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August 30, 2013April 1, 2014

Summers in International Development: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

August 30, 2013 – Sarah Weiner

This past summer, I worked for the Legal Transition Team (LTT) at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). LTT is a small unit within the Office of the General Counsel that focuses on legal reform in the countries where the Bank operates. EBRD is unique among development banks for its emphasis on developing the private sector, so LTT’s overarching mission is to encourage reforms that promote investment and the growth of small and medium enterprises.

My work fell in the public procurement sector and primarily consisted of helping my supervisor complete a region-wide assessment of procurement legislation. Broadly speaking, a public procurement law regulates the procedures through which governments award contracts to private entities and thus sits at the front lines of curbing corruption in many countries. In my role, I analyzed each country’s procurement law with the help of an objective questionnaire that identifies whether each law contains the elements of the benchmark set by LTT. I then produced graphs illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of each law with regard to several categories, such as transparency and efficiency.

The most interesting part of my internship was communicating those results to government officials in each country and working with them to ensure that our data was accurate and fully reflected the progress of recent reforms. I can’t imagine another summer job where I would have gotten exposure to such a variety of different legal systems and had the platform to communicate with (and be heard by) so many different governments. Although the vast majority of my communication with government officials was done over the phone, the highlight of my summer was meeting with representatives from Tajikistan in person, as they happened to be in London for a conference. Navigating that meeting reminded me of one of the reasons I sought out an internship in international development—discussing the law with someone from a different culture, background, and legal system from your own makes your work that much more challenging and interesting!

In short, my internship at EBRD exposed me to the ways international organizations engage in policy dialogues with governments to promote legal reform. Further, I was included in office-wide meetings discussing EBRD policies, initiatives, and challenges and got an overall sense for the way a multilateral development bank operates—all while meeting and working with interesting people from all over the world!

August 1, 2013September 22, 2013

World Bank Attorneys Host LIDS Members for Summer Lunch Discussion on Corruption Enforcement

August 1, 2013 – Daniel Holman

This summer, LIDS members working in DC sat down to lunch with attorneys at the World Bank. HLS alum and LIDS Advisory Board member Cid Butuyan and two of his attorney colleagues discussed their work with the Bank’s Integrity Vice Presidency, the division of the World Bank that investigates reports of misconduct and administers sanctions against firms that engage in corrupt behavior. The role of multilateral lenders in shaping anti-corruption norms is a cutting edge area of law – The Economist recently reported on the past year’s uptick in enforcement actions – and was a topic of conversation at LIDS 2012 symposium on Corruption and Development. At the lunch, LIDS members learned about the career paths that led attorneys to the Bank and about the interaction between the Bank and their interaction with lawyers working on the finance side of the Bank and in the private sector.

(Image courtesy of World Bank Photo Collection. Some rights reserved.)

June 30, 2013September 4, 2013

LIDS White Paper accepted for publication by ABA

During the 2012-2013 academic year, LIDS commenced its first White Paper project led by Maryum Jordan and Delphia Lim. The team consisted of the following students from Harvard Law School and the Fletcher School: Kwabena Acheampong, David Donatti , Patrick Kibbe, Jose Vicente Santos de Mendonca, and Melanie Reed. The White Paper, entitled “Access to Remedies for Public Harm Caused by Foreign Public Bribery: Proposals for Legal Reform in the U.S.,” investigates compensation options for corporate public bribery, with a particular focus on the harm faced by the public in developing countries. The paper spotlights the proposition that remedies for this type of public harm should be provided by the home states of the corporate perpetrators. After examining the current international and American legal frameworks on corruption, the paper explores two ideas for promoting more robust victim’s compensation under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The first idea considers mechanisms for redistributing the fines collected from FCPA violations and the second considers an amendment to the FCPA to include a private right of action for foreign plaintiffs.

After the White Paper was drafted, it was accepted for publication by the American Bar Association’sCriminal Justice magazine. Criminal Justice is published quarterly for the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section–members include defense and prosecution lawyers, judges, and academics. The published White Paper will be available in the Fall 2013 edition.

October 11, 2012April 1, 2014

Summers in International Development: Vilnius, Lithuania

October 11, 2012 – Daniel Holman

For summer following my 1L year, I worked with the European office of a U.S. staffing and business services company in Vilnius, Lithuania. Building in part on connections to the Lithuanian-American community, the company had recently found success in expanding to Europe by recruiting IT professionals in the Baltic to provide services U.S. and Western European companies. Beside the opportunity to go abroad and experience an in-house legal department’s perspective, the legal underpinnings of the cross-border investments and trade in services on which that business depended was an added point of interest. In addition to reviewing contracts and other work from the headquarters in Detroit, I spent much of the summer interacting with Lithuanian business and government leaders to understand the benefits and challenges of attracting and managing foreign investment. Lithuania’s position as something of a crossroads nation–both geographically between east and west, and developmentally in the way it has built an advanced economy while still in wake of rapid social changes following independence in 1991–make it an interesting place to observe and think about how globalization plays out in different corners of the world. It was also a reminder that development doesn’t just happen in the global south, but within individual countries and regions, and that opportunities for growth and development in one area may shape and be shaped by events far afield.

If you have any questions about Lithuania, in house work, or how any of this actually relates to development, don’t hesitate to contact me at dholman@jd14.law.harvard.edu.

September 16, 2012August 23, 2013

LIDS Team Presents Paper on New Developments in Whistle-Blower Protection at the World Bank

September 16, 2012 – Phil Underwood

This summer, members of the Harvard Law and International Development Society (LIDS) presented a paper at the International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA) conference in Washington, DC. The conference, sponsored by the World Bank, brought together anticorruption officials from all over the world, including World Bank’s Regional Governance and Anticorruption Adviser Lisa Bhansali, the conference moderator. The LIDS team worked with Alexandra Habershon from the World Bank’s Coordinator for the International Corruption Alliance and Integrity Vice Presidency.

Over the course of the spring semester, LIDS team members Connie Sung, Gisela Mation, Nico Palazzo, Phil Underwood and Sushila Rao worked together to develop a paper based on a series of case studies on whistle-blower programs around the world. These case studies showcased both newly-implemented and existing policies and mechanisms on whistle-blowing. These mechanisms have been designed to encourage whistle-blowers to come forward with information surrounding public-sector corruption, and offer them protection after doing so. LIDS studied whistle-blower programs in countries across the world, specifically India, Peru, Bhutan, Morocco, and the United Kingdom, as well as a mechanism implemented by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), a regional organization in eastern Africa. Case studies specifically analyzed the institutional and legal structures of these programs and their impacts on broader corruption policy.

Some highlights of the case studies include:

a new SMS- and voicemail-based system to accept complaints of illegal exploitation of mineral resources in the Kivu province of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo;
Project VIGEYE, a crowdsourced system offering citizens multiple means to complain about corruption throughout India, and a fully digitized system for keeping track of such complaints;
new legislation on whistle-blower protection in Morocco, which includes provision for hiding of complainants’ identities by marking down false addresses and using voice-obscuring technology in testimony;
a comic book published by the Peruvian Controloría Generalto boost awareness of their whistle-blowing and anti-corruption efforts; and
- a series of recent rules promulgated by the Bhutanese Anti-Corruption Commission covering, among other things, debarment of corrupt firms and the making of gifts to public officials.

In keeping with the broader themes of the ICHA program, which is “focused on the introduction of new approaches such as crowd sourcing and citizen engagement” to the fight against corruption, the case studies investigated the role of technology on whistle-blowing policy. Many regions in the developing world lack the communications infrastructure that is common in North America and the EU, so policies must take into account the need for alternative methods of making complaints, especially the use of mobile phone technology. Ideally, countries around the world will be able to adopt these new mechanisms for the promotion of whistle-blowing in cases of public-sector corruption, and the limitation of corruption.

The LIDS team also benefitted from the aid of (and would like to thank) World Bank corruption experts and national authorities, and its supervisors, Harvard Law School Professor Philip Heymann and Christelle Dorcil of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Other speakers at the event included Carla Salazar, General Secretary for Peru’s General Comptroller; K. Subramanian, Officer on Special Duty for the Central Vigilance Commission in India; and Hari Mulukutla, Consultant to GIZ for the Regional Resource Governance Project in West Africa.

September 10, 2012April 1, 2014

Summers in International Development: Legal Resources Centre, Cape Town, South Africa

September 10, 2012 – Phil Underwood

LIDS’ very own Co-VP of Projects, Megumi Tsutsui spent her summer in Cape Town, South Africa, where she worked at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC). In her work as a Chayes fellow, she compiled a research report involving the small-scale mining sector in South Africa. Please read her blog post here for more information on her experience and her work.

Also, please check this blog in the near future for more LIDS members’ experiences working in international development as part of their summer activities.