Democratization
a manner that is both sustainable and appropriate in the local legal context.
With the goal of facilitating the professional
development of legal professionals working on
war crimes cases in the region, ODIHR delivers targeted training to judges, prosecutors,
investigators and their support staff on specific
war-crimes-related matters. In a similar vein,
ODIHR also provides training and legal and
other support staff to selected legal institutions
throughout the region. Overall, the project has
ensured the hiring of 32 support staff working
on war crimes in legal institutions in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. These
institutions have expressed their commitment
to retain the maximum number of these support staff beyond the project’s time span.
The project also facilitates development of
the training capacities of professionals in the
region on international humanitarian and criminal law, by increasing their direct access to
war-crimes-related knowledge, expertise and
information existing at the ICTY and elsewhere
in the region. In the course of 2011, a comprehensive international criminal law training
curriculum will be published and an e-learning
portal allowing for web-based self-learning for
professionals dealing with war crimes will go
online. Furthermore, the capacity of war crimes
defence counsel is being strengthened through
the development of a manual on most effective
and innovative practices utilized by the Association of Defence Counsel practicing before the
ICTY and training on an array of war-crimesrelevant topics.
The project also transcribes recordings of
ICTY proceedings in selected cases and translates the transcripts into the languages of the
region and has also undertaken to translate a
research tool on case law of the ICTY Appeals
Chamber. More than 15,000 pages were transcribed in 2010. By the end of the project,
more than 140,000 transcript pages are to be
completed.
Strengthening Capacity for Legislative
Reform
Decisions to conduct legal reform are ordinarily
taken at higher levels of government and legislatures. At the working level, it is the drafters
of legislation who must reflect political undertakings and decisions in law, often in the face of
new and complex legislative issues, and sometimes lacking the relevant expertise to complete
the task. ODIHR provides the necessary
24
ODIHR Annual Report 2010
expertise to bridge this gap by assessing compliance of draft laws with relevant standards,
making recommendations for improvement,
and sharing good practices to help lawmakers explore other options. This process is often
followed by roundtable consultations with legislators and civil society on draft laws.
Often, work on one review will lead to further reviews on related issues. A good example
of this in 2010 was ODIHR’s assessment of the
draft Amendments to the Moldovan Criminal
Code Related to Hate Crimes. The recommendations were aimed at ensuring the compliance
of the draft legislation with international standards and OSCE commitments and were
discussed at a roundtable in Chisinau in June
2010. This roundtable, organized by ODIHR and
the OSCE Mission to Moldova, brought together
Moldovan authorities and prosecutors and lawenforcement officials from the United Kingdom
and France, and explored how to investigate
hate crimes in practice. Due to the proximity
of the issues, the Moldovan Ministry of Justice
also requested ODIHR’s review of the draft Law
on the Prevention and Fight against Discrimination once the hate-crimes related review had
been completed. This review was submitted in
October.
ODIHR’s work in the area of legislative
reform sometimes follows up on other activities of the Office. For example, following the
publication of ODIHR’s Final Report on its
Trial Monitoring Project in Armenia, ODIHR
received a number of requests from other public
institutions in Armenia to review amendments
to criminal procedure drafted in response to
the Final Report. These included the review of
the “Concept Paper on the Reform of Criminal Procedure Legislation”, as well as reviews of
the Armenian Criminal Procedure Code and
of modifications to Armenian criminal legislation related to acts of contempt of court. Both
the Concept Paper and the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code were discussed at an expert
meeting organized by ODIHR and the OSCE
Office in Yerevan, in co-operation with the
Armenian Ministry of Justice, in November.
ODIHR reviews were also conducted on legislation or draft legislation dealing with the
following issues: freedom of assembly, domestic violence, combating trafficking in human
beings, freedom of association, financing of
political parties, freedom of religion, criminal sanctions and disciplinary procedures
against members of the armed forces, and
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