NEW YORK, April 03 (Online): In the United States the University of Washington's Law School Seattle has won a $2 million State Department grant to help war-ravaged Afghanistan rebuild its legal profession.
The school's Asian Law Center, which has vast experience working with Islamic countries, beat out six other law schools to operate the three-year program.
In a country where the rule of law has essentially vanished, this kind of help is desperately needed, U.S. government and Afghan legal experts said.
Under the program, the UW will bring as many as 20 Afghan scholars and master's-degree candidates to the Seattle campus to study and research aspects of international and American law.
The faculty members - most of whom will be linked to Kabul University - will return home after a year to help train the Asian country's next generation of legal minds. "This potentially could be very significant for the future of Afghanistan," said Jon Eddy, program manager.
Afghanistan had endured more than a quarter-century of war before the United States invaded it after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In December, a group of senior Afghan lawyers and judges, speaking before the U.S. Institute of Peace, characterized the condition of the country's legal
system as bleak.
Many of the courts don't have buildings in which to operate, they complained. Afghan legal experts consider many judges to be unqualified, and defense attorneys are rare.
Virtually nothing has been done to establish and apply qualifications for judicial personnel, develop court administration, or address deep-rooted corruption in the government.
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