Prominent Civil Society Organizations Join D4J Team in the “Quest to Demand Justice” in Kosovo

October 25, 2016 - Demand for Justice (D4J) Program held its first partners meeting. This meeting provided a great opportunity for each partner to represent their scope of work over the course of D4J Program.

Kosovo Law Institute (KLI), as one of D4J’s key partners, will expand their court monitoring work by assessing 2 specific “access” challenges in Kosovo: 1. whether justice actors are successfully affording the right to free legal counsel in criminal matters to citizens who cannot afford a lawyer; and 2. whether courts are adjudicating administrative dispute cases efficiently and in “due time” as required under Kosovo’s Constitution.

Levizja FOL (FOL) shall focus on judicial transparency by opening a dialogue with justice actors regarding their constitutional obligation to ensure public access to judicial information, and by creating an “E-Justice” platform designed to deliver public access and foster justice sector accountability. FOL’s E-Justice platform is not only expected to list scheduled court hearings and track cancelled hearings, but it will also publish all relevant “public documents” such as individual court judgments and decisions and criminal indictments, and documents related to judge and prosecutor performance and asset disclosure.

Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) will conduct an anonymous Judicial Integrity Initiative (JII) Survey of Kosovo judges, prosecutors, advocates and police in order to reveal mechanisms of corruption and/or barriers to integrity plaguing the justice sector in Kosovo. The JII survey is based on a 2015 world-wide JII survey conducted by the International Bar Association (IBA) and will provide the basis for Kosovo justice actors to identify, discuss, and address their integrity challenges during 2017 and beyond.

Youth Initiative for Human Rights - Kosovo, Community Building Mitrovica and NGO-AKTIV will drive our outreach efforts to educate and activate the public - especially youth - on justice sector issues including human rights, and the judicial access and pubic accountability mechanisms available to secure those rights. They will organize “rights”, “access”, and “accountability” lectures and debate clubs for high school students in municipalities within Pristina, Peja, and Prizren Regions. Youth activism also will be achieved via “ride along’s” with D4J monitoring and advocacy initiatives, and via “Idea farm” competitions organized to promote youth initiatives on projects to inform their communities or conduct advocacy projects.

D4J Partners pledged to make joint efforts to increase the quality and availability of community information resources and improve advocacy and public education efforts in order to trigger action from citizens to demand justice in Kosovo.

The Demand for Justice Program is a five-year initiative funded by the U.S. Department of State/INL and implemented by the National Center for State Courts to support the development of robust, evidence-driven demand for justice in Kosovo. Through D4J, NCSC is mobilizing CSO partners to act as agents of change to foster accountability, transparency, and integrity in the justice sector.