The Rwanda Law Reform Commission on Thursday launched its flagship programme aimed at aligning the country’s laws with regional protocols and instruments. The programme, dubbed ‘East African Community (EAC) Legislative Compliance’ intends to identify legal instruments and obligations signed by Rwanda that may require reform of the local laws before their ratification. Speaking at the launch of the programme, the Chairman of the Law Reform Commission, John Gara, said membership of the EAC has resulted into Rwanda entering into a wide range of obligations which require some changes in some national laws. An initial review conducted by the Commission identified about 250 obligations that may call for a legislative review. "From now to September we are going to go through all these obligations and identify the priority ones. However, some of them may require us to amend some existing laws, others may not require anything while there are also those that may require enactment of new laws,” said Gara.He pointed out that his office has a mandate of ensuring that Rwanda’s legislative framework is compliant with its international obligations, including those of the EAC. Opportunities "This compliance programme provides us with a huge opportunity through regional integration to achieve our national targets like Vision 2020 and the EDPRS 2,” said Gara. He added that; "on the one hand, we are seeing opportunities by taking on this new course but, again, its an obligation to us to do it.” The programme is partly sponsored by Trade Mark East Africa and, according to its country manager, Mark Priestley, for any country that would want to benefit from regional integration there is need to harmonise its laws with regional protocols. "Prioritising this programme allows Rwanda to position itself more strategically be strategic in regional integration. For example, Rwanda being a landlocked country realised that there is need to build a strong service industry; all this fits well with this new initiative,” said Priestley. He pointed out that the advantage so far is that Rwanda has a strong political will regarding regional integration and that favours the process of harmonising of local laws with regional instruments.