Demand for Justice (D4J) Partners meet the Ombudsperson

The D4J team and its partners met with the Ombudsperson, Mr. Hilmi Jashari.  Kosovo’s Office of the Ombudsperson (OIK) is a key oversight institution in Kosovo and thus a strategic partner for the D4J program.   One by one, D4J partners – KLI, KDI, FOL and YIHR – described their project goals and activities to Mr. Jashari, who immediately recognized a number of opportunities for the Ombudsperson and D4J collaboration to maximize D4J results toward its central mission to build citizen trust in the justice sector by fostering judicial accountability, transparency and integrity and raising citizen awareness and activism through youth education and outreach at Kosovo’s schools.

Mr. Jashari was particularly attracted to the idea of organizing lectures in high schools offering both a personal appearance, and the participation of OIK legal officers at YIHR Youth for Justice (Y4J) lectures scheduled to take place later this Winter and Spring.  Meanwhile, Mr. Jashari also agreed to upgrade the Ombudsperson’s “Know Your Rights” platform with D4J information and visual enhancements intended to facilitate public and youth access to information.  This D4J/OIK partnership will allow appropriate YIHR Y4J lecture materials and relevant data or findings garnered from the 3 D4J monitoring projects (KLI, KDI, FOL) to be incorporated into the Know Your Rights platform.

D4J’s OIK/CSO collaboration offers Kosovo a living example of how CSO’s can help the OIK to “build citizens’ trust toward the Ombudsperson Institution” as recommended in a recent Council of Europe Report based on the expertise of Jorgen Steen Sorensen, Parliamentary Ombudsman, Member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law – “the Venice Commission” (Denmark).  But perhaps more importantly, this OIK/CSO collaboration promises to equip citizens with basic human rights knowledge, encourage citizens to speak out against violations of such rights, and inspire citizens to demand delivery of these human rights protections from an increasingly accountable, transparent, and integrity-filled justice sector in Kosovo.

The Demand for Justice Program is 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. For more information, see www.demandforjustice.org.