The Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and the Libyan American Public Affairs Council welcomed participants to an invite-only Libyan Draft Constitution Analysis and Review Conference at the Atlantic Council on January 13, 2016. Conference participants analyzed the new Libyan draft constitution released by the constitution subcommittee on October 6, 2015. The conference addressed the degree to which the new Libyan constitution meets international standards for preserving democracy, freedom, transparency, and good governance.

Topics of discussion included mechanisms to enforce fundamental social and economic rights, decentralization and financial redistribution, the role of religion and Sharia, and balance of powers. American scholars and professors Sanford Levinson, Nathan Brown, Erwin Chereminsky, Zaid al-Ali, and Jorg Fedtke provided their assessment and analysis of the draft constitution. Constitutional Drafting Assembly members, including Mohamed Ben-Ruwin and Abdelkader Kadura, joined these scholars to provide a Libyan perspective.