary phase, a desk study was started to identify the activities to be
assessed for each programme entity. For PE313S1, a complete list of legal projects and
projects with a legal component was drawn up, based on information found through FPMIS
(Field Programme Management Information System) and in the Legal Registry files. During
the evaluation period, 251 projects were carried out, of which 40 were managed by LEGN as
LTU (Lead Technical Unit). Delivery data by year were provided by TCOT. Concerning
PE313P1 and A1, a list of publications was already available on the Legal Office website.
From 2000 to 2005, 63 publications were produced by LEGN, of which 20 in the Legislative
Studies series (in print and electronic format) and 43 in the Legal Papers Online Series
(electronic format only). In the fields of water and fisheries law, additional works have been
produced in collaboration with other FAO divisions and with partner organizations.
Distribution statistics were only available for printed publications through GIII. Web statistics
provided by GILW were partial and ambiguous due to temporary suspension of the service for
software upgrading. Data on FAOLEX were readily available within LEGN. The total number
of database records at the end of 2005 was 46 000. During the period under review, new
records have been added at an average rate of 5 400 pieces of legislation per year.
1
These include activities such as the legal registry, the Legal Office website, the treaties database and work
related to statutory bodies.
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The second phase of the evaluation process consisted in gathering qualitative information on
the outputs produced, which was mainly done through interviews and questionnaires. A list of
relevant names and e-mail addresses was prepared with the help of legal officers. The sample
of people interviewed to assess legal assistance projects included 17 legal officers, 15 FAO
officers from other divisions (three others responded by filling a questionnaire) and five
partner organizations (IUCN, UNEP, World Bank, WHO and UNESCO). Questionnaires
were then prepared in three languages and sent out to 48 FAO Representatives, 23 of whom
responded giving feedback on 33 projects and to 91 national participants (government
counterparts and national consultants), of whom only 19 responded. Another FAO
Representative was interviewed while he happened to be at headquarters during the
evaluation. A different questionnaire was then posted to 32 international consultants who have
been working with LEGN for a number of years and are particularly knowledgeable. Eighteen
of them responded, totalling 26 questionnaires – one per project. Information on FAOLEX
users and on the readership of LEGN’s publications was retrieved in part through the
interviews of FAO officers (legal and non-legal), but mostly from questionnaires posted on
the Legal Office website. The FAOLEX questionnaire was sent to 55 users of the database,
including legal officers, international consultants and FAOLEX technical authors, of whom
23 replied. The questionnaire on legal publications was sent to a list of 142 actual and
potential readers, but only 23 responses were received. Both forms are still online to ensure
constant feedback from occasional and usual users/readers throughout 2006. Data on the
number of citations of LEGN’s publications in international legal literature could have been
obtained by means of citation analysis. Unfortunately, the in-house service (which was
offered by the FAO Library) has been recently suspended, and existing free-access systems
did not give significant results.
1.2. Resources of the programme
Financial resources – The resources of programme 313 have remained relatively constant
since 2000, although they have shrunk in real terms due to the decline in the dollar. In 2000
the total expenditures under programme 313 were $1 649 491, including $173 045 reimbursed
from other sources, mainly project salary reimbursements and technical services. In 2004 the
total was $1 831 634 including $320 073 mainly from projects. The final calculations for
2005 are not in, but the budget amounts to $1 971 272, including $249 000 in
reimbursements. Additional salary reimbursements will allow expenditure to exceed $2
million.
Human resources – The human resources of the programme in 2000 included nine
professional officers, five general service officers plus one registry clerk assigned half-time.
(The staff do not correspond precisely to the financial resources because of a somewhat
arbitrary distribution of fractional costs between programme 313 and programme 124.) “Nonstaff human resources” included about 16 technical authors engaged in selecting, indexing and
abstracting legal texts for inclusion in FAOLEX (at a cost of approximately $120 000 in
2002), two consultants for general assistance to FAOLEX, numerous paid researchers and
authors and several unpaid interns.
General Service staff – The General Service staff include the manager of FAOLEX, a clerk
assigned half-time to FAOLEX and half-time to the registry, a senior secretary with officemanagement responsibilities, an operations clerk responsible for projects and travel and an
14
office technology coordinator. Half the time of the clerk responsible for the whole Legal
Office registry is also charged to the programme.
APOs – An important element of personnel not reflected in the budget is associate
professional officers (APO). The APO programme provides for donors to pay the full costs of
a professional officer assigned to FAO during a period generally of two years with negotiable
extensions (up to a total of five years in the case of the Netherlands). The extensions are
normally on a cost-sharing basis. In 2000 there were two APOs in the Development Law
Service and one in the General Legal Affairs Service. As it happens both of the LEGN APOs
are now regular programme legal officers, one in LEGN and the other in LEGA.
Staff vacancies – The 2004-2005 budgets provided for a substantial decrease in euros, the
currency in which LEGN payroll costs are incurred. As a result, the P-5 post vacated by the
current Chief of LEGN was not filled, reducing the number of professional officers to eight.
Furthermore, one of the P-4 officers transferred to another division in 2005 and her post was
not filled, although it was possible to retain one of the APOs on a cost-sharing basis (50 per
cent paid by FAO). One general service post was also lost, reducing the total to five
(effectively only half a post less since all five work full time for programme 313).
Non-staff human resources – Non-staff resources made up some of the shortfall through more
intensive use of interns throughout the year and the development of a group of paid authors
and researchers. There are now usually five interns at any one time. By 2003 the number of
APOs reached a peak of six, including one in LEGA who has in practice worked mostly in
programme 313. At the end of 2005 there are five APOs, including the one in LEGA.
Grey area – Within the Legal Office, LEGN operates quite independently, but at the same
time there is substantial interchange of staff for specific tasks. One P2 legal officer works
about a third of her time on general legal issues assigned directly by the Legal Counsel and
another third on the Legal Office regular programme budget. The officers of LEGA have all,
except for the Legal Counsel and one other, come from LEGN. Three of them continue to
perform occasional missions on LEGN projects, giving an essential flexibility to the office in
implementing its projects. As mentioned, the LEGA APO also works almost full time for
LEGN.
Career opportunities – The collaboration between LEGN and LEGA and the flow of
professional staff between them also greatly expands the opportunities for career development
in the Legal Office. This is an advantage that other UN legal offices do not have.
1.3. Programme design
1.3.1. Law-making
Role of law – The role of law in the management of agriculture and natural resources depends
very much on its general role in society. No two countries are precisely the same in this
respect, nor are all the variables known or agreed upon. Still, there are factors such as the
degree of homogeneity in social values, the coherence between them and legal precepts and
different levels of awareness of the law. There are frequent incongruities between formal and
customary law, between law and religion. Thus the means available to implement law vary
15
widely, not only in terms of human and material resources, but also in terms of the degree to
which people accept the legal system and its representatives.
Drafting – The only way to deal systematically with the variation in the roles of law is to
study the country closely and to analyse the political, economic, social, scientific and
regulatory issues that have suggested the need for legal action. This rarely yields a single legal
solution but a range of them, some incompatible with the others.
People’s participation – Aside from the analytical task of identifying issues and solutions, a
good law requires the engagement of the government and the concerned population. The role
of the population is complex – it needs to consider the law appropriate, which means in part
that it has been persuaded that it is necessary even if not desirable; it also needs to feel that its
proper concerns have been listened to and taken into account insofar as possible in making the
law. To some extent, representative government expresses the role of the people in lawmaking, but frequently a part of the population considers itself peculiarly concerned by a law
and wishes to participate more directly in its making. Typical examples are the users of
resources like forests and fisheries. Millions of people depend on these resources for their
livelihoods, so they are not easily persuaded that urban law-makers can properly legislate for
them. The resource-users also are crucial in enforcing the law. If they cannot generally be
persuaded to comply, there is little hope for implementation in most countries. Voluntary
compliance depends on participation in the law-making process.
Government’s participation – The role of government is in some ways similar. Many officials
are not very aware of the legislation they are supposed to administer, have not been consulted
concerning the practical issues of implementation on which they would surely have both
knowledge and concerns and, in part as a result, these officials do little to implement the law.
They, too, need to participate in law-making, and they also need to be brought together with
the affected population in the process. A close collaboration between officials and citizens is
likely to be implied by modern legislation, and it is not likely to succeed if it is simply
ordered without a basis in past collaboration.
As may be imagined, it is not an easy task to organize a legal process that fulfils the analytical
and participatory requirements even in part. In the member countries of FAO there is an
enormous range between those that engage in such a process as a matter of course and others
with no experience of it.
1.3.2. The role of FAO
Government request – The role of the Secretariat of FAO is to respond to the needs of
members in food and agriculture, which is occasionally complicated by a divergence of views
between the secretariat and a government as to what those needs are. Since the government,
and not the people, is the member of FAO, the secretariat’s mandate is always limited by what
the government requests even if ideally the people seem the appropriate counterpart.
Implementation of international requirements – For whatever reason, a government may not
wish to engage in a deep analysis and broad participation, or more likely, it may not need
FAO’s assistance in that process. Also there is a considerable body of legislation, in particular
that which is required to meet international requirements, that is quite technical or
bureaucratic, that does not differ very much among countries, that a country is obliged to
16
adopt relatively quickly and that may only peripherally touch large sectors of the population.
This legislation may not need a country-specific approach, even if it could benefit from it.
Information – There is a great deal of global experience that governments want and that is
useful in devising national legal structures. First of all, of course, is simple information on
what other countries with similar or related problems have done. In its purest form, this would
be the laws and regulations that other countries have adopted. For lawyers, this is the bread
and butter of comparative experience and it is the reason for FAOLEX, essentially an online
database of food and agriculture legislation.
Language – For non-lawyers, foreign – or even national – laws are not particularly
enlightening, and even lawyers are frequently ill-equipped to profit from laws in another
language or from a different legal system. At the same time, the value of knowing exactly
what another country has done, as opposed to a very general, journalistic account, is
considerable for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Several forms of information respond to this
need. One is summaries of legislation in a vehicular language (usually English, French or
Spanish), such as the various regional and global works on sectoral legislation published by
FAO and others. Another is the abstracts included in FAOLEX, which offer a summary of
legislation in one of the FAO working languages.
Publications – Beyond summaries of legislation, there is a range of publications from the
purely informational or analytical to the unabashedly prescriptive that can be used by lawmakers to expand on their own experience. Analytical works need no introduction or defence.
Every university, international organization and many others publish them all the time. Most
of FAO’s publications are either purely informative or analytical.
Manuals and guidelines – Prescriptive works are a different matter. In the first place, few
authors wish to be seen as prescriptive, aware if nothing else that the national and local
peculiarities outlined above rob universal prescriptions of their validity. Yet there is a great
demand for models, guidelines and manuals that will direct national law-making efforts.
There are also areas of law (e.g. trade) where global factors are so dominant that global
models are a good start to national legislation.
LEGN’s mandate – In order properly to respond to what governments request and what they
need, thereby providing the appropriate mix of tailor-made solutions and general information
and guidance, the Development Law Service needs to be able to deliver or to direct
governments to the whole range of services outlined above. This is done through a
combination of FAOLEX, studies and guidelines, and technical assistance.
There is also a substantial advantage in the Service’s producing the full range of information
and advisory services itself. FAOLEX serves as a basic tool for legal advice and research
carried out by the Service. The research and publications benefit greatly from the field
experience gained through advisory services; manuals and guidelines would hardly be
possible otherwise. At the same time, technical assistance is deepened through the advisors’
involvement in scholarly research and debate; and the experience of advising on current
problems returns a constant flow of information on emerging needs to FAOLEX.
17
1.4. Resource constraints
Decreasing budget – The gradual reduction in the real value of the budget allocated to
programme 313 and the recent freezing of posts have now presented a situation that was long
foreseen but somehow avoided. Technical assistance has not so far been rationed according to
geographical or subject-matter priorities. In general, the availability of TCP and some external
financing for projects, and the presence of professional staff and regular consultants covering
the major subjects and languages have permitted responses to all requests. At the most there
were some delays.
Salary reimbursement – One response to declining resources has been to emphasize staff
participation in project work for which salary reimbursement could be claimed. Salary
reimbursement was always a factor in programme 313, but in the most recent years it has
become particularly urgent, accounting for more than a sixth of the budget and more than 30
percent of professional staff costs. In other words, if there were no field programme, LEG
would find itself with two to three fewer professional staff.
Non-project assistance – The area where resource constraints have always affected the legal
assistance programme has been non-project assistance, in particular the travel component and
the arrangement of technical consultations at headquarters. Partly for historical reasons there
has never been a significant travel budget in the Legal Office, and this has forced the
Development Law Service to condition its activities on the availability of travel funds, either
through project financing for project work or from other divisions, in order to participate in
technical consultations and similar activities.
FAOLEX – The difficulty of retaining general service posts has been a limitation on FAOLEX
from the beginning. The technical authors that have worked for years to develop the present
system are all recruited under personal service agreements and paid on a piece-work basis.
They cannot reasonably be asked to train, supervise and administer FAOLEX, nor to represent
FAO in dealing with IUCN and other partners. At present FAOLEX is managed by a G-7
database manager, assisted by a G-2 registry clerk (half time) and a P-2 legal officer (onethird time). This is insufficient for the size of FAOLEX and has in fact led to limitations on
the accession of texts, in particular of those in “difficult” languages and of less important
regulations.
Partnerships – One of the reasons for entering the partnership to create ECOLEX was the
limited resources that both FAO and IUCN had for legal databases. As the third partner,
UNEP appeared to have greater financial resources although it had never succeeded in its
efforts to create an environmental law database. The ECOLEX partners were also attracted by
the idea that eventually the service could generate revenue from users in developed countries.
18
2. Programme entity 313S1 (Provision of Technical
Advice)
2.1. Design
The shape of a technical assistance programme depends very much on the assistance
requested, but there is still a strong element of conscious design in LEGN’s technical
assistance. This begins in the formation of alliances with the technical divisions with which
LEGN collaborates in technical assistance. It goes through efforts to educate funding units
(TCP and the Investment Centre) and other FAO units on the nature of law and its importance
in the development process. It includes the recruitment of specific expertise that changing
demands require, such as trade law which was unrepresented in the Legal Office until 2003.
There is also a high level of self-evaluation of what is needed, what can be done, what works
and what should be tried, out of which new ideas for responses to demands emerge.
Sometimes of course the solution that is developed never finds a problem to be applied to, but
that is the price of trying to keep ahead of demand.
2.1.1. Relation to objectives
Strategic objective – FAO’s overall mission, “to help build a food-secure world”, is expressed
through assisting its members. The means include exchange of expertise and information,
development of international instruments and directed technical assistance to developing
countries. FAO’s strategic objective B2 is “national policies, legal instruments and supporting
mechanisms that respond to domestic requirements and are consistent with the international
policy and regulatory framework.”
Role of legislation – The importance of law in agricultural and national development has been
examined in Why law matters (2002), drafted by several LEGN officers, which attempts to
explain the uses of good law in a notoriously difficult area, forestry. Like all fields, law has its
limitations, but any serious effort to effect change (or preserve stability) beyond a single
village requires some generally applicable rules. Even the limited effectiveness of such rules
requires that they be taken seriously, both in their objectives and in their effects, intended and
otherwise.
Many of the areas that FAO works in depend obviously and directly on law – consider plant
protection, pesticide regulation, food safety and water rights. When a government asks FAO
for advice on introducing tradable fishing rights, it may not really know whether it wants
economic, biological or legal advice, but it will surely need all three from internal or external
sources. Whether for better or worse, the importance of law is increasing, not diminishing in
the world, so many kinds of advice will now include legal elements even if this was not
previously the case. Excellent examples are forest concessions, fisheries regulations and food
regulations, which previously would have been crafted with minimal legal participation.
Good laws and bad laws – The question of how good a law has to be goes to the heart of the
design of programme element 313S1. Why law matters examines a number of ways in which
forestry laws do real harm through bad design. There are probably other areas in which a law
19
that is at least understandable will do the job. Basically, it is LEGN’s philosophy that the
power of a poorly crafted law to do harm is so great that if one cannot do a proper job it is
better to abstain entirely. Examples are rife in the area of natural resource management, where
so much depends on the willing collaboration of resource users. If careless legislation
tramples on their rights or threatens their livelihood, collaboration is likely to turn into passive
resistance or worse, active opposition.
2.1.2. Methodology
Over the years, the Development Law Service has developed an explicit methodology for its
technical assistance activities. It is based on the premise that the Service is requested to help
solve a problem, which may not even be viewed as a legal problem, and not to create new
problems. So the first task is to understand the problem that has engendered a request for
advice. The next step is thorough legal research to determine how the problem issue is
regulated, what instruments exist but have not been used to deal with it and what laws apply
at least tangentially to the problem. These two steps are relatively easy. The next is to ensure
that all stakeholders have been consulted, either directly or through reasonably representative
samples. This is obviously time-consuming and very difficult for a foreigner to do properly.
Finally, a law needs to be drafted. Drafting differs in the many legal systems, but legal
correctness and clarity are generally valued and should be considered minimal requirements.
2.1.2.1. Problem analysis
The beginning of legal assistance is to assess the problem that has caused a government to
request assistance. This may or may not be performed by lawyers and, even if it is, it requires
more than just legal knowledge.
Policy implementation – Where the government has specifically requested legislation it will
be necessary at the least to get a good grasp of the policies it intends to implement. In some
cases formal policies will already exist and the task may be limited to analysing how they
should be applied in the range of foreseeable circumstances in which a law might apply. Even
if the relevant policies have not been spelled out in a policy document, they may be implicit in
departmental budgets, annual reports, proposed programmes, etc.
Treaty implementation – Sometimes the purpose of a request for legal assistance is to translate
treaty obligations into national legislation. If a government has already decided to adopt a
very explicit convention like the 1991 UPOV Convention, there may not be much else to
discuss. But many treaties can be applied in many different ways, like the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea, so a project to bring fisheries legislation into line with the Convention
would require a thorough review of fisheries policy.
Multidisciplinarity – Most projects in which there is a legislative component are
multidisciplinary and include a technical or a policy component or both. In general these types
of project are designed to include the legal advisor from the beginning. This is intended to
ensure that policy investigation or formulation covers everything that will be relevant to
legislation and allows the legal advisor to participate in consultations where the policy and
legal aspects are not clearly distinguished.
20
Time pressure – Most projects, especially those financed by TCP, are based on the idea of a
quick response. Little time is therefore spent on formulation or preliminary investigation, it
being assumed that project staff can react quickly to findings. It is quite common therefore
that a project is designed without knowing fully what the main issues are.
Project formulation – The main disadvantage in the current project formulation procedure is
the difficulty of quickly adding an unforeseen activity when the project is under way. Simply
adjusting the amount and emphasis of foreseen components is not so difficult. The 1999
evaluation of legal TCP projects2 concluded that better formulated projects would not
normally be more cost-effective. The value of more accurate budgeting and work planning
was not considered to justify greater preparation costs.
Responsiveness – There have been several projects that completely misconceived the
government’s request or needs (it is not always clear how these misunderstandings come
about). Two that were singled out for comment were TCP/IRA/2903 and TCP/GUI/2905. In
both cases, the countries actually wanted or needed only a seed law, but the Guinea project
had been originally designed to provide assistance for a law on plant genetic resources,
whereas the Iran project was intended to provide both a plant health and a seed act. These
examples indicate an initial effort in the wrong direction, but in the end both projects
produced appropriate results.
Interdepartmental collaboration – The failure to include necessary expertise in a project does
not seem to have come about intentionally except for the occasional food regulation or food
administration project where LEGN has been excluded. These are increasingly rare, however.
Legal projects that exclude technical components are also rare. One example that was
mentioned (Antigua fisheries) was to be a quick follow-up to a regional project and the
technical and policy questions were thought to have been resolved. It did illustrate the point
that is difficult to introduce a new element in a hurry, but at least a quick mission of FII was
organized.
2.1.2.2 Legal analysis
Analysis of existing law is a standard practice in all legal advisory services (whereas it might
not be required for training activities and certain negotiation preparations). It is worth
emphasizing the breadth of research required in order to identify all the law that bears on a
problem: sectoral legislation; the general provisions such as civil or criminal law that may
already govern a matter; the special legislation that affects activities at the margin of the main
subject; areas of conflict or overlap with other institutions and related law.
2.1.2.3. Reporting
Problem identification – The ultimate output of most legal technical assistance is one or a
group of legal instruments that support management of the identified problems. Terms of
reference are designed to achieve this objective, but this can fail if, as mentioned above, the
expertise for problem analysis has not been included. Even with the appropriate expertise,
constant dialogue is necessary to ensure that the problems perceived by the country are really
being addressed. (It is in the nature of good legal advice to identify other problems as well,
2
A review of the recommendations made in the 1999 PBEE evaluation of TCP projects with a legal component
and of the status of their implementation is found in Annex I to the present report.
21
and to propose solutions, but this is not an excuse for failure to address the problem
presented.)
Interim report – The projects under review provide for discussion of the issues and for an
interim report designed to ensure that the problem analysis and proposed legal approaches are
presented to the government in a form that can be understood by non-lawyers. Occasionally
the issues are considered simple enough to dispense with the interim report, but this creates
serious implementation difficulties if things are not so simple. As a general rule, it should be
assumed that an interim report and the time for a government to consider it are necessary
preconditions to arriving at an appropriate legal recommendation at the end of the project.
2.1.2.4. Stakeholder involvement
The necessity of stakeholder involvement has been set out above. It is probably the hardest
element to incorporate into a technical assistance project. The best means of stakeholder
involvement in a particular country are difficult to know before a project begins. Even where
they are known, consultations are usually time-consuming to organize and require an active
presence in the country. Consultations can be carried out through workshops and small
meetings but that may not be enough to satisfy the desire to participate and it is very hard to
know whether attendance is representative, although this is easier in a small country. The
practice has generally been to organize one or more workshops and hope at least to attract the
representatives of different sectors and interests. Much of the organizational work is
inevitably left to national consultants, which has the logic of their local knowledge but makes
the process difficult to predict or control.
2.1.2.5. Objectivity
National consultants – Objectivity is not an explicit element of project design, but it is
implicit in legal training and therefore assumed as an obligation of staff and consultants.
Increasing experience with national consultants has, however, revealed many cases of
personal or at least institutional bias. This is inextricable from implementation issues but one
way to deal with it in project design is to include in terms of reference and contracts the
requirement that consultants exercise their professional judgement subject to the supervision
of FAO and independently of any other person or institution. National consultants who are
civil servants are already required to take leave from their official positions, but this is not
always applied in practice.
Counterparts – A second element of objectivity that is passed over in silence in project design
is the identity of the client or beneficiary. It is in fact the government of the country, and not a
particular ministry or department. This is often forgotten by both international and national
project personnel, since they usually have to work closely with a ministry or department 3 and
not the whole government. Care needs to be taken in briefing and supervision to ensure that
the closeness is not misused to enrol FAO in one faction of intra-governmental disputes.
It bears noting in this connection that, by FAO’s own rules, the principal interlocutor at national level is the
Ministry of Agriculture.
3
22
2.1.3. Sources of funding
The principal sources of funding of programme entity 313S1 are the regular programme, the
APO programme and TCP. Figures are not entirely comparable from year to year, and in no
year is there a breakdown of projects according to LEG and non-LEG activities. The best
indicative figures are for 2004, when delivery of field projects with LEGN as the lead
technical unit totalled $838 000. All of that was from TCP. By comparison, net regular
programme expenditure for 313S1 was $663 000 and the cost of APOs was $502 000, a large
part of which is properly attributable to technical assistance. Other sources in different years
have included bilateral donors and the World Bank, as well as trust funds and regular
programme resources from other FAO units.
2.1.3.1. TCP
Salary reimbursement – TCP is the largest source of project funding for LEGN and it
reimbursed the regular programme an amount equivalent to two professional salaries in 2004.
Its requirements are therefore very influential in LEGN’s technical assistance programme.
TCP has recently announced a unilateral reduction in salary reimbursements to $393 a day on
a seven-day week basis. This is equivalent to the current reimbursement for a P3 officer and
will mean substantial reductions in revenue for LEGN to the extent it continues to work on
TCP projects.
Nature of TCP – The TCP Guidelines include both characteristics and criteria of TCP
projects. As characteristics, TCP is said to be “unprogrammed”, responding to urgent and
unforeseen needs; it features speedy approval, limited duration, low cost, practical orientation,
a catalytic role and complementarity with other sources of assistance.
Of the TCP criteria4, the most constraining are cost and duration, which are strictly applied
except for limited cases. Urgency, unforeseeability and effect on production seem only
marginally relevant to legal projects, but this has not been problematic up till now.
Follow-up projects – A more significant limitation of TCP is the policy against repeated
assistance in the same field. This makes it difficult to obtain TCP approval for a project to
prepare regulations if there has already been a project to prepare the parliamentary-level act. It
4
According to the TCP criteria, requests must:
1. give emphasis to increasing production in food and agriculture, fisheries or forestry, with a view to
increasing incomes of small-scale producers and rural workers;
2. be accorded high priority by the Government, which must also ensure that the required local support
facilities and services will be available and that follow-up action will be taken;
3. be directed to an urgent and specific problem or need, limited to a particular sector or area, and involve
practical action with well-defined objectives and expected results;
4. complement, without duplicating, other development activities, fill a critical gap and, where possible,
serve as a catalyst for a larger-scale activity;
5. be limited in duration, preferably from one to three months, in no case should the overall duration of
project activities exceed 24 months;
6. be limited in cost, not exceeding the upward limit of US$400 000 per project and preferably much
lower, and involve the most effective and least costly method of execution;
7. provide assurance of the fullest possible participation of the governments in project execution, through
such means as the use of national institutions, personnel and resources.
Although new criteria have been approved by the end of 2005 and will soon be operational, the only substantial
changes concern the criteria of urgency, unforeseeability and effect on production – which never directly
affected legal projects.
23
also can create difficulties in including the necessary policy or technical component in a legal
project that follows an already implemented policy or technical project.
International consultants – A policy that is not of TCP but applies to it with particular
severity is limitation on the use of international consultants. The policy has varied in the
period under review, but a constant is the requirement for the Director-General’s or Deputy
Director-General’s approval for the employment of an international consultant. At times this
has been impossible to obtain, or so difficult that project approval seemed unlikely. This has
directly caused a severe implementation problem (see below) through LEGN’s now routine
formulation of TCP project documents to avoid the use of international consultants.
A combination of methods have been used, including greater use of national consultants, the
use of TCDC consultants (willing to work for $100, now $130 a day) and greater involvement
of FAO staff. In this way more staff time has occasionally been programmed than could be
delivered.
Administrative slowness – Despite the characteristics of speed and urgency, the approval
process of TCP is generally quite long. There is a “fast track” facility limited to $50 000 and
using only FAO staff, but normal approval time ranges from six months to two years. The
average is probably about a year, but it varies according to the financial state of TCP and
other factors. This adds an aura of unpredictability to the problem of slowness.
Regulations – The limitation to two years combined with the reluctance to finance follow-up
projects has frequently caused legal projects to fail to take action that would have appeared to
make the project more useful. The most obvious is the preparation of regulations to
implement legislation prepared under a project. In general LEGN has tried to work first on a
draft law, then on regulations, with ample time for discussion of the principles of the law
before beginning to draft it. If the discussion of principle is followed by a full discussion of
the draft, the process can practically fill two years. It has often been tacitly assumed that with
the draft law in hand the government would be able to draft regulations. In practice this is
frequently not so.
In order to avoid this pitfall, it is recommended that TCP projects be designed where possible
to provide for both law and regulations, and that where necessary the regulations be drafted
contemporaneously with the law. (In fact, in some jurisdictions draft regulations are a
prerequisite to the introduction of a bill in the legislature.)
Project recommendations – A second gap in legal projects may be harder to overcome, and
that is the inability to explain the project recommendations and provide complementary
assistance for their adoption. This is a need practically without limit of time, but it could be
facilitated if specific follow-up were possible. Currently there is a TCP requirement that
national counterparts and FAO Representatives review project follow-up one year after a
project ends, but this seems rarely to happen, or if it does, to produce results.
2.1.3.2. Bilateral donors
Countries – In the period under review, projects financed by Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and
Norway, as well as the multi-donor Fish Code, had legal components. They included a
Norwegian project to reform Vietnamese fisheries legislation, which is now in its seventh
year, including a year of multi-mission formulation. The Netherlands, too, has been willing to
24
fund projects larger in both scale and scope than TCP, in particular the series in Mozambique
beginning with forestry and wildlife legislation, and including the very interesting judicial
training project that followed. The effect of both of these programmes was to allow follow-up
that facilitated adoption of the legislation.
Other bilateral projects are less liberal, but they do avoid the limitations on use of
international consultants and of follow-up projects. Indeed, it may be a matter of LEGN’s
inexperience with other donors, but it seems that only FAO has the kinds of rules that make
technical assistance a struggle.
Institutions – The World Bank has a cooperative programme with FAO which funds large
parts of the Investment Centre, but which also can be used for legal expertise when needed in
both preparation and supervision phases of Bank loans. Supervision work under Bank
financing is less commonly directed through the Investment Centre, but it can allow for longterm legal assistance – as long as reasonably required. Most of LEGN’s experience has been
with preparation phases. The work has included study of the legal basis for intended projects,
as well as preparation of legislation and other legal documents. Normally the preparation
phase is too rushed to allow proper consultation for the preparation of legislation, and the
imposition of legislation as a loan condition is antithetical to the participatory process set out
above. Occasionally preparation allows for longer duration, and in one recent case
(Kyrgyzstan) it has provided the perfect complement (“follow-up”) to a completed TCP
legislation project.
2.2. Implementation
During the period under review, 291 projects were identified, of which 40 had been recently
approved and therefore no substantial work had yet been undertaken. Of the active projects,
51 were operated or managed (as lead technical unit) by LEGN and 200 by other services
with LEGN as a “participating unit”. There is no breakdown of the relative shares of LEGN
and other units in the 200 non-LEGN projects with a legal component, but the SSTS
payments (standard payments for supervisory and technical services) for LEGN projects in
2004 amounted to about one-third the SSTS for non-LEGN projects. Deducting lead technical
unit bonuses, the ratio would be about one to five. This suggests that the average amount of
legal work per project is about the same in both LEGN and non-LEGN projects.
Almost all of the projects identified were financed by TCP. It was not possible to get full
statistics on the delivery of project services during the first part of the period under review,
but from 2003 the TCP data are very good. They show the following delivery:
Year
LEGN LTU
Other LTU
Total
2003
773 000
6 992 000
7 765 000
2004
898 000
8 496 000
9 394 000
2005 (to 05/12)
839 000
7 701 000
8 540 000
Table I – Delivery of legal assistance project services, 2003-2005 (in $)
Taking into account that figures for 2005 are not complete, this shows that LEGN is holding
its own in TCP, both as a lead unit and as a participant.
The distribution of projects is indicated in the following charts.
25
Geographical distribution of legal assistance projects
2000-2005
Near East
15%
Interregional
4%
Africa
37%
Latin America
20%
Asia
12%
Europe
12%
Chart 1 – Geographical distribution of legal assistance projects, 2000-2005
Interestingly, the rate of regional projects (as opposed to country-specific assistance) amounts
to 16 percent of the total number of projects carried out during the evaluation period.
Legal assistance projects by subject matter 2000-2005
Biotechnology
1% Water
Trade
4%
4%
Agriculture & land
15%
Food (including
right to food)
12%
Forestry & wildlife
19%
Environment
(residual category)
2%
Plants
25%
Fisheries &
aquaculture
14%
Animal health
4%
Chart 2 – Legal assistance projects by subject matter, 2000-2005
26
2.2.1. Human resources
2.2.1.1. Picture of legal personnel
Legal officers – All but one LEGN officer and four LEGA officers participate in missions.
The total employment of seven (one worked half a year and one was on leave for about half a
year) LEGN officers on remunerated project work in 2004 was 440 days, an average of
almost 13 weeks per person. The busiest legal officer worked 86 days (17 weeks) on
remunerated project work, although not all of that was travelling. The four LEGA officers
were reimbursed for 74 days of project work. The APOs all participate in missions, but as
they are not reimbursed, the only solid record of the amount of their project work is travel
time (see below).
The specialization of legal officers and APOs in the different subject matters is rather fluid, as
most of them work in more than one area. The main exception is fisheries, where the legal
officers (now reduced to one) only work on fisheries as do the two APOs. The plant, animal
and food group stands out in another way in having used the services of all but one of the
non-fishery specialists in 2005. Three officers primarily responsible for land, water and
forestry have tended to work as a team. The only officer knowledgeable in trade, an APO, has
also been called upon to help out in other areas.
Legal consultants – Twelve legal consultants (both international and partnership) were
employed for missions in 2004. Of the total of 313 days travel time by consultants, 189 days,
or 60 percent, was carried out by four of the twelve consultants used.
National consultants have been employed in most recent projects. Unfortunately there are no
good statistics on their number and tasks.
Total travel – The days on mission of the legal officers and consultants (both international
and TCDC) have been recorded in 2004 and 2005. They amount to 1009 days for staff in
2004 and 408 for non-staff (313 for legal consultants). Of the legal officers’ travel, the seven
LEGN officers accounted for 607 days in 60 trips of which several included more than one
country and three included more than one project (in Indonesia and Vietnam, Sri Lanka and
India, and Sri Lanka and Mongolia respectively). The five APOs travelled 295 days and the
four LEGA officers 107.
Headquarters work – Only part of the discrepancy between travel and salary reimbursement is
due to the fact that salary has been reimbursed on a 5-day week basis whereas travel is
calculated at 7 days. In fact, the time actually spent on project work far exceeds the amount
charged. In most cases only the time away from the office is charged even though substantial
preparation and report-writing time is devoted to a project before and after missions. Only a
small proportion of the reimbursements are for headquarters work.
2.2.1.2. Quality of work
In interviews with legal officers and non-legal colleagues and through questionnaires, the
evaluators sought to obtain an overview of the performance of national and international
consultants, legal officers and non-legal project staff.
27
In general, the FAO staff and legal consultants were credited with doing a very good job. The
competence of FAO legal officers received a very high rating from FAO Representatives and
national officials (many of whom had worked as national consultants). On average
international consultants were considered a bit better than good and national consultants a bit
worse than good.
a) Legal officers and consultants
Coordination – Most of the projects had both legal and non-legal personnel. The quality of
non-legal personnel was never criticized by LEGN staff, probably because they have learned
how to avoid the lazy and incompetent. Non-legal personnel were rated well by both country
respondents and legal consultants. Most of the colleagues in other divisions that were
interviewed had worked on legal projects and demonstrated an excellent understanding of the
positive way legal and non-legal advisors could work together.
An implementation problem with non-legal consultants or colleagues is the difficulty of
coordinating schedules so that both legal and technical experts can travel together. This is
important in order to maximize the interchange between legal and non-legal findings and
analysis. Where the legal consultant is relatively inexperienced, it is also important as a
learning and supervisory method. It is apparent from interviews that this is an occasional
problem, and it may be a result of a legal element being added late to a project, or of overprogramming of missions by both technical and legal officers or simply of poor scheduling.
Service – Both non-legal colleagues in FAO and sister institutions (IUCN, UNEP, UNESCO,
WHO, World Bank) expressed real admiration for the technical competence of LEGN
officers. This was in almost all cases based on personal collaboration with one or two of them,
but praise extended to the whole Service. On this basis they were eager to collaborate with
LEGN and, in the case of non-legal colleagues at FAO, to include legal components in
projects they formulated or managed.
The FAO colleagues sometimes worked in divisions with which a certain amount of friction
had been reported, but they seemed to think that it had been overcome. It is impossible to say
whether these opinions were representative of all their colleagues, but it was comforting to
hear.
Inefficiencies – There were relatively few criticisms of FAO staff and international
consultants, but there was some dissatisfaction about how they were used. There were
complaints that missions were too short to consult stakeholders, that legal consultants were
brought in too late in the project and that one officer or consultant was substituted for another
in the middle of projects. These in the context of praise for the quality of personnel suggest
problems that can be resolved.
b) National consultants
National consultants were another matter. They range from excellent to worse than useless:
one international consultant complained that the national consultant took the floor against the
FAO recommendations at a workshop, and this is not the only case reported. Many times
national consultants do not in fact regard themselves as working for FAO. If civil servants,
they are supposed to take leave during their consultancy, but this is sometimes a fiction and
sometimes not even that. If the national consultant is only supposed to be a counterpart, the
28
loss is only money. But projects are increasingly designed with the expectation that the
national consultant will produce a reliable, if not well-written, review of existing legislation
before the international lawyer’s arrival. What has happened more than once is that the
national consultant was not even recruited before the international lawyer’s arrival (a project
can also be designed this way, although that is rare), so that the latter had to find a lawyer, do
the review of legislation himself and make recommendations all at once.
Review of legislation – A consequence of this is that the review of legislation is poorly done,
with texts that are hard to find skipped and others analysed that may turn out to be irrelevant.
This also affects the problem analysis, since the time that should be spent talking to people
and reflecting on what they say is instead spent looking for legislation. In the end both the
legal review and problem analysis are shaky, and important consultations may be slighted.
This is not always apparent in the final product, since if it is sufficiently polished the reader
will not know what has been omitted or stated on uncertain authority.
Buffer solution – When the failure of a national consultancy threatens, LEGN must develop
the habit of reacting immediately by increasing the provision for staff or international
consultants. This does not mean eliminating the national consultancy but reducing it to what
can be accomplished in the project duration. If a project has not started yet, delay in hiring the
national consultant can often be dealt with by delaying the start of the project, but if a TCP
project has already started, adding a delay in recruitment without making other adjustments
risks running up against the maximum two-year project lifespan.
Recruitment – In principle, it should be possible to improve the recruitment of national
consultants. In many cases, LEGN has been able to identify good, independent candidates and
get them hired. But increasingly there has developed an expectation that the government will
heavily influence, if not determine, the choice of national consultants. This is very difficult to
counter from Rome. The FAO Representative usually has the responsibility for identifying
candidates, and he or she usually accepts the candidates proposed by the relevant ministry,
which usually proposes somebody already involved in the matter, most often an official of the
ministry. This may or may not be apparent in Rome, but without a preliminary mission to
identify a national consultant, there is usually nothing that can be done. Protests usually bring
the response that the government is insisting on a particular candidate and the FAO
Representative thinks that that would be the best way to proceed. It is never known until later
if the legal consultancy had already been promised to the favoured candidate or for what
reason that candidate was chosen.
2.2.1.3. Treatment of legal personnel
a) International consultants
The treatment of staff and consultants is an important issue, and most of the problems arise in
connection with technical assistance. There are significant areas for improvement, some
within the control of LEGN and some not.
Continuity – First, the few remaining consultants are a very loyal group that contributes
research and writing, free peer reviews, ideas for projects and many other services in addition
to technical assistance. They have remained available to LEGN in general because of the
intellectual and social satisfaction of their relationship with the staff of LEGN (professional,
general service and non-staff). They have become relatively few because of the difficulty
29
FAO places in the way of hiring qualified consultants, but the consultants that remain are a
valuable resource.
Questionnaire responses – The very best questionnaire responses were returned by the
consultants. They were generally satisfied with the work they had done and the way they were
treated by FAO. They also praised the quality of their support from the Development Law
Service. They pointed out some problems that are well known and some that are equally real
but had not previously been considered.
Guidance and supervision from LEGN
Don’t know
0%
Bad
0%
Fair
0%
42%
Good
58%
Excellent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Chart 3 – Rating LEGN guidance and supervision (results of international consultants’ questionnaires)
Administrative support
Don’t know
Bad
0%
8%
12%
Fair
54%
Good
27%
Excellent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Chart 4 – Rating LEGN administrative support (results of international consultants’ questionnaires)
Slow administration – The greatest source of discontent with FAO is administration –
contracts, tickets, arrangements for field disbursements. Unfortunately this will probably get
worse as most projects will be operated by country and regional offices. It is very difficult for
LEGN to smooth the way for its consultants when it does not operate projects, and almost
impossible when the operating unit is far away and not eager to cooperate.
Lack of briefing – Another concern of several consultants was the lack of briefing. It is true
that fewer and fewer consultancies schedule a briefing, perhaps because the consultants are
now mostly so experienced that LEGN may feel they do not need it. But they do need it for a
30
number of reasons. One is to feel really part of the FAO team when they represent the
Organization (and us) in difficult situations. Another is to exchange ideas face-to-face with
different legal and other officers of FAO. This was a standard part of consultancies in more
relaxed days.
Background information – A related concern is ready access to FAO’s experience, which
regular officers probably take for granted. Consultants would like better access to background
information on the country and the technical subject, to LEGN guidelines or methodology and
to technical reports on the same issues in other countries. Several also suggested a LEGN
website open to consultants. One hoped for an annual consultants’ meeting.
Possible action – These are matters that LEGN can deal with. A briefing before and after
every mission is probably a waste of time, but a serious briefing before a first mission for a
new consultant and before a new subject matter for an experienced consultant are necessary.
This requires the availability of the supervising legal officer, so it needs some planning. Better
availability of technical reports would not be difficult to arrange and would be useful to staff
and non-staff as well. A reports file in the registry would be a start and perhaps a reserved
page on the website could follow. If more attention is paid to methodological work, sharing it
with consultants would be a matter of course5.
National consultants – Another major complaint was the quality of national consultants.
Nothing further needs to be added. Interestingly, counterparts, who are not paid, were
considered more positively than national consultants.
Contribution of national consultants
Don’t know
Bad
4%
8%
42%
Fair
27%
Good
23%
Excellent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Chart 5 – Rating the contribution of national consultants’ (results of international consultants’
questionnaires)
5
An essential instrument for information retrieval is the legal registry, where all communication files (mail and
e-mail) are classified. The staff resources assigned to this task are far too few for the amount of work: one person
and a half to keep up with the correspondence of nearly 40 people. Two recommendations might be made to
improve this crucial service, one being to hire a full-time person and the other to revise the filing criteria
(currently project files are organized by topic) either by switching to a country-based classification (less
ambiguous) or by redefining the subject matter categories that are currently used.
In addition to the existing Internet website, the Legal Office might consider the creation of an intranet website
as a tool for making information available while avoiding worldwide visibility of certain “sensitive” documents
(e.g. drafts and recent mission reports) and for giving more details on the staff (officers, APOs, consultants and
interns).
31
Collaboration of counterparts
Don’t know
Bad
0%
4%
35%
Fair
38%
Good
23%
Excellent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
Chart 6 – Rating the collaboration of counterparts (results of international consultants’ questionnaires)
Honoraria – Consultants are not happy with their remuneration. FAO’s rates in general are
lower than other funding agencies, and the new PSA will create serious tax liabilities for two
of the three most loyal consultants. This should be faced head-on by requesting
correspondingly higher remuneration for those affected. They can demonstrate higher
earnings elsewhere, and higher fees can be paid with higher approval. Once it is received,
future contracts do not need such approval.
One TCDC consultant has figured out that he is being discriminated against on the basis of
nationality. (In fact this is not quite so: the rules have shifted so that TCDC contracts can now
be and have been offered to several Europeans as well.) If he is considered suitable for an
international consultancy, approval should be sought to have him recruited on that basis. If it
fails, it fails, but the demonstration of good will would be good for him and us.
National consultants are also sometimes underpaid (not always – in some countries FAO pays
the same as the World Bank). Many times the FAO or UNDP scale provides much more
flexibility than is usually exercised. To take advantage of this flexibility requires, however,
that LEGN retain control of recruitment, which is not always possible. To the extent that the
problem of under-remuneration can be foreseen, sufficient funding for national consultants
should be provided in the course of project formulation.
b) Legal officers
Workload – Legal officers are also important, and they have a number of dissatisfactions with
technical assistance. In general they think that LEGN takes on too many field projects and
needs to prioritize its work. Both subject matter and country focus were mentioned. (The
latter refers to avoiding countries on the brink of civil war or otherwise not fertile ground for
legal advice.) Almost all the legal officers have said that they thought there were too many
missions, they were too short, they were being undertaken for salary reimbursement and not
for professional reasons. They adduced both professional and personal (family) reasons for a
general sense that they were being run ragged. This situation has directly contributed to the
loss of one legal officer and in earlier years when it was less severe it encouraged a migration
from LEGN to LEGA.
32
Shortness of missions – It is undoubtedly true that missions have become very short. Although
a short mission can occasionally be very useful, it is more likely to be either an attempt to do
a job in too little time or to be a sort of decorative appearance at a workshop commemorating
the real work that has been done by somebody else. It is recommended that the latter
occasions be avoided in favour of prolonging the former.
From the discussions with legal officers, it seems that one of the main reasons for short
missions is not lack of money in a project but over-programming of LEGN involvement. This
can only become more severe if posts are further reduced. Corrective action is needed.
Short and frequent missions are not necessarily imposed on the legal officers. They
themselves take on more work than they can do and then do their best to squeeze everything
into the available time. They need to join together in a concerted effort to get more approvals
for the use of international consultants, avoiding excessive programming of staff time. The
Service as a whole has to turn down projects that it cannot carry out properly. This means, in
particular, that where an international consultant is required for a TCP proposal and approval
cannot be obtained, the proposal should be allowed to die. It is recognized that this goes
against a long tradition. Another cause of excessive programming of staff time is the fact that
LEGN cannot influence the schedule of approval and implementation of TCP projects. As a
consequence, legal officers are unable to foresee over-programming in time to avoid it.
Prioritization – The question of subject-matter priorities has come up repeatedly and it has
been put off repeatedly since long before the review period. To some extent this will solve
itself if certain subject-matter expertise is not available in the coming biennium. How greater
stubbornness about consultants will affect the subject matter of approved projects is
unpredictable.
APOs supervision – A final personnel issue that only partly belongs here is the supervision of
APOs. The experience of APOs including those recruited as long as ten years ago and now
serving as legal officers has been uniformly positive. It can also be said that the experience of
LEGN with APOs has been equally – or even more – positive. One reason that the
programme has worked well is the relationship between supervising officers and APOs. The
younger colleagues have had well-directed initiation into the work of the Development Law
Service and the complex network of FAO. They have had intensive training in the branches of
law they were assigned to and progressively taken on full responsibilities as legal officers.
The current weakness in the APO experience is that they are too frequently left to themselves
at the beginning. They are not always given serious assignments with close review to begin
with, they are not always introduced to the technical officers they should work with and they
often go on missions all alone with neither a legal mentor nor a technical colleague. These are
bright and resourceful people or they would not be here, but they do need support at the start.
One of the problems of too few legal officers and too many missions is too little attention paid
to the APOs. With the transfer of one of the legal officers dealing with fisheries, the surviving
one has an over-full field programme, secretaryship of the Appeals Committee and two APOs
to supervise. This is too much.
One APO for a legal officer is already a full job, especially at the beginning. Ideally, an APO
would be assigned to work in any area where two legal officers were active, even if not both
full time. The consequence for the future is that it is not recommended that any attempt be
made to replace missing regular programme officers with APOs, although if they can be
33
properly supervised they continue to make a valuable contribution to the work of a very busy
office.
2.2.2 Quality of output
Ratings – The quality of output is almost indistinguishable from the quality of personnel. At
least on the surface, the quality of reports and drafting is universally appreciated with over 90
per cent of FAORs and national authorities rating them good or excellent. Only one of the
open questions brought forth severe criticism of an output, and this was the work of a national
consultant who simply did not finish the job. A team of two national consultants working in
parallel on a binational project was not considered very good, and their reports were only
rated “fair”. The lack of a Spanish-speaking FAO fisheries lawyer was noted in this
connection, but the English-speaking legal officer was rated “excellent”.
Quality of reports and legal drafts
Don't know
Bad
Fair
2%
0%
4%
55%
Good
35%
Excellent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Chart 7 – Rating the quality of reports (results of FAORs’ and national respondents’ questionnaires)
Lack of time – It is implicit in the responses from this group, as well as in the comments of
legal officers and consultants, that a number of projects are carried out with insufficient
personnel time for thorough consultations and analysis. This is not easy to spot in a report or
draft; it is more often revealed when reviewing a draft with the drafter, who occasionally has
to admit a lack of local factual or legal basis for a provision. In fact an attempt to find a badly
drafted text or an insufficient report has not produced one. The criticized reports of the two
national consultants working in parallel do not appear to be bad at all, and the suggestions of
LEGN for their improvement were carried out.
Collaborative work – There are a growing number of projects in which the FAO output is not
so easily identified, being the contribution of one or more experts to a national team that
produces a final draft. The drafts themselves can be criticized as less well crafted than what
FAO is used to producing, but that does not mean that they are not suitable. The national
process certainly brings more local knowledge to bear on the issues and the fact of having had
participation may lead to better national acceptance of the recommendations. The kind of
drafting that can be done by committee is perhaps another issue, but in countries where it is
established practice, the drafts that emerge are likely to fit into the existing body of law well
enough.
34
Workshops – Dissatisfaction with some workshop participation has been reported
occasionally in relation to discontinuity of personnel (switches between legal officers or
consultants during project implementation), or to lack of participation from LEGN
(participation not provided for in project formulation).
Peer review – The degree to which the legal officers review each other’s work is uneven.
Some are more eager reviewers and more talented editors than others, there is the problem of
availability and it is probable that some officers are not eager to have their work reviewed.
None of them admits to this, however. It is worth mentioning in this connection that one
advantage of the Development Law Service is that it brings together lawyers working on a
variety of subject matters who can share experience and insights, much as occurs in an
academic setting. One widely appreciated publication of LEGN in 2002 brought together
those various experiences and drew out cross-cutting themes and lessons learned. The staff
cuts, the over-programming of missions and the general over-work may be leading not only to
less time available for reviewing each other’s work but also to less ferment and knowledgesharing which has traditionally characterized LEGN and made it a unique source of expertise
and experience.
2.2.3. Cost effectiveness
Meeting the demand – Up to the present the Development Law Service has been squeezed by
FAO rules and budgetary practices on the one hand and professional pride on the other to
respond to practically all requests for legal assistance by offering technical assistance with – if
possible – some international legal expertise. The cost-effectiveness of this can be viewed in
several ways.
Quality and credibility – First, if legal advice is to be offered, it is hard to avoid the
responsibility for the quality of the advice. FAO has a lot of credibility, so the chances of a
country’s embarking on an unwise course on the basis of mistaken advice from FAO are quite
high. Being aware of this both as professionals and because of explicit country expectations,
LEGN has consistently insisted on selecting highly qualified staff and consultants. When
hurdles were placed in the path of hiring international consultants, LEGN made a
considerable effort to find consultants that would accept the partnership conditions. This has
not been very successful as most qualified consultants, even from TCDC countries, will not
perform international consultancies for partnership rates. Those that do are not readily
available as they invariably accept better-remunerated consultancies when these are offered.
A constant, intensive search for new partnership consultants is not possible with the resources
of LEGN’s limited staff. The result of sending unknown consultants on mission is also less
efficient than sending known ones. It is hard to use known competent consultants because of
FAO policies and also because fewer are now available due to their non-use over the last
decade. They have gone elsewhere and the ones that would have replaced them, in the course
of normal renewal, were never approached.
Shortcomings of the partnership programme – Two results of difficulties in using the
partnership programme and in getting international consultants approved have been an
enormous loss in flexibility in the field programme and a great increase in time spent on
seeking candidates and approval. Flexibility would – and did – allow both efficient project
administration and the best use of the scarcest resource, legal officers. Time wasted in new
35
approval procedures is time directly taken from assistance to countries. The money saved on
partnership honoraria is insignificant compared to these costs.
Salary reimbursement – Another influence on the way work has been conducted is the need
for salary reimbursement in order to maintain the legal staff, in which more than ever the core
competencies reside. Projects and numerous missions have been taken on in order to balance
the budget. Other activities that might be equally useful must take a back seat to project work.
In particular, it is not feasible to dedicate time to producing (and updating) materials that
could be used by countries to do their own legislation. For reasons of cost and bureaucracy, it
is also not feasible to make rapid visits when a very specific task might produce significant
effects, such as review of a bill that is about to be submitted to parliament. (If the bill can be
stopped, TCP fast-track procedures can allow and have allowed a timely if not entirely rapid
response.)
Non-project assistance – The approach to non-project assistance is further analysed under the
review of the other programme entities, but its essential relationship with technical assistance
should be borne in mind. At this point it is recommended that, if the conditions (staff time and
professional interest, ability to use consultants or to find partnership consultants) for the
delivery of appropriate legal technical assistance do not exist, a project not be pursued and as
far as possible, helpful materials and references be offered instead.
Regional versus country approach – A last point to be underscored is the cost-effectiveness of
regional legal assistance projects. Although national legislative problems often require
tailored solutions, regional projects may be of help in developing compatible national
solutions in a given geographical or political area. However, experience has shown that
regional projects are only effective when proper time and funding are provided, and in most
cases, the upper financial limit of TCP projects does not allow for these. Where such
resources are not available, it is suggested that regional assistance be dropped in favour of a
country-specific approach.
2.3. Impact
Long-term outcome – It is extremely difficult to determine the impact of LEGN technical
assistance in the short term. By its nature, legislation takes time to be enacted, more time to be
implemented and more time after that to be evaluated. In all of these lapses of time
governments can fall and other conditions can change in ways that may render the assistance
irrelevant or at least interrupt the progress from drafting to effective implementation.
As the following questionnaire results indicate, the technical assistance outputs are generally
considered useful by recipients:
36
Usefulness of outputs
Don't know
Bad
Fair
2%
0%
6%
53%
Good
35%
Excellent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Chart 8 – Rating the usefulness of outputs (results of FAORs’ and national respondents’
questionnaires)
2.3.1. Lack of follow-up
Related assistance – One of the frequent remarks of FAO Representatives and national
authorities is the need for continuation of legal assistance right through to the submission if
not the enactment of legislation. In the structure of TCP this is usually impossible, although
several examples exist in Latin America of legal officers’ explaining proposed legislation to
legislatures. The series of Dutch-financed projects in Mozambique has effectively carried
assistance from legislative formulation through to training of enforcement and judicial
personnel. The efficiencies of conducting more than one project in a country have been noted
by several legal officers, but short of a resident donor, this usually only happens by chance.
One benefit of longer missions would be to allow a legal officer or consultant who happened
to be in a country for a succeeding project to undertake some follow-up work of this sort.
Information on output use – The other lack of follow-up is the inability to find out what has
happened to LEGN recommendations. This is difficult without visiting the country as
personnel changes soon render email and telephone calls useless for this purpose. And in
many cases this is not part of the routine duties of FAO Representatives, although they are the
natural resource for this purpose.
37
Was there any follow-up to the
legal assistance provided?
Don't
know,
25%
No, 13%
Yes, 62%
Chart 9 – Identifying whether there was any follow-up to the legal assistance provided (results of
FAORs’ and national respondents’ questionnaires)
The consequence for the purpose of the evaluation is that the impact of projects conducted
during the period under review is impossible to assess systematically.
2.3.2. Acceptance of recommendations
Acceptance – The starting point for impact is the acceptance of recommendations by the
relevant ministry. The questionnaires turned out to be very useful in indicating a rather high
level of acceptance in a short time (see above). Three-fifths reported that the government had
“followed up” the legal assistance (the form of follow-up was not always specified) and very
few reported no follow-up. Interestingly, even those responding from within the country did
not know what the reaction was to a fourth of the projects. Knowing that in some cases
governments have taken ten years to enact legislation proposed by FAO, acceptance of the
recommendation is a positive sign even if there are no signs of legislation for a few years.
Implementation – One of the significant impediments to proper government follow-up of
legislative assistance is the difficulty many of them find in drafting the necessary regulations.
One of the assumptions of projects seems to be that the government presented with a suitable
draft law will have no trouble preparing the regulations. Where this is not borne out there are
two main reasons. One is lack of interest in effective implementation, not confined to FAO
projects. Laws without regulations are not rare in the world. Another reason is the genuine
difficulty of drafting regulations. With the tendency of modern laws to lay out a framework
and leave significant details to regulations, the drafting of the regulations becomes
increasingly important and increasingly complex. Some that are not legally challenging are
technically complex. In either case, it is likely that a government that wanted assistance to
prepare the law will want assistance to prepare the regulations, and failing the latter may end
up with nothing but an unimplementable report containing proposed draft legislation. As a
matter of project design, it has already been recommended that regulations be included in the
scope of legislative projects. Interestingly, the 1999 evaluation made the same
recommendation and TCP seems to have adopted the same view.
38
2.3.3. Suggestions for follow-up
As noted, sustained follow-up seems a natural role for FAO Representatives who have
continuing contacts with the Ministry of Agriculture in the country. At least in those countries
with an FAO Representative, this could improve follow-up of legal recommendations. The
1999 evaluation of TCP projects suggested that the FAO Representative convene a meeting
following a project in order to encourage the government to indicate its follow-up intentions.
Curiously, a similar provision is already included in the TCP Guidelines, without any
noticeable effect. It seems unlikely that LEGN can do much to affect this situation.
2.4. Conclusion
LEGN’s technical assistance is unique in its field and it fills a growing need. Its greatest
weakness is not in design or execution but in diminishing resources. This is puzzling if FAO
is trying to evolve to meet the needs of its members, because there is little doubt of the growth
of this need or of the programme’s success in meeting it.
The quality of the work remains very high, the appreciation of its beneficiaries equally so. If
the resource problem cannot be solved, the recommended course is to retain the quality at the
cost of reducing the quantity and, necessarily, the scope of technical assistance.
This is also recommended in order to avoid a serious problem of overwork of the legal
officers. To the extent that it is reflected in frequent travel, this is more stressful than
overwork in the office and risks serious consequences for morale, quality of work and
retention of staff.
The recommended reduction in field work by legal officers will generally mean less salary
reimbursement, although some recovery can be made through additional SSTS payments for
supervising consultants and constant attention to recovering reimbursement of headquarters
work that is programmed into TCP projects. It is still inevitable that reimbursements will
never fully compensate the cost of technical assistance. In the long run, therefore, technical
assistance cannot exceed a certain proportion of regular programme resources.
3. Programme
entity
313P1
Dissemination of Legal Information)
(Collection
and
Programme entity outputs – This Programme entity has two principal products, FAOLEX and
publications. There are also two online products that are hosted by FAOLEX, namely
FISHLEX and WATERLEX, and two others that have been created by the Development Law
Service in cooperation with the Fisheries Department (National Aquaculture Legislation
Overview) and with WHO (Water Law and Standards), both of which are refer to FAOLEX
for legal texts. Another series of country studies is currently being prepared in collaboration
with IUCN on customary water rights.
Programme entity rationale – The overall rationale for this programme entity is to collect,
create, analyse, organize and disseminate information that will assist the improvement of food
39
and agricultural law. Printed publications are the traditional way of doing this, but web-based
products, including both databases and online publications, are rapidly displacing print for
many purposes. They also allow new kinds of products, such as database-driven online
publications.
Publications – The publications programme has achieved complete online availability of
current publications since 2000. A new series, Legal Papers Online, which began in 1998 and
included six papers by the end of the 1990’s, has added 43 in the six years under review.
Twenty legislative studies, of which two first appeared as papers online, have been published
since 2000, and all were issued in both printed and electronic form. Some of the older
legislative studies have also been made available electronically. Two other “papers of legal
interest” are available with some effort on the publications site.
Databases – FAOLEX has grown from 5 000 pieces of legislation online at the beginning of
2000 to almost 46 000 today. Each year more than 5 000 new texts are selected, indexed,
abstracted and entered. Furthermore, FAOLEX has broadened its country and language
coverage, as well as its scope, by adding five new topics related to environment in view of the
merger with ECOLEX. The FISHLEX database replaces the publication Coastal State
Requirements for Foreign Fishing, first produced in 1981, and consists of summaries of
relevant legal provisions organized by country and subject (e.g. fees, gear, penalties).
WATERLEX is a pure FAOLEX product, essentially selecting the international water
agreements in FAOLEX.
3.1. FAOLEX
3.1.1 Design
FAOLEX is designed to provide online access to the full texts of food and agriculture
legislation worldwide6. The main targets of the database are governments, practitioners, nongovernmental organizations, policy experts, libraries and academic institutions. It is a
comprehensive research tool which can be used to identify the state of national laws on
natural resource management and, at the same time, to compare legislation in different
countries. The database is kept up to date through information received from member
countries or discerned from other sources. Obtaining new legal texts as they are enacted
is often an extremely time-consuming task, which includes the use of national focal points
and research on the web. One of the shortcomings of the updating process is the scarce
collaboration of some national governments in providing new texts to LEGN.
Language coverage – FAOLEX provides a trilingual (English, French and Spanish) keyword
and category search. The titles of legislation and an abstract are given in one of the three
languages and the full text in its original language. Where a translation is available, that is
also provided. For a few countries, only translations are provided.
6
FAOLEX offers access to legislation, regulations and international agreements in 16 different areas related to
FAO’s fields of expertise.
40
3.1.2 Merger with ECOLEX
The IUCN Environmental Law Centre has long indexed and abstracted articles and legal texts
in the area of environmental law, a service called ELIS. In partnership with Kluwer
publishing house it also published International Environmental Law – Multilateral Treaties.
IUCN and UNEP began a collaboration to create ECOLEX, which would be an online version
of ELIS and the treaties. FAO was invited to join after the first phase and decided to do so
based on the substantial overlap between the coverage of FAOLEX and ECOLEX. It also
appeared that IUCN and UNEP had the ability to secure financial contributions for the work,
whereas LEGN was solely dependent on its own regular programme.
3.1.3 Implementation
3.1.1.1 FAOLEX
Development and use – FAOLEX has grown rapidly, although considerable energy and
resources have been drawn off for tasks connected with the merger with ECOLEX. The table
below shows the number of new texts introduced each year. Many other records are also
amended.
The service is widely used, although the number of actual users and the use they make of
FAOLEX are not well known.
Maintenance – The cost of FAOLEX has been maintained at a very low level through heavy
reliance on a corps of loyal, hardworking technical authors working under personal service
agreements. The figures for the technical authors are given below. The software consultancy
costs are in the adjacent column.
Year
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005*
Records
(number)
3 600
5 445
4 738
4 990
8 002
5 717
FAOLEX
Technical
Software
authors ($)
update ($)
92 818
7 500
147 098
10 855
119 816
7 880
190 550
18 321
176 259
0
156 733
24 570
ECOLEX (FAO’s costs)
Training ($)
Consultants ($)
Travel ($)
7 673
0
0
0
19 000
3 049
5 019
16 008
4 881
3 788
4 234
0
9 601
* At 30 September.
Table II – FAOLEX and ECOLEX costs, 2000-2005
The established staffing of FAOLEX is currently limited to one G-7 database manager, a P-2
legal officer (approximately at one-third time) and a G-2 clerk (half time), costing $155 000
as follows (2005):
G7
P2 (1/3)
G2 (1/2)
99 144
31 360
24 438
Table III – FAOLEX staff costs in 2005 (in $)
41
Questionnaire responses – There are several problems with FAOLEX as currently operated.
The coverage is not as broad or deep as it should be both because of the lack of financial
resources for indexing and abstracting and because of the unavailability of specific language
skills. Half of questionnaire respondents found the quality of the abstracts good, but the
quality is very uneven, in part due to the poor command of a working language of some of the
technical authors, also due to the lack of an editor and the lack of time for supervision. The
search function is cumbersome, but apparently users usually find what they are looking for.
The few respondents to the questionnaire reported success and so did interviewees in other
divisions. A telling comment was that FAOLEX was no worse than other FAO databases. The
lack of a more direct search function for those who already know what they are looking for
(instead of having to go through so many layers) was regretted.
How useful is FAOLEX?
Indifferent
5%
Not very
useful
11%
Very useful
35%
Quite useful
45%
Chart 10 – Rating how useful FAOLEX is (results of FAOLEX users’ questionnaires)
How user-friendly are the search
features?
Complicated
and
inefficient
24%
Don’t know
0%
Easy to use
and efficient
29%
Easy to use
but
inefficient
16%
Complicated
but efficient
33%
Chart 11 – Rating how user-friendly the search features are (results of FAOLEX users’ questionnaires)
42
How often do you find what you’re
looking for?
Most of
the time
42%
Hardly ever
5%
Sometimes
38%
Often 21%
Chart 12 – Identifying how often users find what they are looking for (results of FAOLEX users’
questionnaires)
Suggested action – FAOLEX needs to improve in order to remain successful. In part it must
improve because the standards of other databases are improving and people’s patience with
old-fashioned and very technical ones is decreasing. It also needs to improve because of the
increasing availability of online legal information from national sources. The main
weaknesses are the uneven quality of the abstracts and the difficulty of search. The abstracts
are not used very often except where the language of the text is not understood, in which case
they are important. It is recommended that editors be hired on contract to revise the abstracts
by language groups and that $10 000 to $20 000 a year be made available for this purpose.
Steps are being taken to simplify the search interface and to allow full-text search with
Google, which will speed up the query for users who already know what they are looking for.
Further streamlining is a question beyond the technical competence of the evaluation team,
but it does appear that various commercial databases are more user-friendly, although they are
less technical. In any case, constant technical updating is part of a database – it must remain
part of the budget.
Staff resources – FAOLEX cannot improve or even keep going very long with the current
staffing. The technical authors are part-time external contractors who cannot be used for
supervisory tasks. The database manager needs a full-time person simply to carry out routine
supervision and administration and to replace the manager when she is not there. While it is
not enough, it is strongly recommended at least that the half-time General Service staff
member be assigned full-time to FAOLEX. The FAOLEX legal officer should also spend
more time on FAOLEX, but it is difficult to see how this will be accomplished given her other
duties.
3.1.1.2 ECOLEX
Current status – ECOLEX has not been a success so far. The ECOLEX website cannot
effectively search the different databases. The IUCN ones (literature and treaties) are not on
web-compatible software.
The exchange of data has not been very successful either. FAO has sent 700 treaties to IUCN,
but only 200 have been inserted into ECOLEX. UNEP has contributed nothing in terms of
43
information and only its one-third share of certain expenses (see table above, right-hand
columns), which do not include any of FAOLEX’s costs. UNEP has spoken of a judicial
database, but it has done nothing to get it started.
Some things have been accomplished. A common keyword and indexing system has been
developed, largely by FAO with IUCN. IUCN has made a decision in principle to adopt ISIS,
the basis of FAOLEX’s software.
Suggested action – It is very nearly the time to decide whether to continue with ECOLEX or
not. There is great difficulty in collaborating with IUCN, as there would be with any
established service. The theoretical advantages are significant, but the burden on the
minuscule FAOLEX staff is unsustainable without some real return.
The return needs to come in two ways. IUCN needs to integrate its databases into an
ECOLEX platform and step up its rate of record entry. UNEP needs to make a real financial
contribution, which would allow FAO to reduce the disproportionate financial burden it bears.
Without both of these, FAO would be better off alone or with other partners for particular
activities.
Other partnerships – FAOLEX has demonstrated a good ability to attract partners for regional
activities, including parts of UNEP not directly involved in ECOLEX (Balkans, Africa).
Discussions are proceeding with UNESCO and the University of Rome for future projects. It
is recommended that similar possibilities continue to be explored, whether or not ECOLEX
continues.
3.2. Publications
3.2.1. Design
Information dissemination – Within the overall aim of the programme entity, publications
have been designed for several purposes. One is simply to disseminate information, usually
on legislation. Examples are the series on forestry law in different countries (Legislative
Studies No. 66, 72, Legal Papers Online #10, 23, 28, 30, 37, 42, 46). A second kind of
publication analyses important global issues, for example Intellectual Property Rights in
Plant Genetic Varieties (Legislative Study No. 85). Yet another reports on specific legal
developments in one or a few single countries, such as participatory forestry in Mongolia
(Legal Paper Online #46).
Manuals and guides – A final kind of publication, which is becoming increasingly important,
is a manual or guide to legislation in a particular field. For many years there have been
publications with such titles as Plant Protection Legislation, Pesticide Registration
Legislation, Seed Legislation (Legislative Studies No. 16, 28, 51). These publications usually
contain many examples of existing legislation with a fairly brief analysis of approaches to the
issue. A manual or guide, on the other hand, is designed to provide more thorough analysis of
the issues confronted in the reform of legislation with or without model provisions or
extensively reproduced examples.
44
Examples – The first of the modern series of manuals or guides to legislation is a series on
water regulations that, instead of being translated, has been prepared in separate English and
French editions, reflecting the distinct legal traditions as well as the languages (Legislative
Studies No. 69, 80). An Explanatory Guide to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic
Resources for Food and Agriculture was published by IUCN but largely funded by the
FAO/Netherlands Cooperative Programme and mainly supervised by LEGN. Two other
publications in press are Perspectives and Guidelines on Food Legislation, with a New Model
Food Law (Legislative Study No. 87, written and published by LEGN) and Forest Law – A
Manual for Sustainable Development (mainly written by the Development Law Service, to be
published by the World Bank). All of these are designed for government officials, lawyers
and development professionals concerned with the review and reform of legislation.
3.2.2. Implementation
Publication rate – The rate of publication has been uneven from year to year, but that is
mainly because a major publication may represent more than a year’s work, so the date of
publication is not as significant as the period of work. Annual publication rates for Legislative
Studies have ranged from zero to six or seven (depending on how translations are counted).
Legal Papers Online have appeared at an annual rate of between three and eleven. Some of the
Legislative Studies had appeared in whole or in part as Legal Papers Online. The list of
Legislative Studies, Legal Papers Online and the two other papers available on the website are
attached in Annex II.
Language coverage – Most of the 20 Legislative Studies, as well as the Guide to the Treaty
mentioned above, are in English. One is only in Spanish, being a different version of the study
on water administration that first appeared in English. One study has appeared in three
languages, and another (Intellectual Property Rights in Plant Varieties) which was published
in English is now in press in French and Spanish. Two others have been translated from
English to French and Spanish respectively. The other papers and the Guide to the Treaty are
only in English.
The Legal Papers Online show more variety. Forty-three have been posted. One is trilingual
(Trends in Forestry Legislation: Western Europe), one originally in English has been
translated into Spanish (and a French version will soon appear) and the rest are in a single
language, 29 in English, 11 in French and three in Spanish.
The choice of language depends largely on the language of the author, which may in turn have
national or regional reasons. The reason for translations has more often than not been the
availability of additional funding. Another factor, which is illustrated in the series on water
regulations, is the link between language and legal systems. This makes it desirable to
produce a separate edition for civil law and common law systems, rather than a simple
translation.
45
Language coverage of legal papers and
publications 2000-2005
French
22%
Spanish
13%
English
65%
Chart 13 – Language coverage of legal papers and publications, 2000-2005
Subject matters – The subjects of publications in the period under review have included every
relevant field except trade (for which a Legislative Study is under way). Forestry has seen
twice as many publications as water, the next most prolific field. Proportionally more of the
forestry papers were of the less formal, online variety. Water had a distinct lead in Legislative
Studies, with six out of the 20 published.
The choice of subject matter is not based on explicit priorities. It emerges from a combination
of perceived needs, availability of funding and a suitable author, and the interests and
availability of legal officers.
Number of studies by subject matter 2000-2005
25
Legal
Papers
Online
20
Legislative
Studies
15
18
10
4
6
5
7
6
3
0
4
3
3
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
e
th
ad
al
Tr
he
al
y
im
og
ol
An
hn
ec
ot
od
fo
o
Bi
g
Ri
t
ht
t
od
en
Fo
m
on
vir
En
nd
La
ts
&
an
re
Pl
tu
life
ul
ild
ric
W
Ag y &
r
st
re
Fo
s
ie
er
sh
Fi
er
at
W
Chart 14 - Number of studies by subject matter, 2000-2005
46
1
Hard copy distribution – The distribution of publications is opaque, to say the least. Official
distribution of Legislative Studies should account for about 630 copies of English editions,
and a typical print run is only 1000, so it would seem that few are needed to meet requests.
Yet, for several studies, the number of copies actually distributed is lower than 630. This
suggests that distribution figures are not totally reliable. To the extent that distribution is truly
official, it is doubtful that many copies reach lawyers, the most likely readers. The
discretionary distribution, based on requests or the initiative of legal officers, is much more
likely to reach a real readership. About the most that can be said of the distribution of
Legislative Studies is that Gender and the Law (2002) has been a best seller. Mountains and
the Law (2002) and several water publications have also had a higher than average
distribution.
Online distribution – Web statistics could have been useful to assess the use of electronic
versions of publications and papers. However, the information currently made available by GI
is relatively useless because of the ambiguity of the criteria on which it is based. For instance,
it is hard to discriminate between what has been viewed at a glance and what has been
actually downloaded. Furthermore, information officers were unable to extract statistics over
the time span under assessment due to software upgrading being carried out. No significant
conclusions could be drawn from the raw data (per month) obtained for 2004 and 2005.
Interviews with colleagues in other parts of FAO and in other organizations suggest that the
publications are used, largely for further distribution. It does not appear that our interlocutors
have time to read much. LEGN publications are also requested in the course of technical
assistance. Suggestions from both development law professionals and end users often dictate
the choice of titles. It can be said that the assumption about the direct usefulness of guidelines
and manuals is based on the frequency of requests for this kind of literature.
Citation analysis – Citation analysis is a tool to count the number of citations of a given piece
of work in other publications. It could have given us insight as to the contribution of LEGN’s
normative work to the development of thought in FAO’s fields of expertise. Unfortunately,
the available tools did not give remarkable results. The main reason for this failure is the
discontinuation of the Library’s subscription to the two most reliable citation analysis
systems, namely Web of Science for academic journals, and Scopus, which has broader
literature coverage – including a small number of books – but on a more recent time frame.
Free systems such as Google Scholar (which searches online resources), Proquest (which
searches journals, newspapers and magazines) and open-access repositories may well be used,
but search results have been poor due to a discrepancy between the system’s coverage (mainly
focused on academic literature) and the specific readership of FAO legal papers and
publications. Indeed, like most FAO literature, LEGN’s publications have a peculiar target
that includes policymakers, technicians and lawyers. Thus, the actual readership exceeds the
scope of available citation analysis systems.
Quality – The quality of publications can be judged by direct evaluation and by reader
surveys. The survey produced positive responses, but the number of responses (23) was very
low and most of those that responded had some relationship with LEGN, including being
authors of the papers. The outside interviewees tended to judge the publications by their title,
not by their contents. If a title fell within the area of their interest, they tended to be aware of
the publication and to refer others to it. In the course of the evaluation, a number of
publications have been read and found good, but this is not very objective. Since the
47
Development Law Service is in direct touch with the developing countries that are the
eventual audience, however, it is not a bad measure.
Editing – One aspect of quality that seems to be in decline is final editing. One of the online
papers had to be withdrawn for editing; the author of a legislative study has complained about
the poor editing of his work and the person responsible for final layout and editing has
complained about the impossibility of doing an adequate job when all publications arrive a
few days before the annual deadline. Legal officers have in the past contributed editing time
to publications but with overwork and over-programming of missions this may no longer be
possible, which may raise the need to use financial resources to hire external editors to fix
final manuscripts.
3.2.3. Recommendations
Model laws and manuals – The possibility that well-crafted guidelines and manuals can be a
cost-effective complement to the technical assistance programme entity suggests added value
that should be exploited. Although great difficulty has been experienced with model laws and
with manuals in the past, this has stemmed mainly from the unsuitability of models to more
than one situation or legal system. This can be partly overcome through focussing more
narrowly on a set of circumstances. For example, guidelines or models could target particular
institutional structures (e.g. the forthcoming publication on food law contains three models,
one for a single agency, one for multiple agencies and the third for a hybrid system); address
implementation of treaties where there is not much scope for national variation (e.g. the PIC
procedure for chemicals and pesticides); or analysing international agreements affecting only
a discrete area of law (e.g. Legislating for Sustainable Fisheries, published by the World
Bank, 2002, examines the FAO Compliance Agreement and the UN Fish Stocks Agreement).
It should be kept in mind that such publications are actually effective only when they
available in the language of the country where it must be used.
Another approach is to prepare a guide for a single legal system. This has been done in the
area of water regulations, and the popularity of the work (as far as can be known despite the
doubts about distribution expressed above), suggests that it is a fruitful approach.
Practical experience – It will not be possible to produce a manual for everything. Attempts to
prepare guides to legislation have failed because of inexperience on the part of authors
attempting to write a general work about an area where they had little practical legislative
experience. Several failures to write a manual on forestry law betrayed this problem. It is
recommended that this be avoided by limiting the contribution of interns and research
assistants to this sort of publication. It really has to convey the experience of LEGN and its
senior consultants in order to provide useful guidance.
Deadlines – The rush to publish at the end of the biennium may be avoided if the policy to
restrict paper publication is carried far enough. Online publications avoid this because they do
not depend on interdivisional funds transfer. It is also recommended that separate internal
deadlines for each publication be established by management action.
Newsletter – A good way to improve the distribution of publications is to inform likely
readers of their appearance. Plans are underway to compile an electronic mailing list in order
to inform current readers of new publications. It is recommended that this be pursued.
48
Online information services – Another important information product with a role in the
distribution of publications is the Legal Office website. Active since 1997, it underwent a
successful revision in design and content in 2002 with no budget resources. It is suggested
that it be given a new focus by moulding the structure around the work produced. This would
include sections on papers and publications, databases and technical assistance projects. A list
of ongoing projects will soon be published online. Other information will have to be routinely
collected from legal officers about their ongoing activities. A one-time consultancy would be
needed to set up the overall structure, as staff have the skills to ensure maintenance and
updating.
However, adding new content to the website might be problematic due to understaffing in the
service, since the content (most of the website is available in English, French and Spanish) is
provided by the legal officers themselves.
3.3. Database-driven information products
Partnership – The Water Law and Standards database is another example of the difficulty of
partnership. WHO and FAO agreed to combine their interests and expertise, one in water
standards, the other in water law, to create a combined database (as well as a publication that
is due next year). They essentially split the cost of software and each undertook to prepare its
part of the information. A group of fifty countries was selected as the first batch. FAO hired a
software consultant who created a database programme and graphics for the database. FAO
went ahead in 2002 and 2003 and prepared a complex set of abstracts of the relevant
legislation with links to the texts. WHO has yet to produce any standards information, but it
has contributed significant funds for the book. In the meantime, the Water Law database is a
convenient way quickly to compare the water laws of different countries on a number of
parameters.
Other databases – FISHLEX is a similar product to the FAO part of Water Law and
Standards with similar virtues. WATERLEX lacks the laborious abstracting and analysis of
the other two databases, but it produces good results using the existing FAOLEX keywords.
Some other database-driven publications have been published, such as the one on aquaculture
legislation (NALO), or are under way, such as the one on regional port state control measures
in fisheries.
Tentative approach – It is difficult at this stage of experience with web-based publications
and specialized databases to draw any conclusions. In principle, creating specialized databases
using FAOLEX keywords should be cheap and easy. Treaties are relatively few, of a standard
legal type and usually in an international working language, so the existing information in
FAOLEX furnishes good results. Where more detailed information that may not be
keyworded in FAOLEX is wanted, some more work is clearly called for. Where the legal
texts are in languages that the user would not be likely to know, either abstracts or translations
would be needed. The only conclusion that seems clear is that publications that need frequent
revision should be online and not on paper.
Assets of FAOLEX – As an overall recommendation, FAOLEX is a unique and valuable
service that needs all the resources that can be provided. It is the basis of much legal research
in food and agriculture law. For comparative law, it is equally valuable for the law of
49
developing and developed countries. The coverage of developing countries is not very
complete, but there are relatively few other sources of information. For developed countries,
there are many legal websites, but they do not permit a comparison of relevant legislation in
the field of food and agriculture. If the merger with ECOLEX succeeds, this will increase the
value of the service with similar virtues and a greater range.
Conclusion – Experiments need to continue with specialized databases and web-based
publications. They offer superior updating and distribution to paper documents, and those that
can be based on FAOLEX to some extent will realize corresponding efficiencies.
4. Programme entity 313A1 (Support to the Development
of a Regulatory Framework for Food and Agriculture)
PAIAs – This has proved to be an impossible programme entity to evaluate because so much
of its output is already dealt with under 313P1, in particular, publications. Some of the
activities also fall into 313S1 (Technical Assistance). A distinct area of activities that partly
justified the creation of 313A1 with the 2002-03 biennium was interdepartmental
collaboration, typically but not exclusively through the various PAIAs. The PAIAs are now
under discussion and possible reorganization, but they do not seem to have fulfilled the role
originally intended for them. In LEGN the work of the PAIAs has been almost entirely a
function of extra-budgetary funding. They have practically none of their own, and few of the
participating divisions could spare a contribution without harm to their core programmes. As
a consequence, the flourishing of PAIA activities was either financed externally or did not
happen. There were however some exceptions to this: most of LEGN work on climate change,
organic agriculture and mountains was done through PAIAs, with hardly any funding
provided to LEGN by the respective PAIA.
Normative work – There is still a significant area of activity to be accomplished in this area
which is not covered by any of the traditional technical assistance, publications or information
categories. This is basically the “thinking” that produces publications (and web-based
products), that informs the technical assistance programme and that is counted on to create a
group of guides, manuals and related products that is more directly focussed on law-making
than traditional publications. As noted earlier, the ferment and knowledge exchange that occur
through the existence of the Development Law Service are a unique resource.
Implementation of international law – The relationship to international instruments in the
description of this programme entity is not accidental. One of the clearest needs for guidelines
is in the implementation of agreements that frequently have similar consequences for large
groups of countries. One of the likely future areas where LEGN will be called upon to do
more is the servicing of governing bodies of FAO agreements where LEGN’s technical
experience can be particularly useful. Examples are the International Plant Protection
Convention (IPPC), the Rotterdam Convention, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic
Resources for Food and Agriculture and the recommendations of regional fisheries bodies.
Non-project assistance – At the same time, LEGN should not exclusively focus on the
implementation of international instruments. There is far greater demand for support to all
food and agriculture legislation than can be supplied through technical assistance. This
50
programme entity will need not only to produce the materials that help meet that demand, but
also to invent or discover new ways of meeting it. This may be reflected in databases,
publications, training courses or other forms.
5.
Conclusion
The Development Law Service continues to offer a unique and highly appreciated service in
support of food and agricultural legislation. It is one of the FAO programmes with the clearest
comparative advantage. It also is suffering one of the deepest reductions in its most important
resource, its staff. This is a loss that will cause long-term damage, forcing the neglect of
important areas and requiring years to repair even if resources should grow in the future.
Within the current resources, it can safely be said that nothing is wasted. In fact the problem is
just the opposite: too much is being done with too few people. The legal officers are being
exhausted with frequent missions and too many projects to supervise. They are suffering and
the supervision of APOs is suffering. The staff and non-staff personnel of FAOLEX are
stretched beyond their safe limits. At the same time criticism is made that the website should
have professional design and that services and achievements should be advertised. On top of
this LEGN is expected to provide the secretary of the Appeals Committee. This appears to be
an impossible situation.
5.1. Implementation issues
5.1.1. Cost-effectiveness
The need to match income and expenditures has affected implementation of the programme in
a perverse way: the scarcest resource, the professional staff, is used most liberally in order to
generate revenue through salary reimbursement. At least two more cost-effective methods of
serving members’ needs have been relatively neglected. Consultants have been little used in
recent years because of FAO rules making it difficult to use them. And manuals and model
drafting guidelines have been under-emphasized.
There has been a remarkable increase in the use of legal interns and paid researchers, and
methods have been developed to ensure that both are used productively. Interns now average
three months, a period that allows them to produce significant work. A number of former
interns are employed as researchers and authors where they develop expertise in development
law issues and contribute original independent work, as well as research that assists other
authors. The rules prohibiting hiring volunteers as consultants for six months after their
internships has placed further barriers in the way of retaining the best interns for the benefit of
FAO and capitalizing on their knowledge gained during their internships.
The relative neglect of manuals and model laws is only in part accidental. Historically the
Development Law Service professionals have opposed the use of model laws as failing to
meet the criteria of suitability for a real country. Their non-legal colleagues have been
relatively enthusiastic, on the other hand, going so far as to prepare their own models (see the
51
Model Food Law) and disseminate them despite the known opposition of the Development
Law Service. This has probably increased the legal officers’ hostility to model laws. Manuals
or guidelines have come about in part as a response to external requests for model laws. More
flexible and more reasoned than a simple model text, they still promise to be useful in
situations where the Development Law Service cannot participate in law development.
For legislative manuals to be really useful, they have to be informed by broad law-making
experience as well as a good command of the technical area. Where the professional staff is
heavily engaged in technical assistance, it is unlikely to have much time to devote to manuals.
Experienced consultants can very well be used for this work, but their number is limited as
well. Interns and research assistants cannot supply the knowledge that their more experienced
elders would bring to the work. This will need to be reviewed in light of finances, staff
preferences and the real demand for such material.
5.1.2. Use of short-term staff
Many of the “short-term staff” of programme 313 are long-term non-staff. The FAOLEX
technical authors are the backbone of the database, and their accumulated experience is of
crucial importance to the quality of FAOLEX. At least three researchers also fall into the
longer-term category, even though they all have limited contracts, frequently paid by external
sources, and do other things from time to time.
The APOs are true short-term staff, and this quality affects implementation of the programme
in several ways. One of course is that they start with little practical experience and, especially
important in FAO, no knowledge of their colleagues in other divisions. These limitations
should not be exaggerated, however. The APOs during the period evaluated have all been
very successful at delivering practical advice in the field and at introducing themselves to the
technical divisions with which they must collaborate. In many cases they are so successful
that the colleagues in other divisions are not aware that the new legal officers are APOs.
In practice ways have been found to lengthen the terms of APOs. Most of them have been
retained for a third year either with donor financing or on regular programme posts. Three
serving APOs are in their third year and one short-term legal officer recently completed 12
months on regular programme funding, following two and a half years as an APO. Two of the
current legal officers (one in LEGA and the other in LEGN) were APOs. Two of the most
used legal consultants were APOs.
Still, professional staff with ten and twenty years of experience in development law is an asset
that cannot entirely be replaced. Much of the reputation of the Development Law Service
outside FAO is based on the work of the older staff. People assume that there is intellectual
and qualitative continuity between the older and younger staff and accept the younger staff on
that basis at first. It is not possible to set precise formulae for the ratio that should exist
between youth and experience, but it is clear that supervision, mentoring and external
relations need to be provided by older staff for the young ones to thrive, and these functions
all take time.
By unscientific observation it seems that no legal officer can do justice to more than one
APO, so the current five APOs are probably near the limit for the long-term staff of seven
52
legal officers. If there is further reduction in the number of long-term officers, it will be hard
to do justice to the APOs that might be expected to take up the slack.
5.1.3. Comparative advantage
The comparative advantage of the Development Law Service was seen in the 1999 TCP
evaluation as inhering in the expertise of its legal officers and that of its “stable” of regular
consultants. A further element that is equally important is the ability to work in a team with
non-legal experts at FAO. Other parts of the international community lack one or the other of
these elements.
The gradual destruction of the consultant team through the deliberate policies of FAO is a real
loss to the Organization and to the member governments that benefited from the consultants’
services. They have not been able to be replaced by partnership consultants of the same
quality and availability. Some of LEGN’s better legal consultants have found other
employment with competing organizations.
The inability to use consultants freely has forced the legal staff of LEGN to undertake more
projects directly. In light of the limitations on staffing, this has led to shorter and shorter
missions, an increased reliance on national consultants – many of whom have not produced
adequate work – and a tangible if not measurable loss in quality of legal advice.
Even with less ability to deliver precisely the expertise required, FAO still has a significant
advantage in delivering the mix of legal and other advice required to face the problems that
governments have. Interviews with the technical divisions that collaborate with LEGN have
made it extremely clear how important is legal advice delivered as part of an overall advisory
package.
From the questionnaire responses, the objective or neutral character of FAO’s legal advice
was ranked highly, in presumed contrast to other sources of advice. This is one of the areas in
which national consultants are weakest.
The core of experienced technical authors and the existing database of FAOLEX make it very
hard for any other similar service to compete, although as national databases improve, there
will be less reliance on FAOLEX for country-specific legislation.
The ability of the Development Law Service to build on its field experience for practical
manuals as well as analytical literature is unique. This gives the publications prepared by legal
officers and consultants a rare authority in the development law field.
5.1.4. Prioritization
The current budgetary outlook is unknown, but already in the present biennium limited
resources have affected implementation of the technical assistance programme entity. This
will likely be a more pressing matter in the future and should affect programme design.
A near-term decision that will have to be made is the emphasis to be given to trade law.
FAO’s trade law expertise currently resides in two APOs who are due to complete their
53
service in 2006 (after three years and two and a half years respectively). It is an area of
growing significance, but with staff limitations, a permanent trade lawyer may mean the loss
of other expertise.
Land law is also under pressure with the departure of the only real expert in land law. There
are not many land law projects in FAO, but land law literally underlies forestry and
agricultural law.
With another departure at the end of 2005, forestry law is now almost completely uncovered.
Water law is another area where the technical assistance programme is much smaller than the
importance of the subject. To some extent this has been balanced by the flexibility of the
senior water lawyer, who has undertaken advisory work at a high level in other fields as well
as maintaining a significant output of water law publications.
A second sort of prioritization concerns the balance between field and headquarters work by
the legal officers, and the length and number of field missions. Legal officers have expressed
their sense that missions are now two short for proper advisory quality and too numerous for
normal life. There does not appear to be a real limit on the length of missions under TCP
financing, so the real issue is whether to fail to respond to some requests in order to spend
more time on others, or to respond in a different manner, and what requests those should be.
This is inextricable from decisions on the subject matters in which to maintain expertise.
5.2. Recommendations
The most urgent recommendation that emerges from the review is the maintenance of
financial resources at least at the level of the 2004-2005 biennium. There are no serious costcutting measures that can be identified. The staff is already stretched beyond the breaking
point – one legal officer has already transferred to avoid excessive travel, and the efficiency
of short, frequent missions is proving less than hoped. FAOLEX is suffering from insufficient
staff in relation to non-staff collaborators. Any reduction will not only exacerbate these
situations, it will also eliminate areas of competence.
There are some recommendations that can be carried out by LEGN and the Legal Office as a
whole. Many have been already mentioned individually and they are set out below in relation
to the budget. If the budget is significantly reduced, of course, implementing these
recommendations will be like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
5.2.1. Actions that can be taken without significant financial cost
During the preparation of this auto-evaluation several modest suggestions were put forward
which can be undertaken without significant cost. First, a paper on coastal zone management
has been on the computer in room A440 since 2003. It needs to be updated, reviewed, edited
and published. Second, the preparation of a new aquaculture study has been envisaged lately,
but the project has been abandoned with the transfer of the responsible legal officer. It should
be resumed before long to take advantage of the numerous essays and case studies that have
been published in the meantime.
54
Finally, a folder for reports to governments should be created in the legal registry which
should contain only copies of reports to governments so that these can be found without going
through every project file. This would also alert LEGN to cases where the report has not been
filed anywhere.
5.2.2. Structural changes between 313 and 124
The legal officers of LEGA have made extremely valuable contributions as technical advisors
in the field programme of LEGN. One of the LEGN officers has spent one-third of her time
on LEGA work and another third on the overall Legal Office budget management. The
technical advice is reimbursed under normal procedures; the LEGA work is not reimbursed,
since there is no external financing as there is for a project. In the future, it may be that some
of LEGA’s work with FAO treaty bodies can be efficiently performed by LEGN officers with
the appropriate technical experience. For that to work, it will be necessary that time spent on
LEGA work by LEGN officers be compensated by regular programme contributions from
LEGA officers, in particular project management. Otherwise both delivery and quality of
programme 313 will fall.
This will require clear understandings of responsibilities, time required and scheduling
requirements of both LEGA and LEGN obligations. If this can be worked out and adhered to,
there should be gains in staff flexibility and in work satisfaction among those with interests in
the work of both services.
5.2.3. Adjustment of work in 313
There is a pressing need for the reduction of the advisory duties of LEGN staff. Because of
both the stress of frequent voyages and the observed loss of quality in abbreviated missions, it
is suggested that most of the reduction be in the number of projects in which staff are
involved as advisors. This will mean either an increased use of international consultants or the
inability to respond to some requests or both.
With the elimination of one legal officer’s post at the end of 2005, LEGN remains with seven
posts, including the Chief of Service. Two of these posts are now vacant. Among the five
remaining officers, one is tightly constrained by being secretary of the appeals committee,
having to supervise two APOs and having no other legal officer assigned to his field
(fisheries) and another spends two-thirds of her time on non-LEGN work7. This currently
leaves about three legal officers and five APOs to work on technical assistance. Aiming at an
average of two months duty travel per legal officer per year, and missions of two to three
weeks (usually two missions per project), the number of projects that can be carried out
annually by regular staff (including the two vacancies but not APOs) is less than 10. The
amount of ATS reimbursement at TCP rates (now $393 a day on a seven-day-week basis) that
can be recovered for the mission time would be less than $140 000. SSTS payments would
7
It is also notable that there is a long tradition of LEGN involvement in the staff association and on staffmanagement bodies. During the period under review, one LEGN officer was General Secretary of APS (granted
30% time off by AFD), another was Deputy General Secretary and a third, General Member Without Portfolio.
Three LEGN officers are currently serving on APS's Statutes and Procedures Committee, one serves on the Joint
Committee on Food Services and one was appointed by the Director General to the Investigative Panel on
Harassment.
55
also decline, assuming that fewer projects would be approved and implemented. That
amounted to $38 000 in 2004, which was a more normal year than 2005 because of a change
in reimbursement procedures in 2005. If SSTS is reduced to $25 000, the total income from
projects might not exceed $165 000. In 2004 the comparable figure was $332 000.
That included $15 000 for editorial work from the World Bank and $6 750 from the
sustainable livelihoods programme for ten days of headquarters work. Only the latter amount
was repeated in 2005, although smaller amounts of deskwork were also compensated. It is
likely that some income such as that for sustainable livelihoods could be realized in the future,
even if it were not as regular as project reimbursements. If the recommendation to focus on
manuals and guidelines is followed, it is possible as well that the secretariats of FAO
agreements (IPPC, Treaty on Genetic Resources) would be willing to compensate some of the
staff time required. A maximum of $20 000 per year might be aimed for through this means
and by more aggressive charging for office work in support of field projects. That would still
leave a shortfall of $147 000 compared to 2004.
This amount can only be made up for by transfers from the overall FAO budget or by a
further reduction in staff equivalent to one legal officer. If this is necessary, it is
recommended that the reduction be made.
It is not likely that LEGA staff, which will also be squeezed, can travel more, and in fact the
recommendation is not that they do that, but that they contribute to project management. They
would also reap a greater share of SSTS, possibly enough to return SSTS income to the Legal
Office as a whole to the 2004 figure.
With a reduction in project income, staff will inevitably be reduced. The consequence should
be a narrower range of technical advice because of less subject-matter and linguistic breadth
in the staff, but a maintenance of the quality of technical advice.
56
Annex I
Summary of recommendations made by PBEE in the 1999
Evaluation of TCP projects with legislative component and status of
their implementation
The 1999 evaluation was based on the review of 31 projects. During the previous 6 years,
more than 100 TCP projects had a legal component.
Follow-up – Legal assistance projects have slow implementation due to national
shortcomings. To facilitate the adoption of laws and regulations, FAO should improve closure
procedures and follow-up. The lack of final project reporting is lamented and terminal
statements are considered insufficient for this purpose. The report recommends a post-project
wrap-up meeting within 2 months from the NTE date, to be chaired by the FAOR. The lead
technical unit should prepare a working paper for the meeting, summarizing project
achievements and recommendations.
 Status – This has not been implemented. A similar requirement is found in the
TCP Guidelines, with little discernable effect. It seems unlikely that LEGN can
change this.
Cost-effectiveness – The low budget of TCPs makes it necessary to dedicate the resources to
the core of the project. The policy of avoiding the funding of a formulation mission should be
continued. In particular, where projects clearly meet the TCP criteria, tasks related to
clarifications in project design should be included in the first operative mission.
 Status – This has continued and is recommended
Regulations – In order to ensure facilitate the adoption of the draft law produced by the
project, legislative assistance projects should always include regulations from the formulation
stage. Where governments claim having the ability to draft their own regulations, this should
be assessed at project inception.
 Status – As much as possible, it has been attempted to implement this
recommendation and it is recommended that the effort continue.
Participation of locals – Two approaches are usually taken in legal assistance projects:
drafting carried out by locals with FAO’s assistance or by FAO project consultants. Both
approaches seem to be valid depending on the local situation, the final objective being
enhancement of self-reliance. Effective ways to ensure locals’ participation are the
organization of workshops for stakeholders’ consultation and involvement of parliamentary
draftsmen at an early stage.
 Status – Local participation has increased in 2000-2005.
57
Local conditions – National counterparts should be willing and stable: projects should not be
allowed to die with the replacement of the individual promoter. National bureaucratic disputes
should be solved before a project is undertaken and administrative and economic reforms
should not be in conflict with local systems.
 Status – This is accepted and has not knowingly been disregarded.
Legal component – Policy reform projects should always include a legislative component to
assess legal areas to be reformed. Where needed, the legal component should always be
included at the formulation stage.
 Status – Legal components are usually included at the beginning of appropriate
projects and it is recommended that efforts continue to ensure this.
Efficiency adjustments – Longer missions are required to fulfil project assignments and better
programming of staff availability are recommended to ensure timeliness of outputs.
 Status – This has not been implemented but it is recommended once again.
Reports accessibility – In 1999, access to reports often required consultation with individual
officers responsible for each specific project. Improvement of central record keeping was
recommended for ready availability of project reports.
 Status – A digital registry was inaugurated in 2002 and has greatly facilitated
retrieval of documents. It is recommended that it be improved by adding a separate
“reports” file.
58
ANNEX II
LEGN publications, 2000-2005
(E/F/S) English, French, Spanish
FAO LEGISLATIVE STUDIES (TOTAL: 20)
2005
No. 87 – Perspectives and guidelines on food legislation, with a new model food law
Jessica Vapnek, Melvin Spreij
No. 88 – Legal and institutional aspects of urban, peri-urban forestry and greening
Lidija Knuth
No. 89 – The legal framework for the management of animal genetic resources
Antonella Ingrassia, Daniele Manzella, Elzbieta Martyniuk
No. 86 – Groundwater in international law
Compilation of treaties and other legal instruments
Stefano Burchi, Kerstin Mechlem
2004
No. 85 – Intellectual property rights in plant varieties (E/F/S)
Laurence R. Helfer
No. 84 – Land and water: the rights interface
Stephen Hodgson
No. 83 – Legislating for property rights in fisheries
Christine Stewart
2003
No. 82 – Administrative sanctions in fisheries law
Philippe Cacaud, Michele Kuruc, Melvin Spreij
No. 81 – Administración de derechos de agua:
Experiencias, asuntos relevantes y lineamientos
Héctor Garduño (aportes de Mario Cantú-Suárez, Pablo Jaeger, José Reta, Ana María Vidal)
No. 80 – Preparing national regulations for water resources management:
Principles and practice
Stefano Burchi, Ariella D’Andrea
59
No. 79 – Legislation on water users’ organizations: A comparative analysis
Stephen Hodgson
No. 78 – Law and modern biotechnology
Selected issues of relevance to food and agriculture
Lyle Glowka
No. 77 – The right to adequate food in emergencies
Lorenzo Cotula, Margret Vidar
2002
No. 76 – Gender and the law – Women’s Rights in Agriculture (E)
Lorenzo Cotula
No. 75 – Mountains and the law – Emerging trends 2002 (E/F/S) 75
Annie Villeneuve, Astrid Castelein, Ali Mekouar
No. 74 – Legal trends in wildlife management (E/S)
Maria Teresa Cirelli
No. 73 – Law and sustainable development since Rio:
Legal trends in agriculture and natural resource management
2001
No. 72 – Trends in forestry law in Europe and Africa (E/F)
No. 71 – Fisheries enforcement
Related legal and institutional issues: national, subregional or regional perspectives
Erik Franckx
No. 70 – Water rights administration. Experience, issues and guidelines
Hector Garduño
LEGAL PAPERS ONLINE (TOTAL: 43)
2005
# 49 – El papel de la legislación forestal y ambiental en países de América Latina para la
conservación y gestión de los recursos naturales renovables
Franz Schmithüsen
# 48 – Legal and institutional aspects of urban, peri-urban forestry and greening:
A working paper for discussion
Lidija Knuth
60
# 47 – Tendances du droit forestier en Afrique Francophone, Hispanophone et Lusophone
Justine Texier, Bocar Kante
# 46 – Improving the legal framework for participatory forestry:
Issues and options for Mongolia with reference to international trends
James Wingard, Jon Lindsay, Zoljargal Manaljav
# 45 – The interface between customary and statutory water rights – A statutory perspective
Stefano Burchi
# 44 – Funding options for agricultural development: The case for special purpose levies
Jim Fingleton
# 43 – Effectivité de la protection de la biodiversité forestière en République Démocratique
du Congo: Cas du Parc National des Virunga (PNVI)
Christol Paluku Mastaki
# 42 – Etude comparative de la mise en oeuvre des plans fonciers ruraux en Afrique de
l’ouest: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire
Hubert M. G. Ouédraogo
2004
# 41 – Le droit forestier en afrique centrale et occidentale : analyse comparée
Stephane Doumbé-Billé
# 40 – The legal regime for the control of invasive alien species (IAS) in Ghana
George A. Sarpong
# 39 – Legal frameworks and access to common pool resources
Jonathan Lindsay
# 38 – Legislation for veterinary drugs control
Jim Fingleton
# 37 – Comparative analysis of forest laws in twelve Sub-Saharan African countries
Volker Kohler, Franz Schmithüsen
# 36 – Land and water – The rights interface
Stephen Hodgson
# 35 – Essai de présentation des tendances d’évolution du droit pastoral en Afrique de l’Ouest
Ibrahim Ly
2003
# 34 – Contribution du droit à la lutte contre la délinquance et la corruption dans le secteur
forestier: approches conceptuelles
Patrice Talla
61
# 33 – High Seas Boarding and Inspection of Fishing Vessels:
A discussion of goals, comparison of existing schemes and draft language
Eugene Proulx
# 32 – Water as a Vehicle for Inter-state Cooperation: A Legal Perspective
Kerstin Mechlem
2002
# 31 – Intellectual Property Rights in Plant Varieties: An Overview with Options for National
Governments (E/S)
Laurence R. Helfer
# 30 – Regional Study on Pacific Islands Forestry Legislation
Jim Fingleton
# 29 – Port State Control of Foreign Fishing Vessels
Terje Lobach
# 28 – Tendances de droit forestier en Afrique francophone, hispanophone et lusophone
Justine Texier
# 27 – Why Law Matters: Design Principles for Strengthening the Role of Forestry
Legislation in Reducing Illegal Activities and Corrupt Practices
Jon Lindsay, Ali Mekouar, Lawrence Christy
# 26 – Law Making in an African Context: The 1997 Mozambican Land Law
Christopher Tanner
# 25 – Ukraine: The Continuing Dilemma of Land Rights of the People
William Valletta, Volodimir Nosick
# 24 – A Global Instrument on Agrobiodiversity:
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Ali Mekouar
2001
# 23 – Forestry legislation in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Outlook
FAO Development Law Service
# 22 – Reforma agraria : La experiencia Cubana
José M. Garea Alonso, Lic. Mario La O Sosa
# 21 – Tendances d’évolution du droit de la faune et des aires protegées en Afrique centrale
Aenza Konate
# 20 – Droit international de la faune et des aires protégées: importance et implications pour
l’Afrique
Stéphane Doumbé-Billé
62
# 19 – Projet de loi sur les marais au Burundi
Souad Loulidi, Mohamed Ali Mekouar
# 18 – Legislation Governing Shrimp Aquaculture: Legal Issues, National Experiences and
Options
William Howarth, Romualdo E. Hernandez, Annick Van Houtte
# 17 – La Ley Forestal de Cuba: Su Importancia y Repercusión
José M. Garea Alonso
# 16 – Le droit à l’environnement dans la charte africaine des droits de l’homme et des
peuples
Ali Mekouar
# 15 – An Overview of National Forest Funds: Current Approaches and Future Opportunities
Jonathan M. Lindsay, Kenneth L. Rosenbaum
# 14 – Climate Change and the Forestry Sector: Possible Legislative Responses for National
and Subnational Governments
Kenneth L. Rosenbaum
# 13 – Tendances d’évolution du droit de la faune et des aires protégées en Afrique
occidentale
Ibrahima Ly
2000
# 12 – Legal Framework Analysis for Rural and Agricultural Investment Projects: Concepts
and Guidelines
FAO Development Law Service
# 11 – Completing the Transition: Lithuania Nears the End of its
Land Restitution and Reform Programme
William Valetta
# 10 – Trends in Forestry Legislation: Western Europe (E/F/S)
Maria Teresa Cirelli, Franz Schmithüsen
# 9 – Establishing a Water Abstraction Scheme: Issues and Options
Jessica Vapnek
# 8 – Pacta Tertiis and the Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation
and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks
Erik Franckx
# 7 – Satellite Based Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMSs) for Fisheries Management –
International Legal Aspects and Developments in State Practice
Erik Jaap Molenaar, Martin Tsamenyi
63
OTHER PAPERS OF LEGAL INTEREST (TOTAL: 2)
1. Creating legal space for community-based fisheries and customary marine tenure in the
Pacific: issues and opportunities, 2004
Blaise Kuemlangan
2. Internationally shared (transboundary) aquifer resources: Their significance and sustainable
management, a framework document, 2001
Shammy Puri (editor), Bo Appelgren, Geo Arnold, Alice Aureli, Stefano Burchi, Jacob
Burke, Jean Margat, Philippe Pallas
64