Andry Rabarisoa is a judge specialized in administrative justice with 18 years of experience as a magistrate. He officiated as a Council of State judge for 12 years where he judged disputes between the public administration and citizens. He was also an electoral judge in the 2014 presidential election. After having been Director of Cabinet then Inspector at the Ministry of Justice, he has just been promoted to Presiding Judge within the Council of State.

Andry Rabarisoa is also the founder and the first president of the Association of Administrative Judges (ANJA Madagascar) which works to make known the role and attributions of the administrative courts and the Council of State in Madagascar. He believes that administrative justice has a key role to play for the establishment of the rule of law in Madagascar insofar as it controls the legality of decisions made by the administration. In recent years, he has organized conferences and other events to popularize administrative justice in collaboration with fellow judges. 

IVLP Impact Award Project: Empowering Malagasy Judges to Promote Rule of Law and Administrative Justice in Madagascar

Through this project, Andry provided fellow judges with the tools necessary to promote administrative justice in Madagascar in the hopes that ordinary citizens will better understand it and be able to use it in case of disputes with the public administration. The project united twenty judges in Madagascar to set up three major exhibitions for general public combined with conferences on administrative Justice in Majunga, Tamatave and Antananarivo, attracting a total of 490 visitors in the community. The 20 colleagues working in these administrative tribunals are now motivated to pursue other activities with their own resources, as they feel supported for the first time. Andry also organized three conferences in three Universities in Toamasina and Antananarivo to develop the major challenges of justices in Madagascar and discuss the topic with nearly 480 law students in total. Additionally, two targeted awareness sessions were held. The first one was for 33 civil society leaders and the second for 30 lawyers in Antananarivo. Overall, the project helped to raise the profile of the administrative jurisdiction among the target audience.

 

"This was an enriching conference, as the audience, made up mainly of students, was able to learn and relearn, review their certainties and discover certain realities of Malagasy administrative jurisdiction." - Conference attendee

IVLP Exchange Experience 

Andry was a participant in the IVLP Project Rule of Law and the U.S. Judicial System, organized by the U.S. Department of State and World Learning.

Andry's exchange experience led to the development of his IVLP Impact Award Project: "The IVLP experience opened my eyes that change is possible in the Malagasy judicial system and gave me the tools and methodology to implement it."

U.S. Communities Visited

Washington, DC; East Lansing, MI; Manchester, NH; Albuquerque, NM; Santa Fe, NM

Country: Madagascar

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