Challenged by COVID-19, the Government of Nepal is innovating new digital solutions to bring efficiency in some its functions. The Ministry of Law Justice and Parliament Affairs (MoLJPA) on 27 September 2021 unveiled an online course on basics of law drafting. The course aims to impart basic knowledge and skills of law drafting and its processes to the entry-level professionals who will support the drafting of laws at all levels of the government: federal, provincial and local.

Officials said the course would not have been developed had they not been challenged by COVID-19 and its impact on people’s mobility.

The course was launched during the oath-taking ceremony of the newly appointed legal officers who will be deployed at federal and provincial levels. Developed with the support from the Enhancing Access to Justice through Institutional Reform Project, a joint project of the Ministry and UNDP, the online training package is expected to benefit over 2000 legal officers working at different levels of the governments across the country.

“This is part of Ministry’s efforts to adopt innovation in capacity building. The online course will provide basic skills that a legal officer is expected to acquire in order to carry out his or her duty,” said Udaya Raj Sapkota, Secretary, MOLJPA.

Phanindra Gautam, Joint Secretary and National Project Director of the project, said how COVID-19 prompted the ministry to think out of the box for innovative and digital solutions to address the new challenges. The online course, he said, is a solution that was developed mainly because of the difficult situation created by COVID. Tek Tamata, UNDP’s Portfolio Manager, highlighted the objectives of the course and shared that the number of training completion certificates obtained through this course would define the achievement of this course. More than 60 participants, including newly legal officers and all MOLJPA Official were present at the launch event.

The Royal Norwegian Embassy in Nepal and UNDP supported techcally to develop this online law drafting training course. The course contains 13 modules, eight main courses directly related to law drafting, supplemented by five additional courses, such as human rights and law-making, committee system in law-making, gender equality and law-making, treaty-making in the federal system, and legal opinion. This course aims to provide basic knowledge and skill on law drafting to legal officers who aspire to obtain basic knowledge and skill on law drafting course. To complete the course, students have to read the resource materials uploaded on the website and attempt multiple-choice questions (MCQs) test modality exams of each module.  At last, after completing the final assessment, it generates a certificate for the students.

About the Course: https://www.moljpa.gov.np/lms/login