NGOs and the Judiciary – Country Reports

30 May 2016. We are pleased to share with you Country Reports drafted in the framework of the project ‘NGOs and the Judiciary’ ,

Country reports were drafted by six partner organizations from Albania, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia.

The general topic addressed in the project is cooperation, interaction, communication and relations between NGOs and judiciary with special focus on watchdog activities and civic monitoring of the judiciary. All these activities that are tackled in the attached country reports play vital role in shaping civil society, strengthening rule of law and democracy. Firstly, citizens and NGOs control the judiciary via various forms of monitoring. Secondly, by getting involved in trials and educational projects, NGOs empower the judiciary, help with building professional capacity of judges and support activity of courts. When working on the  project all organizations discussed various forms of cooperation and interaction between civil society and judiciary with focus on civic monitoring. 

The overall aim of the project was to gather and share good practices in area of cooperation between NGOs and judiciary, especially civic monitoring of judiciary, with focus on Western Balkans countries. We observe that NGOs are getting more and more involved in various activities related to judiciary (also cooperation projects) and many of these activities are various forms of monitoring. We find it extremely inspiring and useful to discover how this issue is addressed in other countries.  The project can be divided into three phases – research, study visit in Poland combined with a meeting of all partners and workshops in Western Balkans. 

The project was funded by International Visegrad Fund and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea.