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Law and “Order”
Helping Visiting Afghan Scholars with Money Management

Diane Cooley

What connection does the Student Fiscal Services Outreach Unit have to a group of Afghan Law Professors?

The University of Washington School of Law has long been considered one of the leading institutions for Asian law. As a result of this expertise, the school’s Asian Law Center is the recipient of a U.S. Department of State grant for $2 million to establish a graduate program for Afghan law professors. The grant is funding a three-year project in collaboration with Kabul University Law School (KULS) to help rebuild Afghanistan’s legal profession. Afghan lawyers will spend one year in Seattle as visiting scholars or Masters of Law candidates to learn about the U.S. legal system. The project began last year in Afghanistan with seminars and conferences. English language training was provided to program candidates from KULS’s law and politics and Sharia, or Islamic law, departments.

The Afghan Law Professors have arrived in Seattle to begin their studies and this is when the SFS Outreach became involved. Banking in Afghanistan is very limited. As a result, very few of the KULS Professors have had any experience with a bank account. Writing a check or making a deposit was something they had never done. There are only 5 ATMs in Kabul so the intricacies of using an ATM were unknown. While here, each participant will receive a stipend for which the Professors opened accounts at Bank of America. The Professors are also supporting their families back home, so part of the money they receive is sent to Afghanistan.

The UW Law School contacted the SFS Outreach Unit for help with training. Normally the Outreach Unit provides sessions to UW students on managing their finances but we gladly took on the challenge of teaching the basics of banking. We have done two sessions. All the visiting Professors were very engaged and we had lively discussions.

I found it to be a very rewarding experience. It put a human face on an area of the world that is currently associated with some rather negative images.

To learn more about the program go to the UW Law School online newsletter at:
http://www.law.washington.edu/news/ebriefs/sp06/afghangrant.html
Or the Asian Law Center at:
http://www2.law.washington.edu/asianlaw/