102 Trial Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners the merits of individual decisions.149 Rather, conclusions are based more broadly on a comparative approach to the treatment of similar allegations and facts in different cases.150 The box below provides an example from Croatia.151 The OSCE Mission to Croatia’s trial monitoring trial- monitoring programme: reviewing allegations and verdicts to assess the impartiality of the judicial actors involved The primary focus of trial monitoring in the OSCE Mission to Croatia was to assess whether Croatian courts process war crimes cases in a manner reflecting professionalism and impartiality with respect to the defendant’s national or ethnic origin.151 In drawing conclusions regarding the existence of double standards based on ethnic origin in prosecutions, analysis and reporting have focused on allegations, evidence and factual findings in a number of ways, without necessarily assessing cases on their merits. For instance, the programme has drawn conclusions in a number of manners: • through analysis of whether the allegations contained in the indictment, as a legal matter, support the criminal charges; • by demonstrating lack of impartiality with regard to sentencing by citing drastically different treatment of identical facts as mitigating and aggravating circumstances in cases involving different ethnic groups; and/or • by documenting the high rate of reversals by the Croatian Supreme Court of the verdicts of trial courts in war crimes cases based upon the failure of courts to correctly establish facts. The programme has also cited these decisions to illustrate extreme examples of bias in judicial fact-finding. 11.4.3 Hearing-based monitoring and reporting Hearing-based monitoring and reporting refers to a methodology that focuses on monitoring single hearings from many different cases, rather than entire cases from start to finish. Through careful selection of the procedures and practices monitored in individual hearings, a hearing-based methodology can provide an assessment of systemic practices and their compliance with fair trial standards. In this way, findings regarding the functioning of a justice system can be obtained without having to follow individual cases from pre-trial stages through appeal, over a period of months or years. A hearing-based methodology may be especially useful where the purpose of monitoring is to support justice reform through an assessment of how specific procedures are implemented. It is also practical where access restrictions or time constraints preclude the monitoring of individual cases to completion. Hearing-based monitoring will not support in-depth review of individual cases for the purpose of drawing conclusions about the application of fair trial standards at the conclusion of a case, nor will it be suitable for most ad hoc monitoring programmes.152 In practice, the key to successful hearing-based monitoring is to identify in advance the procedures and issues that will be systematically observed in specific hearings. The reporting system used by ODIHR’s programme in Kazakhstan was a hearing-based monitoring methodology. 153 The monitoring of specific procedures and practices was aimed at providing quantitative findings of practices that may not be broadly consistent with a justice system that incorporates international fair trial standards. While the Kazakhstan programme used a closed reporting system, hearing-based monitoring and reporting can be used in open systems as well. 149  Some trial monitoring reports prepared by the OSCE Mission to Croatia have, however, cited the merits of individual decisions to illustrate extreme examples of bias in judicial fact-finding and weighing of facts. 150  In addition to the example of Croatia in the box, see also the “Nine-Month Analytical Report Preliminary Findings on Monitoring Court Cases in Selected Basic Courts of the Host Country”, OSCE Mission to Skopje (April 2008). 151  The OSCE Mission to Croatia was also engaged in other trial monitoring activities. 152  See Part V, “Ad Hoc Trial Monitoring”. 153  The system used in Kazakhstan is described in Chapter 11.3.2.