São Paulo – Five Brazilian lawyers will take part in an exchange in Sudan, an Arab country in North Africa, in November. The initiative is part of a partnership that the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) has with the Sudanese Bar Association. The OAB’s Federal Council promotes this kind of cooperation through the International Relations Commission. The aim is for lawyers in the country to learn about the legal universe in other nations and for foreign to understand a little more about the Brazilian reality in the area.
The Brazilians to visit Sudan in November will be José Ricardo dos Santos Luz Júnior, Lucas Mendes de Freitas Teixeira, Maria Ticiana Campos de Araújo, Olivia Alves Barbosa and Rafael Barreto Souza. They were selected due to their curricula after a national call to all lawyers in Brazil, according to the international press department of the OAB’s Federal Council. They will remain in Sudan from the 1st to the 22nd of November.
In the Arab country, the lawyers will have internships at law firms and will learn about the higher instances of justice, among others. On their return, they will write reports so that the experience may be passed on to other Brazilian lawyers and so that they, according to the press department, may become promoters of the information they collected. The exchange is sponsored by the Sudanese Bar Association and by the Embassy of Sudan in Brazil.
The trip is retribution to the cooperation programme signed with Sudanese lawyers in Brazil in September last year, organized by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), an organisation connected to the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty). Five professionals visited the country for 18 days, and also had internships at law firms in different states, learning about the operation of the Judiciary, including the Supreme Court of Justice and the Federal Supreme Court, in Brasília.
The OAB has this kind of cooperation with several countries, like France, and also with African members of the Union of Portuguese Speaking Lawyers. The organisation is also discussing establishment of similar partnerships with the United Kingdom. According to the international press department, programmes like this also allow countries to learn from each other. In the case of exchange with the Africans, one of the facts that called the attention of participants, for example, was the operation of the Union’s Public Defence, a department that provides legal assistance to citizens. The initiative should also favour assistance to international organisations in Brazil, as there will be more professionals with knowledge of the laws of the country they visited.
*Translated by Mark Ament
