Third meeting of the USAID “New Justice” Program Stakeholder Advisory Group was held
On 13 April 2018, the third meeting of the USAID “New Justice” Program Stakeholder Advisory Group was held.
The purpose of the event was to review and discuss the USAID New Justice Program monitoring and evaluation indicators, to get acquainted with the results of the trial monitoring and to develop roadmaps for New Justice to improve its tasks execution efficiency and to achieve its goals.
The Advisory Group includes the representatives of the High Council of Justice, the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine, the Council of Judges of Ukraine, the Public Integrity Council, judges, the representatives of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, the State Judicial Administration of Ukraine, the National School of Judges of Ukraine, the donor community and civil society organizations.
During the meeting the results and conclusions of the first trial monitoring program implemented by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine together with the Center of Policy and Legal Reform within the framework of the “Ensuring the observance of human rights in the administration of justice” Project were presented.
The participants of the meeting reviewed the results of the all-Ukrainian polling of the court stuff. Particular attention was also paid to the results of the second phase of the polling of professional lawyers, participants to court proceedings, concerning the judicial reform, independence and accountability of the judiciary, perception of corruption and readiness to combat it.
A separate section of the event was devoted to discussing the results of the second annual polling of the advisory group members on the independence and accountability of the Ukrainian judicial system in accordance with the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) indicators.
In addition, a draft methodology for monitoring trust in the court, developed by the Institute of Applied Humanitarian Research in cooperation with the Council of Judges of Ukraine and the USAID “New Justice Program”, and a pilot project on the approbation of the Council of Europe European Commission on the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) Checklist for Promoting the Quality of Justice and the Courts were presented.
During the discussion, the Chairman of the Commission noted that the research results presented would be useful in the Commission’s staffing procedures and thanked the organizers for the extremely interesting event.
Reference:
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nove Pravosuddya Justice Sector Reform Program (New Justice Program) started implementation in Ukraine in October 2016.
The program is designed to support the Judiciary, the Government, the Parliament, the Bar, Law Schools, Civil Society, Media and Citizens to create the conditions for independent, accountable, transparent, and effective justice system that upholds the rule of law and to fight corruption.
The USAID New Justice Program builds upon the success, partnership and efforts of the USAID Ukraine Rule of Law Project (UROL) and FAIR Justice Project (FAIR) and coordinates activities closely with Ukrainian counterparts, USAID, U.S. Government and other donor projects and implementers in Ukraine.
