Visit of partner organizations from the area of Western Balkans and Visegrad countries

2 November 2015. Between 28-30 October 2015 INPRIS hosted a group of representatives of partner organizations from Albania (Albanian Helsinki Committee), Macedonia (Coalition of Civil Associations „All for fair trials”), Serbia (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights- YUCOM), Czech Republic (CEELI Institute) and Slovakia (VIA IURIS). The visit is a part of international project “NGOs and the Judiciary – watch dog activities, interactions, collaboration, communication”.

The first part of the meeting (28-29 October 2015) was organized in a form of a study visit and was attended by representatives of Balkan partner organizations. The participants had an occasion to exchange their views and experience with the Justice at the Supreme Court and Member of the Advisory Board at the Judges Association Themis- Katarzyna Gonera and  with the Judge Łukasz Piebiak- member of the management board of the Association of Polish Judges IUSTITIA. We also met with a representative of the Polish Ministry of Justice and local non-governmental organizations: Citizens Network Watchdog Poland, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Polish Society of Anti-Discrimination Law and Court Watch Poland Foundation.

The second part of the meeting took form of a working session and was attanded also by representatives of Visegrad countries. Its aim was elaboration of common recommendations, presentation and discussion of country reports, as well as preparation of draft country workshop agendas for the workshops that are to be organized by the Balkan partners in their home countries.

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