Democratization: Rule of Law To address these issues, the ODIHR organized a regional two-day seminar for some fifty experienced defence lawyers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia on defending in war-crimes cases. In addition to providing a forum for discussing access to evidence and equality of arms, the seminar also helped build a regional network of lawyers that will allow for sharing of expertise in this area. Reforms can have long-term effects on the functioning of the criminal-justice sector and can have serious implications with respect to the implementation of fair-trial principles. Thus, such reforms merit a comprehensive public debate before they are introduced and an informed discussion about the course of implementation of the respective laws when they come into force. Under the heading of “reform through debate”, the ODIHR held a second weeklong summer school on criminal-justice reform for Central Asia in Almaty in August. Experts, prominent scholars, and practitioners from Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States provided information on their criminal-justice systems, presented comparative studies, and shared their experiences of reforming criminal procedure and legal institutions across the OSCE area. The school concluded with a roundtable called “Criminal Justice in Central Asia: Current Trends and Prospects for Further Development”. At the roundtable, senior policy makers and legal experts from Kazakhstan joined the participants to discuss issues relevant to criminal-justice reform in Central Asia, including reform of prosecutorial agencies, plea bargaining, evidentiary rules, and mediation of criminal cases. Prevention of torture According to the results of a variety of OSCEsponsored monitoring initiatives and reports from other governmental and non-governmental institutions, torture and ill-treatment continue to undermine the effective implementation of the rule of law in many countries. Insuf- OSCE Promoting debate on criminal-justice reform ficient political will to root out torture and illtreatment is apparent in some states, where law enforcement agencies are given free rein to mistreat detainees, especially those accused of political or extremist activities. The combination of poor training, inadequate professional standards, and low pay in many states, coupled with the pressure to report “solved” criminal cases, leads to frequent abuse of suspects and witnesses. Adequate safeguards for the protection of human rights are missing from criminal procedure in many participating States, and the existing safeguards against abuse are not vigorously enforced. Anti-torture work is prominently reflected in the ODIHR’s agenda. Preventing and combating torture are mainstreamed into all programme activities, with particular emphasis on pre-trial detention and prosecutorial reform, as well as targeted support to strengthen domestic monitoring programmes and capacities. Access to detention facilities through public monitoring is a key to combating torture. Deprivation of liberty represents a radical limitation on individual freedoms in general, and places of detention are regularly closed institutions, where detainees depend on authorities in a situation of extremely unequal power relations and an ever-present danger of abuse of power. Monitoring, as based on standardized and objective criteria, can partly redress this problematic situation insofar as it pres- Keynote speaker Judge Fausto Annual Report  29 Pocar (left), President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, with ODIHR Director Ambassador Christian Strohal at a meeting on the rule of law, Warsaw, 10 May.