Central and Eastern Europe

The following Justice Initiative projects are underway in, or relevant to, Central and Eastern Europe:

National Criminal Justice Reform

Bulgaria: Access to Justice
A pilot public defender model of legal aid provision for criminal cases is underway in the Bulgarian judicial district of Veliko Turnovo, as an alternative to the present system of ex officio-assigned counsel. This project aims to establish criteria for measuring the quality and cost-efficiency of criminal legal aid services, propose mechanisms for assessing the material status of defendants and accused persons; and give young lawyers an opportunity to develop skills in criminal defense advocacy. A longer-term objective is to encourage reform of the legal aid system as a whole, with a view to improving its financing and administration through the creation of a legal aid management board.

Bulgaria: Promoting Prosecutorial Accountability
A comparative study of prosecutorial systems in ten countries has been undertaken to provide impetus for reform of the Bulgarian Prosecutor General’s office and to act as a catalyst in bringing about a more accountable and transparent prosecution service. This will be achieved by developing well-researched recommendations on how such a reform process should proceed and on what criteria it can be based. The recommendations will be shaped by Bulgarian actors so as to inform the local decision process in an appropriate and contextualized manner.

Lithuania: Reforming Legal Aid Services and Administration
Two pilot public defender offices, established with significant Justice Initiative input, have substantially improved the representation indigent defendants receive in their respective regions. They have also played an important role in revealing serious deficiencies in the existing system for delivering, monitoring and valuing legal services to the indigent accused—including ineffective management of state funds and attorney time, an absence of reliable data, and highly variable service quality. In response, the project partners have sought to expand on the pilot offices to assist the government in reforming the institutional structure and administration of legal aid in Lithuania. Read on the conference Reforming Legal Aid in Lithuania, Vilnius, April 22, 2004 and the conference report.

Latvia: Promoting Bail in Place of Pretrial Detention
The main objective of the project is to assist the Latvian criminal justice system in reducing the number of people held in pretrial detention and shortening the period of detention, so that its use is limited to situations prescribed by international standards—i.e., where there exists a danger of the accused absconding, interfering with the course of justice or committing a serious offence. The project will further review the suitability of bail as a possible alternative in some cases where pretrial detention is currently used.

Access to Justice in Central and Eastern Europe: Forum Report
A summary of the European Forum on Access to Justice held in Budapest, Hungary, on December 5–7, 2002. This report is part of the Project on Promoting Access to Justice in Central and Eastern Europe, funded by the European Commission and the Open Society Justice Initiative.

Regional: Book on Pretrial Detention - Program Area National Criminal Justice Reform
It is essential to identify and highlight the gaps between a state’s de jure and de facto compliance with international standards in this area. A clear, country-specific understanding of the real process through which persons come to be placed—and remain—in pretrial detention provides a foundation for project activities (such as bail supervision programs, assistance to judicial officers, or improved legal aid) to target country-specific lacunae, such as the absence of available alternative disposals or of legal representation at pretrial hearings. Paradoxically, many of the states which are the “worst offenders” in terms of excessive use of pretrial detention have enacted—and purport to apply—national legislation which closely mirrors international presumptions against the use of pretrial detention and in favor of the use of alternative measures. This is the case in three former Soviet Union countries in which the Justice Initiative is pursuing (in Latvia and Ukraine) pretrial detention projects or (in Kazakhstan) a juvenile justice project with a significant pretrial detention component. Latvia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are currently ranked as the countries with, respectively, the 23rd, 13th and 5th highest prison population rates in the world.

Ukraine: Reducing Pretrial Detention
The project aims to assist actors within the Ukrainian criminal justice system to reduce the number of people held in pretrial detention and shorten the average pretrial detention period.

Freedom of Information and Expression

Albania Defamation Law Reform: Secret Gag Order Challenged in Constitutional Court
A secret executive order restricting official communications with the media violates the Albanian Constitution and the European Convention, five human and media rights groups argue in a petition filed today with the Constitutional Court. The petition contends that the Order on Communications with Print and Electronic Media, issued by Prime Minister Fatos Nano in August 2002 but never publicly disclosed, violates freedom of expression as well as the constitutional right to information on government activities. The decree prohibits most senior civil servants from "communicating with print and electronic media in order to provide information on their official duties." The Secret gag order was later revoked to pre-empt constitutional hearing.

Bulgaria Freedom of Expression: Defamation Law Reform
Kassabova Case

Macedonia: Comments on the Draft Law on Free Access to Information
These comments to a draft Macedonian freedom of information law were submitted to the Macedonian Ministry of Justice in October 2004. The Ministry has indicated that it will produce a new draft incorporating the comments, which the Justice Initiative will be asked to review.

Regional: Freedom of Information Adoption Strategy session
On 10 November 2002, a one-day meeting of FOI groups was organized by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Article 19 in Skopje, Macedonia, in order to develop strategies for furthering freedom of information goals in the southeast European region. Participants presented the current situation regarding the adoption of freedom of information laws in each country/territory. It was noted that although many countries have constitutional provisions on the right to information (Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia), governments give a low priority to adopting the legislation needed to make the provision operational. Furthermore, there tends to be widespread confusion between “Public Information” (mass media) laws and access to information (FOI) laws. NGO representatives from countries with FOI laws (Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia) were invited to (and attended) a regional meeting in Zagreb in March 2003, to share their experiences of campaigning for the adoption of these laws.

Regional: Freedom of Information Law Implementation, Legal Advice, Litigation and Monitoring Tool
Justice Initiative FOI implementation projects include legal advice and litigation in Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Peru. Litigation challenging government refusals to provide requested information has been a traditional tool of activists interested in making freedom of information laws work in countries that have them. The Justice Initiative is currently working with partners to provide legal advice and pursue litigation in Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Peru. The Justice Initiative has developed an “Access to Information Monitoring Tool” which permits evaluation of national FOI law implementation and comparative assessment between countries. This instrument is currently being tested in a pilot project encompassing Armenia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Peru and South Africa.

Equality and Citizenship

Bulgaria: Justice Initiative files legal brief in ECHR Nachova case
November 8, 2004—The Justice Initiative filed written comments with the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on November 2, in the case of Nachova and others v. Bulgaria. The case, which concerns the killing of two Roma men by military police, is of great significance for the development and application of legal norms concerning racial discrimination and violence. Also read The Strasbourg Court's Finding of Race Discrimination in Nachova v. Bulgaria.

Regional: Racial Profiling
The Justice Initiative desires to promote equality for vulnerable groups and a recognition that human rights problems are often rooted in struggles over competing conceptions of citizenship. Projects combat discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and women, and promote the rights of noncitizens, particularly in the aftermath of September 11.

Russia: Combating Discrimination: Strategies for Lawyers and NGOs
The grave discrimination that minority groups suffer in Russia requires urgent remedies. There is almost no experience in the human rights community of litigating discrimination as such, and a tremendous need to build these capacities so that the legal system may become an effective antidiscrimination tool. Systematic documentation of the problem, necessary to prove discrimination, does not yet exist. The challenge will be to develop appropriate documentation and build Russian NGOs’ capacity to use this as a basis for litigation. To meet this challenge, the Justice Initiative is developing a number of projects with the purposes of reducing the incidence of ethnic and racial discrimination by state actors in the Russian Federation, and building NGO legal capacity, through documentation and litigation to challenge discriminatory acts in Russian courts, at the European Court of Human Rights, and/or at the CERD.

Spain: Legal Advocacy against Racist Violence
The project will document, report upon, and pursue legal remedies for racist violence. Project activities will support local advocates' efforts to utilize existing but rarely applied antidiscrimination law in their legal challenges to racially-motivated violence. Domestic antidiscrimination NGOs, and those working with migrant and refugee issues, as well as individual lawyers and advocates are project partners.

Anticorruption

Russia: The Use and Misuse of Administrative Resources
State and public resources are reportedly employed by incumbents in Russia to electoral advantage. The Justice Initiative and Transparency International-Russia together launched a project to monitor the misuse of these "administrative resources" during the election campaign for the 2003 Russian Federal State Duma (parliament).

Legal Capacity Development

Regional: Clinical Legal Education
The Justice Initiative seeks to professionalize and further institutionalize clinical legal education within university law faculties, and to enhance the public interest function of clinics by helping develop substantive specialized skills in particular fields of human rights concern. The Justice Initiative will improve clinical teaching and supervision through specialized training programs for faculty and the creation of course materials on subjects such as ethics and professional responsibility. Through careful allocation of resources the Justice Initiative will strive to capitalize on progress in countries where clinics have achieved rapid growth, while helping to promote clinical education in places where the idea has yet to take off. High quality clinics have emerged in Armenia, Hungary, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland and Russia, and there have been promising developments in Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania and Romania.

Regional Focus: Clinics in Ukraine and Central Asia
There are twenty-five university-based legal clinics in Ukraine, of which fifteen have been started since 2000 by the local Soros foundation—the International Renaissance Foundation—with the assistance of COLPI. Clinical programs in Central Asia are at various different levels of development. Clinics in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan stand out as well-established high quality programs, whereas those in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have yet to achieve institutional recognition within their respective law departments. The Justice Initiative organized an assessment of clinical developments in Central Asia at the end of 2002, and is currently in discussion with local Soros foundations about regional and national activities to address the quality and institutionalization of these programs.

Regional: Human Rights and Public Interest Law Fellows Retreat (Istambul)
Organized by the Open Society Justice Initiative in partnership with Columbia University's Public Interest Law Initiative, the Central European University's Legal Studies Department and the OSI Network Scholarship Program. The range of fellows' interests, as demonstrated by the papers presented, was as rich and varied as the nationalities in attendance. Subjects included a first-hand account of a sustained legal challenge to the forced sterilization of Romani women in Slovakia; the legality of so-called "Article 98" bilateral agreements used by the U.S. to shield its nationals from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court; the surge in importance of civil society organizations in Indonesia since 1998; and an analysis of discrimination against women in citizenship regimes in many countries globally.

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