impacting the effective and fair functioning of the system overall or in regard to specific types of cases. An assessment should entail both a “desk-based” review of current laws and previous reports on the justice or court system, as well as external consultations with domestic legal experts and representatives of local organizations engaged in rule of law, police reform, and relevant human rights work. It should be expected that an assessment will lead to a wide range of issues that might be addressed through a monitoring programme. Assessing in-country conditions also requires programmes to identify the level of political will or interest of authorities in engaging in a process of reform. In some states, a well-defined reform process may already be underway. In others, trial-monitoring may be a first step in identifying specific problems and presenting compelling evidence of the need for reform. Meetings with justice-system officials should be used to preliminarily identify where support may exist in the government for reform, including what type of reforms are considered to be needed, as well as where indifference or resistance may be expected. This process will serve as an initial indicator of how trial-monitoring will feed into a wider reform process, and a gauge of the extent to which the government or specific officials are ready to actively co-operate in a process of reform, or alternatively to resist it. A needs assessment should also take into account the interest and capacity of local organizations to become partners in a monitoring programme. Consultations may reveal the existence of local organizations able to engage in legal analysis and help with programme development, conduct training, or provide support to meet other organizational needs, including staffing monitors. In addition, meetings with local organizations are also an opportunity to determine whether prior monitoring efforts have been undertaken and whether capacity exists for domestic monitoring groups to conduct monitoring independently (see Chapter 3.5, “Domestic monitoring organizations or coalitions”). This process allows an organization to gauge the past involvement of civil society in justice issues and the corresponding need to build domestic capacity as a potential primary purpose of the programme. 2.2.2 Organizational capacities and resources An organization should also seek to determine what type of programme or focus is appropriate for the needs and resources of the organization itself. First, the mandate of the organization should be considered in any preliminary assessment relating to a programme’s focus. For some programmes, the mandate may itself shape the focus of its monitoring. Similarly, the nature of an organization’s past work may also limit its ability to engage in effective monitoring. For instance, organizations that have engaged in political advocacy for specific groups or issues may not be perceived as an objective monitoring presence on issues of criminal justice reform, and consequently state officials and judicial actors will be less likely to accept their findings. In general, the more specifically an organization’s mandate or mission statement supports monitoring or justice reform, the better access will be to observe trials, and it will also be in a better position to make recommendations. However, even if an organization does not have a specific mandate recognized by the state, it may still actively engage in trial-monitoring by relying on the right to a public trial enshrined in international Trial-Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners 29