Support to the Establishment of the War Crimes Chamber in BiH – Training of Legal professionals
Background
Bosnia and Herzegovina has entered a crucial period of post conflict development where recent access to justice reforms will be put to the test as the great weight of unresolved war crimes cases are going to be processes locally. UNDP recognizes that the processing of the individual perpetrators of the war crimes constitutes a key part of the access to justice. UNDP has, in partnership with the Government of Japan, provided key start-up support to the War Crimes Chamber (WCC) within the Prosecutor’s Office / Court of BiH which has included a mixture of capacity building activities, courtroom furnishing and outreach for the WCC.
The Project: “Support to the Establishment of the War Crimes Chamber (WCC) in BiH – Training of Legal Professionals” strains to enhance the rule of law, independency and professionalism of judges, prosecutors and other legal professionals. This Project is a part of the overall efforts of the local authorities and the international community to support the establishment of specialized Sections I for War Crimes of the Court of BiH and Prosecutor’s Office of BiH. Activities are different but the main goal is to have an independent and efficient BiH judiciary as a part of the institutional structure. Our key partners in the implementation are: BiH Ministry of Justice, Court of BiH, Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, HJPC, Registry, Entity Training Centres (JPTC), OHR & ICTY and ICRC. Enhancing the competencies of the national legal professionals, who are the cornerstone of the new system, is one of the most significant aspects of the legal reform. The capacity-building through training of the legal professionals and other professionals dealing with war crimes cases is therefore the main segment of the Project.
All Project trainings included a variety of domestic and international authorities of the highest calibre and experience. They have gathered around 80 national and international speakers by October 2007 in over 45 different capacity building exercises. After the initial seminars on ECHR, the Judicial College 2007 is the latest of highly specialized trainings organised for the judges of the State court within the framework of this Project.
Objectives
UNDP strives to improve democratic governance – having projects on comprehensive judicial reform as well as projects in the field of justice and human rights reforms. UNDP is supporting strengthening of the court structure in BiH, implying that the judiciary becomes an independent, efficient and effective part of the national institutional structure. The judiciary should consequently be able to undertake its significant role in conflict prevention, improving ethnic representation, addressing gender imbalances and promoting equitable and sustainable human development for all.
The most significant aspect of the legal reform is enhancing of competencies of the national legal professionals and other staff involved in processing of war crimes. Hence, law enforcement as well as capacity building through training and exchange of experiences among legal professionals is required to ensure full functioning of judiciary at all levels.
Achievements and Expected Results
The challenge of dealing with the past touches upon multiple dimensions of justice and human rights:
• how to bring war criminals to justice,
• how to do justice to war victims and survivors and
• how to revive a war-torn society and regain trust amongst its ethnic groups.
These challenges make criminal justice and the work of the War Crime Chamber a necessity not only to achieve individual accountability, but also to contribute to a general debate about the past and therefore to state building. It is clear that the task of bringing perpetrators to justice, remedies for human rights violations to victims as well as achieving reconciliation is so monumental that it has to be pursued by many strategies in parallel.
The first strategy is enhanced capacity for war crimes processing. In the future, criminal justice would be served at 2 different levels at the same time: at the state level through the WCC and at the local level through the 16 cantonal and district courts. Up until now, there are criminal reports on some 16,000 individuals. War crimes trials throughout BiH will be a reality in the coming years. While the War Crimes Chamber will not be able to prosecute more than a few hundred cases, it will be crucial to ensure that the capacities of the local criminal justice systems to assume these responsibilities are strengthened in time.
In support of this, UNDP is planning to conduct an assessment of local court capacities to deal with war crimes cases in the near future. This objective is directly tied to the already running UNDP initiative in support of the WCC in BiH (the Judicial College is part of this project). Based on the assessment, UNDP intends to design a continuation of its capacity building project for both the WCC at state level and local courts.
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