The “Legicambodia” database
What is Legicambodia?
On the model of Légifrance, “Legicambodia” lists and translates the various existing Cambodian legal texts (laws, regulations, reports) as well as international treaties and conventions that Cambodia has adopted or ratified.
Legicambodia is a multilingual legal instrument with a search engine in three languages: French, English and Khmer that meets accessibility requirements to facilitate searches for both practitioners and citizens. This database is currently regarded by legal experts as the most advanced database to date as being the only one to offer citizens the possibility of Khmer intelligent and ergonomic search.
This legal database will be online soon.
Why a legal database in Cambodia?
Currently, Cambodian citizens lack information and knowledge on legal texts (laws and regulations) because of the absence of a real legal database understandable by people without legal training. Moreover, in order to improve the legal sector, it is necessary to create an easy tool to use based on data integration by lawyers and professors, as well as the ability for law students, trainees and lawyers to access to study cases.
Therefore, in order to overcome the problem of access to a reliable legal database, accessible and available to all citizens, the Association Henri Capitant in Cambodia decided to create a comprehensive online database gathering the laws and regulations of the Kingdom of Cambodia. This database with an open-access aims to promote the transparency of laws and to make them understandable and accessible. This project will ensure the updating of the database through the addition and compilation of Cambodian legal texts, judicial decisions and thematic reports. This project will also involve the creation of a collaborative work platform that will enhance the legal database through the additions of experts and the integration of legal decisions. Legicambodia will then lead to the development and the qualitative improvement of the law and the legal sector.
Who are the partners of the Association Henri Capitant Cambodia for this project?
The RULE, first university of law in Cambodia, through the excellency of its French law branch, is one of the key partners of the project. Offering French diplomas relocated, training of the RULE constitute the vast majority of Cambodian francophones jurists. The Association Henri Capitant Cambodia aims to work in closer partnership with the teachers involved in the dual-degree programs of the RULE as well as French universities to organize conferences, seminars and training whose reports can be inserted into Legicambodia.
The team consist of students in their final year of law licenses from the RULE that will enter the data on Legicambodia. They will work from the premises of the RULE. The RULE has significant legal expertise to carry out this project, since its students and researchers are not only familiar with the LegiFrance database they use regularly, but are also able to work in three different languages (French, Khmer, English). Moreover, the RULE has demonstrated expertise in drafting thematic reports, as their students demonstrated their expertise by integrating texts in the sectoral database created for the World Bank in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce.
Therefore, the participation of the RULE is a great value to this project.
Nokor Group is the IT service provider for the “Legicambodia” project, which is to date, the first public legal database in Cambodia based on Légifrance model. With its technical expertise and various experiences, Nokor already created a collaborative management platform for an association, containing a document management module that can also host the Legicambodia database.
What is the expertise offered by the Association Henri Capitant?
The legal database Legicambodia is ready and the Cambodian Ministry of Justice is currently conducting a reflection on the modalities of its online availability. Besides the forthcoming publication of the public legal database open to all Cambodian citizens, the Association also offers, using this database, its adaptation to the needs of organizations, companies and law firms interested by developing a private database with characteristics tailored to their needs and requests.