ILAC and UIA Organise
Haiti Coordination Conference
ILAC member organisations met in Paris on 15 June to
coordinate assistance to Haiti´s justice system.
In the wake of the Haiti earthquake on 12 January, a number of ILAC member organisations –and some non-members – had expressed an interest in working together within the ILAC consortium to assist in rebuilding the justice system in Haiti.
On June 15, more than 30 representatives of 15 organisations from Europe, South and North America, as well as high-level representatives from the UN and the government of Haiti, met in Paris in the headquarters of the Paris Bar to discuss how to best coordinate and combine their efforts to help the Haitian justice sector. The conference was organised jointly – and co-chaired - by ILAC and Union Internationale des Avocats.
The conference was divided into two parts. First, the participants were briefed on Haiti´s historical and political background, with emphasis on the legal sector. Then the government of Haiti, the UN and ILAC informed the conference about what is already being done and what is being planned in terms of judicial assistance, in order to provide the participants with a foundation on which any new suggestions could be built.
The second part of the conference began with a round table in order to provide an inventory of what the participating organisations were able to bring to the table in terms of experts and financial resources. The conference ended with a discussion – based on a list of possible projects of assistance - about which organisations – or groups of organisations – were ready and able to undertake one or more of these proposed projects. As a result, more than 20 different projects of assistance were adopted for implementation and/or financing by one or more of the present organisations. Obviously, the challenge will now be to translate these commitments into concret action.
In order to stimulate interest in assisting the justice system in Haiti, ILAC Executive Director has published an appeal in the latest issue of ”Juriste International”, UIA´s quarterly magazine.
Download the Conference Report
Annex A Participating Organisations
Annex C Possible Projects for Assistance
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ILAC Trains Court Reporters in Pilot Project
ILAC has sponsored the training of four Liberians as court reporters for the Liberian courts of records. The current process of making verbatim record in these courts is both slow and inaccurate. With funding from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ILAC has been assisting in organising this pilot project initiated by the Judicial Institute in Monrovia.
Read more
ILAC and IBAHRI calls for radical reform of
Kenya’s justice system, in major report
The report documents a pressing need for judicial reform. Public confidence in the judicial system has virtually collapsed. A lack of independence in the judiciary, corruption, delays in court processes, and the costs associated with using the court system, have all served to perpetuate a widely held belief among ordinary Kenyans that formal justice is only available to an elite few.
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), in conjunction with ILAC issued the report on the 15th of February 2010. It is entitled Restoring integrity: An assessment of the needs of the justice system in the Republic of Kenya.
Click here to download the report
As a follow-up to the report, ILAC and IBAHRI held a debate on Kenya´s draft constitution and its potential impact on reducing future electoral conflict on Monday 19 April at the Bar Council for England and Wales in London. The debate, entitled On the edge: Kenya´s struggle for democratic reform, focussed on the recently passed new draft constitution, the subject of a referendum prior to 2 July 2010 as part of Kenya´s efforts to reform.
