Month: October 2021

The Kosovo Prosecutorial Council, supported by the European Union/Kosovo Justice Sector Programme -EUKOJUST, has organized a three-day workshop, attended by Chairman Maloku, EUKOJUST Project representatives, members of the Committee for Normative Issues and officials of the Department of Information Technology in the KPCS, who, at the same time, constitute the Working Group for drafting the Regulation on the management of work processes through the Case Management Information System (CMIS). During the three-day workshop, discussions will focus on the procedural issues, including administration, management, access rights, data retrieval in CMIS, communication with the parties in the procedure, receipt, registration and distribution of cases and other aspects of work, which are within the draft Regulation on the management of work processes through CMIS, which is designed to ensure best functioning of work processes in the prosecutorial system. The participants stated that this workshop is of an extraordinary importance because one of the main pillars of the reforms in the prosecutorial system is the digitalization of the prosecutors’ work, which increases the work efficiency and enables a better management of general resources.

On 12 October, EUKOJUST Expert for Public Legal Education Expert / Domestic Violence and Marginalised Groups – Bardhë Krasniqi, participated in the public hearing on the first draft law on Prevention and Protection from Domestic Violence, Violence against Women and Gender-Based Violence organized by the Assembly of Kosovo (AoK) Committee on Human Rights, Gender Equality, Missing Persons, Victims of Sexual Violence During the War, and Petitions. The hearing was chaired by the head of AoK Committee Duda Balje, where she invited comments from civil society organizations, government representatives, and international organizations and donor funded projects.

The EUKOJUST expert commended the AoK Committee on the initiative and attempts to align the draft law with EU Acquis and the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (known as Istanbul Convention) and emphasized the importance of such alignment based on the Kosovo legal system and the domestic violence victims’ needs. The EUKOJUST expert explained that one of the EUKOJUST project-specific objectives is to strengthen access to justice for all citizens in Kosovo, particularly in the field of domestic violence and disadvantaged or marginalised groups. EUKOJUST expert offered her legislative drafting and international law expertise on access to justice in civil and criminal law. Such expertise will be provided through EUSR’s lead Legislative Review Mechanism.   

The AoK Committee and participants shared their views and agreed on the way forward.

The EUSR LRM comments will be provided to the AoK Committee within one month.

European Union / Kosovo Justice Sector Programme, in partnership with the UK Embassy Project: “𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐢𝐧 𝐊𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐯𝐨”, organized a roundtable with a group of relevant Civil Society Organizations active in the field of monitoring the activity of the justice institutions in Kosovo.

The purpose of the event was to offer the selected organizations a platform for tuning their positions in relation to the KPC and the prosecution system in general while extracting a set of recommendations and requests for the KPC to meet in order to enhance communication and cooperation with the civil society actors.

Discussions were extremely fruitful and lively, with participants presenting excellent points and solid views on how the process should proceed. Both Projects will further this roundtable with the relevant justice institutions to ensure that the conditions for improving and extending cooperation are met.

Another roundtable will take place in the near future, to build up on the foundations created and to ensure the process is moving forward with no delay, to the benefit of both the civil society organizations and the KPC.