Senior Counsel Marianne Guerin-McManus attended the North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (NAPEO) conference in Marrakech, January 16-18, 2012. The goal of the conference was to bolster public-private partnerships and enhance the network of entrepreneurs and business leaders in the United States and the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania). CLDP participated in the conference with a panel on intellectual property and entrepreneurship as well as a presentation on franchising. CLDP interacted with the many participants who are already partners in CLDP programs and focused on working together to create a Maghreb region (including Libya) that would allow US companies to see North Africa as a real market for the first time.  Over the past two years, CLDP has been instrumental in Algeria and Tunisia in establishing the legal and regulatory framework for franchising. CLDP was also the provider of technical assistance to the government of Morocco in the implementation of the US-Morocco Free Trade Agreement. CLDP also worked in Libya until the start of the revolution on building the capacity of the judiciary to improve the resolution of commercial disputes.