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Legal Technical Assistance to Asia
Japan's Intellectual Assistance to Asian Nations Needs to
Include Constructing a Comprehensive System

Intellectual Assistance for Nations in Transition


To assist in constructing a legal framework, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, provided support through JICA. Nevertheless, the actual business is being conducted by a committee based in Japan. In the case of Vietnam, the committee was headed by Professor Akio Morishima of Sophia University, with various other professionals representing different areas of expertise. The selection of professionals is based upon JICA requests through the officer in charge at the Ministry of Justice, which then makes the selection. It is possible to have public prosecutors and judges as members of a committee.

Akira Tatsuki
Foreign affairs secretary
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Economic Cooperation Bureau
Technical Cooperation Division


The leadership of the committee, determines how a project proceeds. In the case of Cambodia, several different task forces have been created.
Additionally, Japan has dispatched experts to recipient countries. On a long-term basis, Mr. Shiroo Mutou, an attorney, has been sent to Vietnam's Ministry of Justice. He is proceeding with projects according to feedback he receives from the committee based in Japan.

We expect that assisting in construction of legal frameworks in Asian nations in the region will become one of the new areas of ODA technical cooperation. There is a tremendous demand from these Asian nations.
We would like to put a great deal of effort into projects such as these.
However, since the one project has just been launched, we need to accumulate the knowledge of how to best to proceed. Moreover, we need to secure human resources in order to assist others and we also must be better prepared with our support systems. In the past, Japan's ODA has mainly focused on financial cooperationsuch as constructing roads, bridges and buildings. Of course, it is important to build the infrastructure in countries which are expanding, nevertheless, we believe those intellectual fields such as the development of human resources and assisting in the development of constructing a legal framework will become increasingly important in the future.



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