Week 3
This week I had the opportunity to attend the GC Resident Legal Office (RLO) Conference for the week. As mentioned in my Week 2 post, this conference only happens once every four years or so, so I was lucky to be with the Agency this summer. The conference gave me a great chance to hear from the RLOs about their experiences working on the ground with the development missions. It has also been interesting to learn that USAID actually has more Foreign Service attorneys than the State Department. With all of the RLOs in one place, I heard countless stories about missions and the legal challenges that USAID faces in its overseas posts.
Throughout the conference, we heard from a number of guest speakers representing implementation partners, Congress, and academics. Interestingly, we heard from Dan Runde who is senior vice president, director of the Project on Prosperity and Development, the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Mr. Runde is an expert on the BUILD Act (mentioned in my Week 2 post) as well as the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. I have cited a number of his papers on these topics for term papers for my Master’s classes, so I was very familiar with the policy discussion that he led at the conference. Mr. Runde recognizes the threat that the Belt and Road Initiative poses for the international development community, and I would highly recommend his papers to anyone interested in learning about the topic.
On another note, this week I also received some great news. Last summer I had the privilege of working in Indonesia through the Center for Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. I worked with scholars at Andalas University to write a paper on election law issues prevalent in the Constitutional Court of Indonesia. I blogged all about it last summer too, so if you are interested you can check out my 2018 blog series. Long story short, the paper that I wrote has officially been accepted for publication in the Election Law Journal, which is a Q1 level journal. I am thrilled to have a publication, but even more excited that my findings will be available to scholars around the world. In addition to the entire PUSaKO team at Andalas, the article would not have happened without Professor Warren and the Center for Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. It was truly an incredible opportunity, and I am very thankful for the experience.