LSASL receives coveted ALSA membership

Reach­ing new heights in bring­ing both in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal law stu­dents to­geth­er, the Law Stu­dents As­so­ci­a­tion of Sri Lan­ka (LSASL) has done Sri Lan­ka proud by be­com­ing the first South Asian coun­try to re­ceive mem­ber­ship in the Asian Law Stu­dents As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­SA), at the Asian Fo­rum held in Man­i­la, Phil­ip­pines.
From be­ing an ob­serv­ing mem­ber in the AL­SA, Sri Lan­ka has ris­en to be­ing a mem­ber of the AL­SA, when the LSASL was hon­our­ed with the mem­ber­ship. The in­duc­tion took place at the Fo­rum which was held from Au­gust 27 - Sep­tem­ber 2 af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al Board of AL­SA and oth­er mem­ber coun­tries had agreed unan­i­mous­ly to grant Sri Lan­ka the mem­ber­ship of AL­SA.

In the past years LSASL has been re­lent­less­ly pursu­ing their ob­jec­tive of pro­mot­ing an ac­ces­si­ble mass-ori­en­ted le­gal sys­tem in Sri Lan­ka. Thus as a re­sult, law stu­dents from dif­fer­ent Sri Lan­kan uni­ver­si­ties have been work­ing to­wards this com­mon goal and it al­so has brought them to­geth­er as a so­ci­ety of law stu­dents from dif­fer­ent back­grounds ea­ger to share their ex­pe­ri­en­ces and ideas about de­vel­op­ing our le­gal sys­tem.

The AL­SA is a stu­dent body where 14 dif­fer­ent Asian coun­tries in­clud­ing In­do­ne­sia, Ja­pan, Ko­rea, Ma­lay­sia, Sin­ga­pore, Tai­wan, Thai­land and Sri Lan­ka are part of, and stu­dents from these Asian coun­tries are com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing the ap­pre­ci­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing of core val­ues in each le­gal sys­tem.

LSASL has al­so or­gan­ised a study tour for their Asian coun­ter­parts giv­ing them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share their ideas and as­sess­ments on hu­man rights and how the sub­ject is in­flu­enced by so­cio cul­tur­al fac­tors. "Law and Hu­man Rights" was held from 13- 18 Au­gust and the fu­ture le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives were able to pres­ent their un­der­stand­ings about Law and hu­man rights on a rec­og­nised plat­form and go­ing be­yond the aca­dem­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, the for­eign law stu­dents had been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties to get a taste of Sri Lan­ka cul­ture.



" The AL­SA is a stu­dent body where 14 dif­fer­ent Asian coun­tries in­clud­ing In­do­ne­sia, Ja­pan, Ko­rea, Ma­lay­sia, Sin­ga­pore, Tai­wan, Thai­land and Sri Lan­ka are part of, and stu­dents from these Asian coun­tries are com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing the ap­pre­ci­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing of core val­ues in each le­gal sys­tem "







In ad­di­tion LSASL or­gan­ised a Le­gal Aid Pro­gramme for the Ka­lu­tara Dis­trict last year to­geth­er with a Dis­a­bil­i­ty Law Aware­ness Pro­gramme. A Le­gal Pan­el Dis­cus­sion event “Law­TALK” was al­so or­gan­ised to en­hance the op­por­tu­ni­ties of shar­ing the ex­pert knowl­edge of le­gal ex­perts. All mem­bers of the gov­ern­ing Coun­cil of  AL­SA vo­ted in fa­vour of Sri Lan­ka as­sess­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties done by LSASL both in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly and be­ing im­pressed with the re­cord they ac­cep­ted Sri Lan­ka as a mem­ber coun­try.

 Re­ceiv­ing the AL­SA mem­ber­ship would place both Sri Lan­ka and AL­SA in a vi­tal po­si­tion as it opens more win­dows of op­por­tu­ni­ty for Sri Lan­kan law stu­dents to de­vel­op con­tacts and con­nect with oth­ers to get wid­er in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure and share le­gal knowl­edge with their fel­low Asian law stu­dents.

LSASL will be hold­ing their LSASL An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in the first week of Oc­to­ber where the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of LSASL and the AL­SA Sri Lan­ka Board would be ap­poin­ted.