Project assistance completion report [: regional administration of justice]

The project was implemented by the Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of the Offender (ILANUD). Achievements in the project's various components are as follows. The training component included short training sessions on criminal law topics for judges and prosecutors, specialized training for court officials on a wide range of topics, and study tours to the United States, Europe, and other Latin American countries. The advisory services component helped develop justice sector assessments throughout the region, as well as criminal justice statistics, permanent collection mechanisms for the reporting of legislation and jurisprudence, bibliographic materials, and a central database at ILANUD; additionally, country-specific assistance was provided to a host of national institutions in developing annual country plans and in designing instructional and training materials development component included the development of several new divisions (project, administrative, and advisory services, research, and training), an extension facility, a documentation center, and the contracting of long-term TA from Florida International University to assist in project design and evaluation. The project also funded programming and planning assistance by ILANUD to other regional institutions such as the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, and various special series such as contracting local personnel to coordinate administration of justice activities on behalf of USAID missions, and support for the design of bilateral projects. Quantitative outputs included 172 seminars, 61 short courses/seminars, the funding of 76 University of Costa Rica scholarships, 224 TA missions, 93 publications, the development of 129 training materials, the establishment of 7 law libraries, and the completion of various justice sector assessments. In its final 2 years, the project sought to increase ILANUD's capacity to survive beyond the life of the project. The Eleventh Amendment set strict preconditions to the disbursement of final funds -- that ILANUD begin an international search for a new director, consolidate the Advisory Board and Executive Committee, establish new bylaws (including the Board's policy review role), develop an action plan to institutionalize a permanent Board of Directors, and prepare a development strategy. When ILANUD's Director General was unresponsive to these requirements, an Interim Director began working on them, eventually giving way to a new Director General. While much remains to be done, ILANUD has continued to make progress in the 12 months since then in the areas of modernization, institutional development, and future sustainability (including a dramatic diversification of funding support), resulting in a Mission acknowledgement of its compliance with the terms of the Eleventh Amendment. Recently, ILANUD was given a mandate by the Presidents of Central America to prepare a regional plan of action and assist in its implementation. While ILANUD is not the regional center many had hoped it would become, it remains a viable institution capable of carrying out a regional program of providing TA for the region's justice sectors. Perhaps the greatest lesson learned from the project is that unrealistic expectations tend to create unrealistic goals which, in turn, cloud a balanced measurement of project results. While the project did not make regional justice sectors perfect, as its critics argue, it does seems to have made immeasurable progress in bringing the issue of justice sector reform to the forefront of U.S. foreign aid programs and to have created the conditions required for the development of most regional bilateral USAID rule of law projects currently being implemented in Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Peru. Today, Rule of Law projects form an integral part of USAID's Democracy portfolio and continue to draw upon the successes and lessons learned from this project for their development.