Project: "Support of reforming of justice in Ukraine"

Participants:
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine
The Supreme Court of Ukraine

Block 1 The reforming of Ukrainian justice according to European standards
Elaboration of the new approaches to the application of European principles of justice and fixation of the stable orientations in the professional legal consciousness of judges

Block 2 Humanization of the practice of infliction and execution of punishments
Aim: Humanisation of the practice of infliction and execution of punishments. Spread of the practice of application of the alternative kinds of punishments. Decrease of the number of prisoners in Ukraine.

Block 3 Efficacy of the execution of the judicial decisions: European experience
Aim: Promotion of the efficient judicial defence of the juridical physical persons' rights through the execution of judicial decisions
Duration of the project: 2004 - 2006

Participants of the project:
State department of Ukraine for the execution of punishments
State Executive service of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine
The courts of appeal and local courts of Ukraine
The Supreme Court of Ukraine

The main goal of the project is to activate and mobilise the work of the judicial voluntary associations in Ukraine so as to strengthen the independent status of judges and to provide for a fair and impartial, people-rights oriented justice system.

The project intends to work through four components:

- legislative changes, which will be targeted at the analysis and amendment of relevant legislation to improve the status of judges with regard to the judicial independence;

- regional/oblast response model, which will design an pilot mechanisms to protect judicial independence “in the field”, at the oblast level and below;

- awareness raising and information campaign, which will aim at distribution of the European experience in this area and at informing wider groups of judge and the public of recent trends in the development of the judicial independence in Ukraine;

- establishing of a monitoring system to watch where and how often the violations of the judicial independence tales place.
As a result, the project seeks to make impact in terms of:
- a better inclusion of the opinion of the judiciary as for drafting the legislation in the area of judicial independence and court procedures;
- a stronger protection of interests of judges through judicial voluntary associations;
- improvement of judges’ awareness of the international standards and principles of the judicial independence;
- better public control over the application of the concept of judicial independence.

The project will be implemented by the Centre for Judicial Studies as leading organisation in partnership with the All-Ukrainian Independent Judicial Association and the Foundation for Fair Justice, who will from an implementing consortium. The project will be carried out in close collaboration with the Council of Judges of Ukraine.

Project duration – October 2006 - September 2009

The Objective of the Project is to implement measures that will hopefully reduce the number of detainees in remand prisons.

The goals of the Project are:
- To conduct an experiment at two model courts (City of Bila Tserkva and Obolonsky District Court of the City of Kyiv) in order to analyze the legal and institutional environment (analysis of court rulings) in the sphere of pre-trial detention;
- To prepare programs and conduct trainings for target groups (judges, investigators and prosecutors) on implementation of international standards and norms related to pre-trial detention into practice;
- To develop teaching guidelines on application of pre-trial detention as a measure of restraint and optimization of relevant procedures;
- To conduct a study visit to Switzerland.
Duration of the project: january 2006 - March 2008

Participants of the project:
The Supreme Court of Ukraine;
The General Office of Public Prosecutor c of Ukraine
Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine;
State Department of Ukraine for execution of Punishment.

The Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SDC) and the Swiss Cooperation Office in Ukraine (Director Ueli Muller) renders financial support of the project.
Project manager:Hans Bulmann.

The independence of judges: international standards and national practice. (Manual)

The twenty issue of the Bulletin of the Centre for Judicial Studies has been published. Topic "The status and prospects of the development of justice in Ukraine". Download the Table of Contents.

The previous issues can be download here.