Pursuant to a Decree of Turkmenistan’s President, adopted in November 2007, the process of improving national legislation has started in Turkmenistan.

The main objective of this work is to revise the existing legislation and legal norms, to amend and modify existing laws and increase their efficacy, to adopt new laws, and eventually to bring the national laws in compliance with international and European standards.
A Programme for the improvement of national laws was also adopted for the period of 2008 – 2012. This work was prompted by the lack of uniform interpretation and application of national laws in legal practice.
According to the Constitution the legislative system reform is aimed at assuming international norms and rules and the use of the experience gained in the sphere of interstate economic relations and international standards with regard to international trade, transport and transit. The need to improve the international legal services standards and administrative staff training is an immediate priority recognised by the Government of Turkmenistan. The current development of the countries’ regulatory framework is restricted also due to the lack of professional capacity in the sector.
Another important issue is the education of professionals working in the national legal sector. The Specific Objective is to support the Government of Turkmenistan in the interpretation and application of international law with specific attention towards supporting the building up of an appropriate training resource facility to enable the creation of in-country’s expertise in the area of comparative law and international practices.
The results to be achieved are twofold:
– Elaboration of a Training Resource Facility aimed at addressing the capacity gap in international law and practices in Turkmenistan: updating and upgrading the level of concerned Government structures as well as judicial/legal professionals involved in the drafting of law and implementation of international contracts/agreements, with a special focus on international law and practices (component 1);
– Elaboration of a legal explanatory dictionary to consolidate the Turkmen legal terminology and enable the extensive use of scientific and practical material to all concerned stakeholders (lawyers, judges, etc…) (component 2).