XV Edition GIZ Law Journal

BANGLADESH

KOSOVO

of the judiciary in the North - What’s next? After the integration

The advantages of Restorative Justice are manifold. The community is actively involved in the process and offenders recognize the harm caused. Both offender and victim jointly agree upon a decision for reparation and all involved parties support each other to implement the decision while the facilitator and community members follow up on the decision. This ensures that the relationship between victim and offender is ultimately restored. The Restorative Justice approach introduced by the project particularly improves women’s access to justice by applying gender-sensitive criteria to the sessions. The sessions finish during daylight, they are conducted in a neutral location, women speak for themselves and are represented with at least 30% in a session, female family members of a male offender or victim are present in the process and female facilitators follow up with women.

Remarkable results have been achieved by the project over the last years: 92.5% female victims and offenders surveyed are highly satisfied with the process and more than 7,000 Restorative Justice sessions have been successfully concluded. Especially notable is the effect that introducing Restorative Justice and encouraging female facilitators has on the empowerment of women in rural communities. A female RJ facilitator stated that “Before I was an RJ facilitator, my movement was limited to my courtyard or my neighbor’s courtyard. Since being trained, people recognize me on the street as someone who will help them in need. Even my husband now calls me if he witnesses disputes during work. I knew I was capable of more and people have started seeing that. Now people have started nominating me for different Community Management Committees.”

By: Muhamet Brahini, Rrona Berisha and Yllka Pajaziti

Four years later – Kosovo’s progress in integrating the Serbian legal tradition in Serb-dominated areas into its national legal framework The integration of the justice system in Serb-dominated Northern Kosovo in 2017 was a breakthrough and a momentum that the International Community, such as GIZ, USAID, UNDP, EU, etc., did not let pass by for the right reasons. It was a milestone for the rule of law in Kosovo, but it was a milestone that could quickly turn into nothing. This breakthrough came with a huge challenge: the implementation of Article 5 [Languages], paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo which provides that “The official languages in the Republic of Kosovo are Albanian and Serbian.” It was clear from the beginning that there was a major challenge to provide citizens, judges, and prosecutors with translation taking into consideration the lack of technical staff for interpretation from Albanian into Serbian and vice versa, thus, making judges incapacitated to review the case files because almost every case includes parties in the procedure from different ethnicity. On top of this was also the huge backlog of cases. As such, the GIZ Legal and Administrative Project devoted a component to the Basic Court of Mitrovica: The aim was to increase the number of decided cases and to provide training in the Kosovar legal and procedural regulations at the Kosovo Justice Academy for the 40 Serbian speaking judges newly appointed to the Basic Court in Mitrovica, thus tackling the language barrier and other necessary interventions. Therefore, Mrs. Suada Korenica, in charge of this component, developed implementation measures addressing the abovementioned challenges and at the same time coordinated the activities with the other international donors supporting the Basic Court Mitrovica. The focus of the support was mainly on the training of the judges and the court staff, so that – while respecting their genuine legal tradition and culture - they would function by the Kosovar legal system. However, one of the major initial obstacles was the offering of training in the Serbian language. Thus, there was close cooperation with the Kosovo Justice Academy to ensure that the training materials are also offered in the Serbian language as well as trying to ensure that the Kosovo Justice Academy allocates a sufficient budget for providing material and training in the Serbian language.

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