2018 Melbourne Forum

Implications of Culture for Constitution-Building

The third Melbourne Forum on Constitution Building in Asia and the Pacific will be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 15-16 October 2018. The topic of the 2018 Melbourne Forum is "Implications of Culture for Constitution-Building".

Culture affects constitutional arrangements in all parts of the world. The Melbourne Forum will explore these issues with primary reference to the countries of Asia and the Pacific, as a vast and diverse region of the world that represents a substantial component of global constitutional experience. The Asia‐Pacific region offers a particularly useful context for this purpose. Asia and the Pacific are home to an extraordinary variety of cultures. In many cases, aspects of culture have deep historical roots; in at least some, culture is or has been implicated in conflict; everywhere, it is evolving. The Forum will deepen understanding of how culture interacts with constitution building across Asia and the Pacific, in ways that throw light on the issues presented by culture in this important region and that inform global practice more generally. It will also throw light on the additional challenges presented by cultural considerations for the implementation of new constitutional arrangements, which almost invariably requires cultural change of some kind.

The Forum is jointly organised by International IDEA, the Constitution Transformation Network and the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Sri Lanka.

Concept note Forum program MF-18 Report

Group Photo of Melbourne Forum 2018 participants