Robert O’Brien will lead a symposium titled Building Justice in Afghanistan at UCLA School of Law from 12:00 – 1:30 PM.

Mr. O'Brien is the co-chair of the US Department of State 's Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan, which was launched by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in November 2007 as a non-partisan American initiative to assist the people of Afghanistan in rebuilding.

The Partnership allows law firms to demonstrate their commitment to assisting Afghans reform the judicial system in their country by funding low-cost, high-impact training projects for prosecutors, defense lawyers, women judges and other important justice-related activities.

Since it was launched, Mr. O'Brien and the Public-Private Partnership have initiated a number of programs to train Afghan prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges. Mr. O'Brien has traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the Chief Justice of the Afghanistan Supreme Court; Afghanistan's Attorney General Abdul; the executive director of the Legal Aid Organization of Afghanistan; the Afghan Prosecutors Association; and other officials to discuss how the public-private partnership could best assist in building and improving that nation's civil and criminal judicial system. Mr. O'Brien reported his findings to the United Nations at a forum held at UN Headquarters in New York.

The Partnership recently completed a 10-day training session in the United States for a group attorneys and legal defense experts from Afghanistan who traveled to the United States to discuss human rights and the rule of law. The program took place in Boston and Washington, DC, and included a day of roundtable discussions at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the state of human rights and the rule of law in Afghanistan and meetings with Department of State, Department of Justice and other governmental officials in Washington, DC , including attorneys with the Federal Public Defenders Office.

In January 2009, the Partnership, working closely with the State Department, hosted a group of prominent Afghan women attorneys and law-enforcement officials for an intensive two-week training program in California and Washington, DC. The Afghan women jurists met with high-ranking government officials and legal luminaries, such as Secretary of State Clinton and retired Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor.

More information about the Public-Private Partnership is available for download from the State Department Web site.