To kick off this year’s Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP), students participated in a three-day bootcamp with some very special visitors from Kabul: American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) law faculty members Mehdi Hakimi and Naqib Khpulwak, ALEP program advisor Rohullah Azizi, and the first graduates of the new law program at AUAF, Ali Hasanzada, Nafay Khaleeq, and Waris Hakim Syal. Each of the graduates has received a full scholarship to study for an LLM at an American law school (Ohio Northern University, Fordham University, and University of the Pacific, respectively).

“The idea for the bootcamp sprang from the hope that new ALEP members would build the strong relationships so integral to our work with AUAF at the very beginning of their ALEP experience. The weekend was a great success—the new team members all report being invigorated, inspired, and excited to continue working closely with our AUAF colleagues over the course of the new academic year,” says Shereen Griffith, JD ’16, ALEP co-director.

ALEP was founded in 2007 as a student-driven initiative under Stanford Law School’s Rule of Law Program. Since then, ALEP has worked closely with faculty and students at AUAF, publishing 10 textbooks about Afghan law for Afghan students. In 2012 ALEP received a $7.24 million grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, which helped ALEP expand its textbook-writing capabilities and establish a bachelor of arts and law degree program at AUAF. The law department now has five faculty members and two adjunct lecturers. Sixty students are in the program—35 percent of them are women. To learn more about ALEP, go to http://alep.stanford.edu.