9 Foreword The right to a fair and public trial by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law, along with other due process guarantees, is an integral part of the Human Dimension commitments as affirmed by OSCE participating States.1 The States have acknowledged the importance of trial monitoring as a tool “to ensure greater transparency in the implementation of these commitments” and have agreed “to accept as a confidence building measure the presence of observers […] at proceedings before the courts”.2 The Legal Digest of International Fair Trial Rights aims at building the capacity of legal practitioners to conduct professional trial monitoring by providing them with a comprehensive description of fair trial rights coupled with practical checklists based on the experience of OSCE trial monitoring operations. OSCE field operations and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) have already developed a significant wealth of substantive knowledge and practical experience in this area. ODIHR has taken up the role of systematizing and harmonizing this know-how in line with its mandate to “enhance the collection and preservation of past and present expertise.”3 The Legal Digest of International Fair Trial Rights is an important step in this direction, and this publication represents an important contribution to building the institutional memory of the OSCE. Practitioners involved in trial monitoring, among them OSCE staff, are the primary beneficiaries of the Legal Digest. Moreover, ODIHR undertakes to reach out to NGOs and to disseminate the Legal Digest widely among civil society. ODIHR is also developing a training 1 Concluding Document of the Vienna Meeting, Vienna 1989, para 13.9; Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, Copenhagen 1990, para 5.12 to 5.19. 2 Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, Copenhagen 1990, para 12. 3 Common Responsibility, commitments and implementation, (Warsaw: OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, 2006) page 74, in fine, Report which was submitted to the OSCE Ministerial Council in response to the OSCE Ministerial Council, Decision No. 17/05, “Strengthening the Effectiveness of the OSCE”, within OSCE Ministerial Council Document, Thirteenth Meeting of the Ministerial Council, Ljubljana, 5–6 December 2005, para 2.