By Lino Brosius
Wednesday 17 May 2017 Ukrainian and Dutch legal professionals discussed the findings of a court review that was conducted in December 2016. This review involved three district courts and the Court of Appeal in the Lviv region in Western Ukraine. The review report maps the main challenges in the administration of justice in this specific region and presents several areas for follow-up initiatives.
CILC and its Ukrainian partner organisation CJS organised a round table in Lviv to discuss the findings of this review report with the presidents, chiefs of staff and several judges from the Shevchenko district court of Lviv, the Pustomyty district court, the Stryi district court, and the Court of Appeal of the Lviv region.
Dutch experts Martin van der Jagt, Johannes Verburg and Lino Brosius presented the outlines of several follow-up initiatives. ‘Process optimisation’ and ‘Media and public information’ were marked as priorities for the next project phase by the Ukrainian colleagues. These areas can include the following:
- Checking why you do what you do
- Assessing how processes are linked to each other
- Assessing who does what in which order and at what moment
- Reflecting on whether the way things are done is logical
- Formulating the relation between the court and the media outlets
- Writing a press release and developing public information brochures
- Organising open court days
- Defining which information to publish on the website of the court and how to use social media
- Training media judges
The first next steps include formulating working groups, nominating initiators and defining action plans for these two focus areas.
June 8th a similar round table discussion is scheduled for prosecutor’s offices in the Lviv region that also participated in a review exercise in early 2017.
This bilateral Dutch-Ukrainian project is funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs under its Matra programme.
All pictures courtesy of the Lviv branch of the National School of Judges of Ukraine.