LUMS Faculty Addresses UN Meeting

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LUMS Faculty Addresses UN Meeting

September 04, 2012

Dr. Osama Siddique, Associate Professor, Department of Law and Policy at LUMS addressed the Third Annual Legal Empowerment Asia Partnership (LEAP) Meeting held at Hanoi, Vietnam from August 27-29, 2012. Dr. Siddique was invited to share his expertise by the UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Centre (UNDP APRC), UNDP, Vietnam, and the Vietnam Lawyers’ Association (VLA). He was asked to present at the session entitled “Partnerships for Legal Entitlement” and his talk was titled “Lessons for Future LEP Interventions and the Case for Empirical Foundations for Reform Design.” The detailed presentation was followed by an hour-long question answer session that generated a very engaged debate and a rich exchange of ideas.

Founded in 2010, LEAP provides a very significant international platform for interaction and collaboration amongst legal empowerment practitioners, government representatives and delegates from civil society in the Asia region. LEAP members are invited annually to share lessons learned and identify innovative ways and means of assisting the poor and disadvantaged realise their social and economic rights. The Meeting brought together over seventy delegates from various UNDP country offices as well as academics, reform practitioners and activists from seventeen countries. Dr. Siddique was the sole representative from Pakistan.

A significant part of Dr. Siddique’s current research focuses on various endogenous and exogenous factors that contribute to legal disempowerment of the poor and vulnerable Pakistanis. The Meeting attendees were highly appreciative of Dr. Siddique’s multiple insights and prescriptions based on his diverse work in this area over the past eight years. In their closing remarks, Ms. Pauline Tamesis – Practice Team Leader for Democratic Governance and Coordinator for the Asia Regional Governance Program – UNDP APRC and Dr. Prof. Le Minh Tam, Vice President of the VLA (who also chaired Dr. Siddique’s session) specifically quoted some of the insights and lessons provided by Dr. Siddique in his presentation and praised their wide-ranging value and relevance for others working on LEP in the region.

The UNDP has invited Dr. Siddique to share his expertise in the past as well. In October, 2010, he was invited to present at a UNDP Symposium: "Non-State and State Justice Systems: Principles and Practices of Engagement" in Bangkok, Thailand where he presented on “Multiple State Systems and the Case for Non State Justice Solutions in Pakistan.”