The Rwanda Law Reform Commission (RLRC) has launched an online tool that will help the country’s legal fraternity and other stakeholders in monitoring how Rwandan laws comply with legal obligations to which Rwanda is party within the East African Community (EAC).

Dubbed "the East African Community Legislative Compliance Tool (EAC-LCT)”, the application was inaugurated Thursday evening in Kigali.

It is meant to help RLRC and its stakeholders monitor the implementation of Rwanda’s commitments with regard to her obligations under the EAC Treaty and other EAC legal instruments such as protocols and ministerial decisions among others.

At the launch of the website, the Chairman of the RLRC, John Gara, said the tool will help the commission achieve its mandate of reforming laws but also facilitate other members of the public with information they need to make decisions.

"The importance of the tool for RLRC is to allow us easy tracking of the compliance status of Rwanda’s commitments to the EAC and to identify obligations that have legislative implication. The tool will also facilitate RLRC to know the deadlines set for reforming laws to comply with EAC obligations,” he said.

The commission is responsible for harmonising Rwandan laws with principles that are provided for under international legal instruments ratified by Rwanda, including those under the East African Community.

In line with achieving its responsibility, the RLRC initiated a project called the "East African Community Legislative Compliance Programme” under which the Legislative Compliance Tool was created with funding from Trade Mark East Africa in Rwanda.

The Programme Manager at Trade Mark East Africa (Rwanda), Anataria Karimba, congratulated Rwanda on creating the legislative compliance tool, explaining that it’s a step forward in the development of a predictable and dynamic legal environment in Rwanda and the EAC bloc.

"Now it’s possible to determine the current state of overall compliance status of Rwanda with a single click. This is an important milestone that will influence investment in Rwanda and the region; investors can now access this information from any part of the globe as they make their decisions to invest in Rwanda,” she said.

Officials said that the tool will help RLRC to identify areas which need more efforts to expedite the legislative compliance process- because, as a web-based application, it is accessible by internet to other government institutions as well as the general public who will be able to directly send feedback.

"The major challenge that will be addressed by this system is to bring about coordination and collaboration among all stakeholders and government institutions to manage the implementation of Rwanda’s legal obligations under EAC,” said Alain Songa Gashabizi, the acting head of the department for law research, reform, and revision at the RLRC.

Experts at the commission say that joining the EAC demands compliance with a wide range of obligations.

Latest analysis has revealed that over 370 EAC obligations apply to Rwanda and have implications on the country’s legislative framework.

Out of the 370 identified obligations, the experts say, 253 were implementable obligations meaning that they were detailed and specific and did not require harmonisation to take place at the EAC level.

They also found that Rwanda has already implemented 85 percent of the implementable obligations relating to the Common Market protocol and 70 percent of all implementable obligations.

The country is also in the process of implementing another 25 percent of all the implementable obligations.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw