Week 1: Prague
Greetings from Prague! While today is wet and a bit gray from an overnight rain, even as I type these words, I can hear birds chirping cheerily and the sound of children playing in the park outside my window. After nearly a week here, I am already accustomed to this mix of sights and sounds—runners and dogs and children and families gathered on the lawn. Because CEELI Institute, where I am working this summer, offices in a beautiful villa surrounded by a public park, it feels a bit surreal to say that I go to work every morning when my office overlooks a tiered vineyard, and my morning walk is basically a stroll uphill to the villa.
Indeed, it’s hard to overstate the hospitality I have already experienced here, and this hospitality is actually part of CEELI’s model and success. In providing beautiful facilities, a place for people to stay, wonderful meals, and the picturesque (and even quiet) setting of Prague, they are able to convene lawyers, judges, activists, practitioners and others who are “in the trenches” of creating democratic processes in their home countries. These individuals come to CEELI for training, equipping, and even rest. When they arrive, they are often in the midst of difficult circumstances on the ground. I am familiar with the convene and learn model, as I have worked for organizations in the U.S. that have a similar approach, but I have never seen it done in the context of an international NGO working to bolster democracy, human rights, and judicial reform. I do not take for granted the work that it takes in providing this amount of deliberate care for each of their constituents, especially as it is a slow and steady, personal approach in the midst of a fast-paced, digital age. I look forward to learning more about the ways CEELI constituents benefit from this model, as I am already seeing that it can provide space for creativity and innovation, particularly when working on entrenched, decades-long problems.
I am certainly benefiting from the peace and quiet. After a rigorous 1L year, I feel more energized than I have in a long time, in spite of the jet lag. That said, it has not been all rest and relaxation. I hit the ground running last week, plunging into research for a project proposal on my first full day in the office. The proposal was a joint one between CEELI and IFES, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. The project is focused on bringing together local stakeholders to address unmet anti-corruption standards in several countries, as set by various international agreements. The foremost of these agreements (and standards) is UNCAC, or the United Nations Convention against Corruption. But there are other regional as well as national, in-country bodies and agreements that address anti-corruption efforts, including the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s (OECD) various regional action plans, as well as agreements that have emerged from the European Union and the African Union.
My task was to make sure that the proposal covered all of the most important of these agreements and bodies reporting on, measuring, and setting standards for anti-corruption efforts. Given that there are maybe hundreds of these agreements, I knew this task could become endless, and my initial searches coughed up page after page of reports and recommendations. But I worked closely with CEELI staff to make sure I found the agreements and oversight bodies with “teeth,” that is those that had the ability to not only make recommendations and put forward a plan, but that also had review mechanisms and accountability measures.
The interesting part about this process is that while it was certainly a labyrinthine journey of weaving in and out of documents and websites, the labyrinth did drop me off in a unified center. This bad metaphor is my way of saying that while there are endless efforts at addressing corruption, by international, regional, and national bodies, there are only a few that have proven effective, and they emerge repeatedly as reference points for the rest. In reform efforts, it appears there is certainly a temptation to reinvent the wheel, but there is also a process by which things tend to coalesce around strategies that work or a few central key players. And UNCAC, the OECD, and others IFES had already identified in the proposal were those key players and agreements that were rising to the top, to which other agreements and bodies continually referred as the standard for anti-corruption reform.
This exercise in a comprehensive review of mechanisms and pressures effectively motivating countries to address corruption was an excellent introduction for me. While I have worked in the international development field, it has been a few years since I have done a deep dive into the major international bodies and agreements, including the various departments of the UN. And I have never examined anything involving corruption or judicial reform in these bodies. So it was a good primer for me to familiarize myself with the lay of the land right off the bat. It was also encouraging to learn that even my colleagues who have worked in this field for decades are still learning about these governing bodies. This process affirmed for me that the field of international law and development is dynamic, but there are a few nodes of knowledge and influence that hold great sway. And it affirmed that I am endlessly fascinated by these bodies and how they structure reform efforts.
