INTRODUCTION

POLICE REFORM:

• Seminar on the Methodology of Teaching Human Rights in Police Academies
• Use of Force and Firearms Training Module
• Assisting with Police Reform in Macedonia
• Police & Media Project

ACCESS TO JUSTICE/ FREE LEGAL AID:

• Seminar on Access to Justice

MEDIA

• New Media Law Training Strategy

MILITARY REFORM

• Combating "casualties in peacetime": training on Conscripts’ Rights Advocacy

LEGAL EDUCATION

• Clinical Legal Education Program Launches Sub-Regional Meeting Series

FOCUS ON NATIONAL FOUNDATIONS

• Soros Foundation-Moldova

ANTI-CORRUPTION INITIATIVES

• COLPI Anti-Corruption Initiatives
• Legislative Screening Initiatives
• Model Study of Attitudes Toward Corruption
• Study of the Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Bodies

PENITENTIARY REFORM

• Roundtable Discussion for Penitentiary Leadership

JUDICIAL REFORM

• Azeri and Tajik Constitutional Court Justices Meet for a Roundtable Talk

NETWORK MATTERS

• Soros Network Law Program Planning Seminar
• OSI-Montenegro

SPECIAL REPORTS

• Combating Trafficking in Women

On the eve of a new millennium, post-Cold War euphoria has been dampened by alarming crimes against humanity. Conflicts in Rwanda, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, and more recently, East Timor and Chechnya, have demonstrated that the existing institutions that promote justice for the victims of crimes against humanity have not been sufficient. With a view to the importance of this issue, COLPI has joined a network of organizations in promoting the establishment of an international criminal court that would address these offences.

COLPI was among the most active organizations in the region in preparing for the July 1998 Rome Conference of States on the Establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in fostering the ratification process, and in planning follow-up activities to facilitate this process.

The ICC Statute, adopted as a result of the Rome Conference, provides for a permanent criminal court to investigate and bring to justice individuals who commit the most serious violations of international humanitarian law such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The Court will have global jurisdiction and the capacity to try individuals.

Prior to the Rome Conference, COLPI conducted a workshop to prepare the members of the ICC delegations from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine, and to ensure the active involvement of these states in the creation and operations of the ICC. Through this workshop, COLPI successfully assisted the ICC delegations in clearly understanding the scope of the legal documents that the UN had provided in preparation for the conference. It helped them to analyze and clarify the relationship of the ICC to the Security Council, the role of the independent prosecutor, cooperation between the ICC and national agencies and courts, and the mechanisms for enforcing ICC decisions.

Not long after the Rome Conference succeeded in adopting the ICC Statute, COLPI took an initiative to attract the attention of the national parliaments and governments in the region of COLPI’s activity (Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Mongolia) to its ratification. The ultimate goal of the subsequent conference was to tackle the most serious constitutional and legislative problems related to the ratification of the Statute and to provide solutions for overcoming eventual obstacles.

Many—if not all—states have had to make adjustments in their national legislations in order to achieve compatibility with the ICC Statue. These challenges ranged from constitutional amendments and changes in national criminal codes, to correct translations of concepts outlined in the Statute that simply have no corresponding term in the national language. Despite the obstacles, the meeting attested to a strong international impetus for completing the process as quickly but also as correctly as possible.

In line with COLPI’s positive experience with activities to promote and facilitate the establishment of the International Criminal Court, we are currently elaborating further follow-up activities for the Rome Statute ratification process and the implementation of the ICC. COLPI will invite representatives from former Soviet Union countries for a conference in October 2000 that will provide models for implementing national legislative changes and an opportunity to discuss the outcomes of the Preparatory Commission (PRECOM) conference. Smaller COLPI-organized events for participants from Central and Eastern European EU accession countries, and COLPI’s involvement in future events promoting ICC Statute ratification, are under consideration.

The international community has historically used a variety of means to hold warlords accountable for their crimes, including sanctions and military involvement. We hope that the International Criminal Court will prove more effective when individual accountability for mass atrocities needs to be addressed. COLPI hopes to have contributed to a valuable mechanism for promoting justice for peace and the rule of law over the rule of force, as we hope for a more just and peaceful new century.

From November 13–20, 1999, COLPI conducted a seminar in Russian on methodologies for teaching human rights in police academies in the former Soviet Union (fSU) and Mongolia. Traditional police training courses in the fSU generally focus on rules and tactics, ignoring important behavioral aspects. Police academies’ curricula seldom include the most recent developments in police work, like community policing concepts. Curricula tend to marginalize fields like human rights: if incorporated at all, they are not integrated into the coursework, but instead, taught as a separate block.

In an effort to encourage representatives of different police academies to share their experience with counterparts at other institutions, and to establish cooperation between police academies, COLPI brought together for a one-week seminar high-ranking officials from police academies throughout the region, including rectors or deputy rectors and individuals responsible for curriculum development. The aim was to present the participants with an overview of modern methodologies and the use of multimedia in the process of teaching human rights in police academies.

After the first day’s overview of the current status of human rights education in the region and the general characteristics of international human rights legislation, participants devoted the next two days of the seminar to the analysis of real-life situations intended to demonstrate the application of human rights standards in their daily practice. These dealt with the right to life and bodily integrity, the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment, the right to fair trial, the rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression, the right to the security of home and correspondence, and the right to freedom of movement. The seminar also addressed professional policing and included an overview of new police training methods and content. The seminar concluded with the participants developing criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of human rights courses in police academies.

Overall, the participants found the seminar informative and asked COLPI for copies of seminar materials so that they could incorporate them into curricula as soon as possible. Since most institutions have neither the technical equipment nor the financial resources to purchase copies, participants also suggested that COLPI distribute to the academies the Russian-language CD-ROM that had been presented during the seminar.

Participants also suggested that the next seminars could concentrate on specific branches of law, for example, criminal law and human rights, civil law and human rights, humanitarian law, and so forth. Also needed, they thought, was a seminar devoted to the protection of policemen’s rights. COLPI is reviewing these suggestions with a view to incorporating them in future activities.
 

The first part of the module focuses on the legal aspects of the use of force, starting with the relevant international human rights conventions. On the basis of these, the training module creates a framework that can help police officers decide when to use or when not to use force in practice. Because this legal framework is derived from international conventions, it conforms to the laws and regulations of any country that is party to the international conventions.

The second part of the program focuses on the psychological aspects of potentially violent situations. Emphasis is placed on those psychological aspects that have an influence on the process of assessing when to use or when not to use force or firearms.

Next, the program teaches a practical approach to potentially violent situations that fits within the legal and psychological frameworks. The approach involves creating a virtual image of the expected situation before the real confrontation (eye contact between officer and suspect) takes place. Using the proposed visualisation method, police officers will become better able to concentrate on those vitally important aspects of a situation that would determine whether or not to use force or firearms. It will help police officers concentrate on necessity and proportionality at the moment of confrontation, and on controlling the irrational processes that result from instinct, emotional stimulation, and concerns for one’s own safety. The final part of the training program gives attention to managerial matters that concern the use of force and firearms.

The first module is being designed for the police in Kosovo, but its flexible format makes the module easy to adapt to the police training institutions of other countries in the region.
 

Following two successful seminars for the Macedonian police leadership during the refugee crisis in the spring of 1999, COLPI and its partners are continuing their initiative to assist the Macedonian police in transforming itself from a traditional law-enforcement organization into a service to its citizens functioning within the parameters of a democratic state. As a next step, COLPI, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and the Open Society Institute-Macedonia, sponsored an assessment of the Macedonian police institution.

In late February, a joint team of police experts from Western Europe and the US and the Macedonian police management met with the leadership of the key police units, including uniformed police (peace and public order), the investigative branch, the border police, and the police educational system. The team evaluated the strategies for reform and measures that have already been implemented, and compared them with the best practices of professional policing existing in Western Europe, North America, and elsewhere.

The assessment resulted in a series of recommendations that could build on the existing reform efforts undertaken by the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior, and could help translate into practice the Ministry's stated commitment to professional policing that functions under democratic principles and acts as a service for the protection of all citizens.

According to the team's findings, one important area where COLPI could be of further assistance is in the area of education and training. The Macedonian police has begun a complete restructuring of its education system, to reflect its shift in focus to the issue of policing in a democratic society. Changes under consideration involve not only changing the recruitment process and the duration and level of the education (from a middle school to a post-secondary level), but also incorporating into the curriculum new subjects such as de-escalation tactics, treatment of minorities, domestic violence, languages, and new teaching methodologies.
 
 

What obligations require the police to provide information to the media? What kind of information should the police officer on the street give to journalists? What are the rights of investigative reporters? Do journalists have the right to access scenes of recent crimes? What kind of information might, if released, prejudice an ongoing police investigation? How can journalists and police cooperate to disseminate crime prevention information? How can the media expose police corruption or malpractice and still maintain a working relationship with police public relations officers?

These and many more questions form the impetus for COLPI's Police and Media project. In-country work started in February 2000 with a workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria that brought together police spokespersons and journalists. The project aims to develop guidelines to govern police–media relations. The guidelines will address legal problems such as how to balance the duty to provide information with the right to privacy of the victims of crimes. The guidelines will be used to train both police and journalists, and should help police spokespersons interpret the maze of laws and regulations that govern provision of information to the public. The ultimate aim of the project is to promote a mutual understanding between the police and the media which will enable each to carry out its job with a reasonable degree of trust while recognizing that tensions always exist between media and public institutions.

The pilot phase of the project is being carried out in partnership with the Access to Information Program in Bulgaria and the European Center in Albania. In both Albania and Bulgaria there is good will on the part of the police to provide information to the public, and there is a recognition that transparency will promote public trust in the police and aid in crime prevention initiatives.

Because the legislative framework for provision of information is not clearly or sufficiently developed in either Bulgaria or Albania, guidelines must interpret domestic regulations in accordance with international standards. This project should help NGOs in each country who are campaigning for improved access to information legislation and promoting greater government transparency in practice as well as in law.

The provision of information guidelines will be available for use in other countries by early autumn, 2000. They will be complemented by other police and media training materials currently under development at COLPI.

In November, 1999 in Budapest, COLPI conducted a two-day seminar on access to justice in the former Soviet Union (fSU) and Mongolia. The seminar, which targeted legal aid groups and practicing lawyers from bar associations, addressed issues of state obligations under international treaties on access to justice, existing standards, and experiences with government-organized and government-supported legal aid systems. 

The participants worked with examples of effective measures established elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe. For instance, practitioners from Bulgaria and Poland shared their organizations’ experience in running legal aid projects as an avenue towards access to justice. They spoke of strategic litigation methods and new ways of providing ex-officio legal assistance.

Lithuania served as another important example. There, the central government supported an Open Society Fund-Lithuania/COLPI joint legal aid project involving the establishment of two pilot public attorney’s offices (based on the public defender model) in Vilnius and an outlying city. If successful, the model can be replicated throughout the country. Concurrently, the Lithuanian parliament adopted a Law on Free Legal Aid, which will enter into force on January 1, 2001, and which will provide a legal framework to govern the work of the public attorney’s offices, and that will establish guidelines for setting fees for legal aid proportional to the clients’ income, has been submitted to the Lithuanian parliament. if approved, it could enter into force by 2001.

A set of working groups served as a forum for brainstorming on methods of evaluating free legal aid systems, alternatives to legal aid, and legislative frameworks. The participants exchanged their experiences in managing legal aid projects, strategies for involving professional lawyers in free legal aid cases, and fund-raising.

They also reached conclusions concerning how to continue legal aid activities in the region. Participants recommended establishing a network of all free legal aid organizations in order to systematize the sharing of experience, information, and new methods of litigating on free legal aid cases. They also stressed the necessity of specific training on alternative ways to provide free legal aid, fund-raising, and management.

Participants further recommended that bar association members and legal aid groups continue to meet on the regional and sub-regional levels, and focus on topics such as the relations with the European Union, constitutional courts, and reform of the lawyer’s profession in the context of judiciary reform. They recognized the need to begin dialogue with representatives of the law-enforcement agencies, judiciaries, and media in order to raise these institutions’ awareness about legal aid issues and to increase their involvement in legal aid and access to justice projects. In closing, the participants agreed to give high priority to topic-specific training and to meetings with all actors involved in the area of free legal aid in their respective countries.
 

New approaches to media law training have become part of the COLPI strategy for 2000 and beyond. To meet an increasing demand for trained lawyers and journalists in the former Soviet Union, COLPI, in collaboration with the OSI Network Media Program, is working with media law experts to develop in-depth training courses on all aspects of media-related laws and to incorporate modern media law curricula into university journalism and law faculties. Linked to both these projects, COLPI is building a bibliography of relevant texts that are suitable for translation.

Under this project and in collaboration with the Mongolian Foundation for an Open Society, 40 Mongolian media lawyers participated in a six-day training in December 1999. The intensive course included international standards on media freedom, laws on defamation, access to information and regulation of broadcasting. Workshops covered topics like, "How to advise journalists in advance of publication" and "How to defend the media in court cases."

The trainers came from across Europe: Willem Korthals-Altes (a media law professor and judge from the Netherlands), Ildiko Gergely (a media lawyer from Hungary living in the UK) and Galina Arapova (a media defense lawyer with the Glasnost Defense Foundation based in Voronezh, Russia).

The Mongolian participants evaluated the course and trainers very positively, and the training model is now being adapted for use in other countries. Preparing detailed briefing materials for both the trainers and participants was one essential part of its approach. Equally, the training should be linked to other initiatives: in Mongolia, related projects included developing a legal advice center for journalists and promoting the reform of broadcasting legislation.
 

"Please, put all metallic objects on the table," the security guard at the Hungarian Parliament building asked as usual last December, when the participants of COLPI’s training module on Conscripts’ Rights Advocacy arrived to meet the head of the Human Rights Committee, a leading protagonist of conscripts’ rights in Hungary. One member of the group was detained by the electronic security system: some metal was detected even after he had put all his keys, belt, and change on the table. After some searching, security guards found the metal piece that had been inserted into his back after a serious battle injury. This so-called afganiets (veteran of the Afghan–Soviet War) is now co-chairman of the Union for the Protection of Soldiers in Uzbekistan.

This anecdote reveals the trend among the older generation of conscripts’ rights activists to have joined the movement in reaction to some personal tragedy. The younger generation of participants chose this work without the same personal engagement, because of a commitment to human rights advocacy. Provided with the proper tools and information, they said, they would expand their activities in this field.

COLPI’s training on Conscripts’ Rights Advocacy aimed to fill this gap, strengthening the legal awareness and organizational skills of the participants from 13 countries of the former Soviet Union (fSU). For seven days, from December 11–18, 1999, this diverse group of grassroots activists, students, military personnel, lawyers, scholars, and a journalist, talked about violence in conscription armies and ways to monitor and report on these problems. The border between trainees and trainers blurred as participants shared best practices. The co-chairwomen of Soldiers’ Mothers in St. Petersburg (a conscripts’ rights NGO), for example, presented their methods of monitoring the mobilization process, encouraging mothers to learn their rights to protect sons, and providing legal expertise for deserters. Members of the European Council of Conscripts’ Organizations (ECCO) presented the advantages and results of different systems of self-protection and representation of conscripts’ interests, and provided samples of training courses, brochures, and videos. A "situation-game" on how to organize a national campaign for conscripts’ rights protection rounded out the self-training block.

The theoretical part of the training included an overview of complaint procedures, disciplinary and penal law for conscripts, international standards, and German, Hungarian, and Russian case studies. The case analyses most interested the participants. For example, they met a Hungarian Army colonel and Military Academy professor who was forced to turn down his position in the Hungarian Anti-Conscription League because this work was declared an unjustified political activity by military authorities.

Another useful part of the training was the media course, during which participants learned to use their advocacy activities as a bridge from abused conscripts to major media outlets, and through them, to the public. An experienced documentary producer and journalist shared some very valuable methods of how to "wrap" and "sell" information about violence, and how to prepare press releases.

This training was the pilot event of COLPI’s Conscripts’ Rights Advocacy Project. Though long-term impact cannot be assessed at this early stage, concrete evidence of the success of the training has already appeared. The participants have done their homework—representatives from each organization have prepared plans for a brochure on conscripts’ rights. COLPI has been pleased to see the excellent quality of these model brochures, and looks forward to seeing them published.
 

Previous issues of the COLPI Newsletter have reported on some of the developments in clinical legal education in the region. Since COLPI’s clinical legal education programs were launched in early 1998, their success has received wide recognition. More than 40 law clinics have been established and continue to operate at university law faculties throughout the region with the financial assistance of COLPI and the respective national Soros foundations.

The complexity of clinical legal education programs and a lack of experience require that continuous assistance be given to the newly-established clinical centers. The individual and specific nature of each clinic—one could even say that there are as many types of clinics as there are clinics—further complicates the need. COLPI has teamed up with the Public Interest Law Initiative in Transitional Societies of Columbia Law School in New York (PILI) to provide this technical assistance.

At the first Symposium on Clinical Legal Education in Poland in March 1999, COLPI proposed organizing informal sub-regional meetings in addition to the annual Symposia (the second Symposium is scheduled for June 26–31, 2000 in Bulgaria). These sub-regional meetings were to have several objectives:
 

•  to facilitate experience exchange among newly-established clinics located within a close geographical proximity;
• to promote network building and long-term relations among clinics; and
• to use existing successful models as examples for the others—this often proves especially useful for overcoming law faculty administration skepticism.

The very low cost of organizing sub-regional meetings adds to their attractiveness. The clinics themselves could eventually conduct them without extra financial support because of their geographic location and informal agenda. Each meeting would include teams from legal clinics consisting of four to six people: the clinical director, a professor-supervisor, lawyers, and two or three of the most active students. At first, a COLPI or PILI representative would facilitate the one- or two-day meetings.

The first sub-regional meeting, hosted by the legal clinic of the Moldova State University Law Faculty, took place in Chisinau, Moldova on October 15–17, 1999 for legal clinics from Romania and Moldova. The meeting’s main theme was "Supervision of Clinic Activity of Students by Tutors—Ways of Implementation and Improvement." According to Mr. Dragos Blinaru, director of the clinic, who reported on the participants’ conclusions, supervision of clinic activities could be improved through student completion of written conclusions on each case, plea competitions organized to improve students’ court skills, tutors’ supervision methods that do not infringe on the client’s privacy but maintain control of student–client consultations, and repeated meetings like the sub-regional meeting to exchange the experience of clinical legal education participants.

The second meeting took place in Almaty, Kazakstan on November 15–16, 1999 for the representatives of clinics from Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The meeting primarily addressed basic start-up issues of legal clinics and served to disseminate clinical legal education ideas, using the experiences of two clinics from Almaty. Not long ago, six new clinics were founded in Kazakstan, one in Uzbekistan, and plans are underway to help establish clinics at Tajik State University and Kyrgyz-Slavyanski University. COLPI anticipates organizing another meeting in this sub-region soon, this time to discuss the management, methodology, and ethics of legal aid clinics.

Donetsk, Ukraine was chosen for the site of the third sub-regional meeting on November 18–19, 1999 because of the remarkable success of clinical legal education there. The meeting brought together clinic representatives from seven regions of Ukraine that had experienced recent developments in clinical legal education. Problems encountered by the supervisors of newly-established clinics were the main focus of the discussions. Plans were made to continue more specialized meetings in the future. One participant from the city of Ivano-Frankivsk initiated an e-mail discussion group to tackle questions of professional standards, ethical responsibility, and organizational issues. The participants of this e-mail list also hope to join forces to draft a methodological guide for clinic teachers in Ukraine.

The final sub-regional meeting of 1999 meeting took place in Tartu, Estonia on December 2–3, 1999 for the representatives of five clinical programs in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Participants tackled issues of teaching methods, student supervision, ethical standards for student legal practice, client intake, and case selection. The meeting helped to create a network of clinicians in the Baltic states and encouraged them to coordinate their efforts in the future.

The real success of the first few sub-regional meetings on clinical legal education attests to the further viability of the program. COLPI is determined to continue them this year, adding even more sub-regions to the list.
 

In the foreword to the Soros Foundation-Moldova’s (SFM) activity report for the year 1998, Executive Director Mr. Victor Ursu pointed out that it had been the most fruitful year in the foundation’s history. His judgment reflects the foundation’s considerable extension of activity in fields where investments in the past had been far from intensive or outstanding—namely, the law and public administration programs. The rapid development of the SFM Law Program did not happen by chance. A favorable political climate, consolidated by the Moldovan Parliament’s approval of legal and judiciary reform concepts, helped to spur the initiative.

The government’s willingness itself did not entail a well-developed plan, however. Insofar as Parliament intended to initiate modifications in the country’s legislation, it did not take into account the necessity for a deep change in mentality among those empowered to conduct the legal reform, or an investment in the development of civil society, that the elaboration and enforcement of these modifications demanded. Legal reform, as the Soros Foundation-Moldova saw it, could only be successful if based on the following pillars:
 

• a very well trained legal community;
• a change of mentality and a gradual release from old-style approaches in favor of the gradual adoption of European legal standards; and
• an essential role for civil society in the reform, which would result in fruitful collaboration between governmental and non-governmental institutions.

The consolidation of this platform allowed the Law Program to make a new start in 1998 and to develop successful legal education, legislative drafting, and police reform projects in 1999 that could assist and quicken legal reform.

In close collaboration with COLPI, SFM dedicated a large part of its Law Program to legal education. It focused not only on university legal education and professional training of the legal community, but also on making society aware of the importance of citizens knowing their rights and obligations in a democratic society.

Since qualitative university legal education constitutes the base of a healthy legal system, the Law Program has made wide efforts towards restructuring the higher legal education system during the last two years. Under the law faculties’ curriculum development project, the Program supported the development of five new courses, the publication of four new textbooks, and the elaboration of 16 other textbooks. Hundreds of legal textbooks written by both local and foreign authors were purchased and donated to the law faculties.

Another interesting and effective Law Program project was the creation of a legal clinic at the Moldovan State University. Opened in September 1998 as a component of the law faculty, it succeeded in becoming an independent NGO that collaborates closely with the law faculty of the University and with the Law Academy. The clinic both offers free legal assistance to vulnerable members of society and allows last-year students to exercise practical skills. The clinic’s law students participate in real law suits, representing real clients in civil cases in court with the assistance of their tutors, law professors, and professional lawyers. In the first semester of the academic year 1999–2000, 107 students offered legal consultation to 83 persons, drew up procedural acts for 51 persons, and participated in 23 law suits, winning seven of them.

In October 1999, in order to share experiences and to find solutions to unforeseen new problems, Chisinau hosted a sub-regional meeting of law teachers who run legal clinics in Romania and Moldova (see the article on Clinical Legal Education, p.6). There, teachers discussed how and when to interfere in a clinical legal consultation without creating discomfort for the client and confusion for the student. The meeting also permitted the participants to establish common rules for very difficult and long-running cases. It will influence the methodology of the facultative course in clinical education that the law faculty of Moldovan State University introduced into the curriculum this year.

In response to the need for legal information in Moldovan society outside of the legal community—as people are not yet aware that the law exists for every member of society, not just for judges, prosecutors and lawyers—the SFM Law Program developed additional public awareness projects in 1998 and 1999. For example, in the last two years the Program supported the elaboration, publication and distribution of commentaries on newly adopted legislation and contradictory laws, such as the law on copyright and other intellectual property rights, the Constitution, labor legislation, the law on joint stock companies, and the law on administrative-territorial division. These works tend to be very popular among ordinary citizens as well as being very useful for specialists.

Another important public awareness project has been the development, printing, and distribution of wallet cards that outline a person’s rights and a policeman’s duties upon arrest. The cards received the support and the signature of the Moldovan Minister of the Interior. With the help of NGOs, 20,000 cards were produced and distributed among citizens, in pre-trial detention institutions, and at police departments. In addition, 5,000 posters with the same content were produced and displayed in police departments. With these in place, citizens could point at them to ensure that their rights and police obligations were observed.

The biggest project the SFM Law Program will implement in 1999–2000 is the creation of the Public Law Library in Chisinau. This project aims to facilitate citizens’ access to legal provisions, help them understand the organization of a society based on the rule of law, increase public interest in human rights issues, disseminate the results of legal scientific research, and provide access to needed materials to anyone related to the legal profession. This library will meet international operational standards and will develop activities characteristic of a legal resource center, such as offering weekly public law discussions on different issues.

In another avenue towards legal reform, 1999 demonstrated that fruitful collaboration between the SFM Law Program and government officials is both possible and necessary. Joint projects aiming to support judicial independence and the elaboration of adequate normative acts, such as SFM’s project with the Ministry of Justice to create and support a Judicial Training Center (JTC), make a serious impact only if there is political will to carry out the reform. The goals of the SFM Law Program coincide with government plans for judicial independence and the elaboration of a modern legal system in Moldova. The development of the JTC in 1999, as a continuation of a three-year project that started in 1998, allowed SFM to broaden its cooperation with government officials and to involve NGOs in the process of legislative drafting.

The Moldovan government, following its ratification of the European Convention, has begun to modify 22 normative acts to accord with the stipulations of the convention, including the criminal code, the family code, the labor code, the law on migration, the administrative code, and others. At the beginning of 1999, most of the modified normative acts had passed the first parliamentary reading. Before the second reading, members of the legal community requested that the drafts be thoroughly revised, to avoid double regulation on some of the same legal issues. The SFM Law Program’s input into the process of legislative adjustment and drafting included financial support of expert consultations for several of the drafts, and the submission of the recommendations and the reports on compatibility to the Parliamentary Law Commission.

In the framework of the legislative drafting program, the SFM Law Program also provided support for expert consultations on legislation governing the non-governmental sector in Moldova and for elaborating the law on foundations, the law and regulations on research and development, and the legal framework on agricultural cooperative systems. The Program also supported other activities directly linked to the process of legislative drafting, like organizing the first Congress of Moldovan Lawyers on the occasion of the adoption of a law on advocacy and the establishment of the Lawyers’ Union.

The SFM Law Program intends to extend and intensify its attention on prison reform programs, juvenile crime prevention and juvenile offenders’ social reintegration, and police reform. In previous years, the Program supported several successful police reform projects. In 1999, the Association of Young Law Researchers, in collaboration with the Police Academy, began developing a professional training course for the region’s police officers to increase their level of theoretical knowledge and professional skills. In the year 2000, SFM plans to cooperate with the Police Academy and the Police College to modernize their curricula and introduce special courses on human rights. Other activities within the police reform program will be designed to improve relations and to re-establish trust between police and the population.

All of these directions hold some similar obstacles. The human and institutional resources for conducting sustainable projects that might improve the legal awareness of citizens and the professional level of the legal community are often characterized by an "old-style mentality" and deep financial crises; civil society is not very active in the area. But the Soros Foundation-Moldova Law Program will continue to develop and extend its efforts in close collaboration with COLPI.
 

A great deal has been written over the past years about the serious threat to the region posed by corruption. Corruption attacks the economic health of fragile new economies, functioning, de facto, as an additional form of taxation that lowers the capacity of companies to invest and consumers to spend, undermines competitiveness, and discourages foreign investment.

Perhaps more importantly, even petty corruption in everyday life undermines the public’s faith in its government and institutions. It seems to demonstrate that a violation of norms and of the rule of law is tolerable, and reinforces the conviction that an individual is powerless in a corrupt system. Examples set by government officials do little to dispel this view. This erosion of public trust in institutions and processes threatens the stability of fledgling democracies.

COLPI, while recognizing that its activities can address only a narrow range of the complex factors that contribute to corruption, plans to promote legislative developments that may reduce opportunities for corruption. For example, legislative measures that limit individual officials’ discretionary powers in awarding state contracts, and that increase transparency and fairness in these procedures, can be an effective remedy to corruption. COLPI also intends to enhance the role of civil society as a "watchdog" against corrupt practices.
 

Among COLPI’s recent anti-corruption initiatives is a series of legislative screening projects that evaluate the effectiveness of laws and procedures regulating certain government practices.

The pilot initiative in this sphere was a study targeting public procurement proceedings in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. These analyses compared the effectiveness of legislation and practices in those states with the legislation and best practices employed in the EU countries and North America. Several recommendations to strengthen the legal frameworks can be made on the basis of these studies.

COLPI’s aim was to develop a methodology for evaluating the potential for corruption in public procurement that could be applied throughout the region, and that the national Soros foundations could carry out in their own states. The results can be used to raise awareness about the threat of corruption, and also to advocate for stronger legislation.

During the year, the legislative screening project will extend not only geographically, but also topically, to address other areas susceptible to corruption such as conflict of interests legislation and laws regulating political party financing.
 

In the fall of 1999, COLPI initiated another pilot study to assess the attitudes of St. Petersburg police officers towards corrupt practices. Carried out by the Scarman Centre of the University of Leicester (UK), the study seeks to track changes in officers’ views of corruption as they progress through the different stages of police training and then through their police careers. This will provide valuable data on the impact of current police training that may inform ameliorative measures in the future.
 

COLPI has also initiated a comparative regional assessment to evaluate issues that affect the effectiveness of special government offices or other administrative bodies charged with fighting corruption. Issues range from their mandate and authority, independence, and resources, to the legal framework that governs and limits their activity, to their relationships with other legal structures that affect their ability to bring offenders to justice (independent judiciaries, prosecutor’s offices). COLPI is particularly interested in identifying the types of issues that render these institutions either potent tools for fighting corruption or administrative failures that have little or no real impact. A regional conference devoted to the issue is tentatively scheduled for late 2000.
 

COLPI held its first seminar on penitentiary leadership in the former Soviet Union (fSU) in Budapest in December 1999. The meeting aimed to bring together penitentiary leadership from fSU countries and Mongolia, to update participants on on-going reforms in each country, and to determine what kinds of cooperative programs COLPI should initiate to improve the situation in prisons and speed up the necessary reforms. The participants’ views will help COLPI tailor its activities for the year 2000 to serve the needs of each particular country.

After the seminar, the participants were asked to provide the feedback on the needs that inform COLPI’s present and possible future activities in penitentiary reform. The several issues that crop up again and again in all COLPI’s work with prisons can be summed up and divided into four main groups:

1. Issues affecting particular groups of prisoners. These include, for example, groups like long-term prisoners, women, and juveniles; pre-trial prisoners also have special needs, as do those with some form of mental disability. Foreign nationals constitute another group.
2. Thematic issues like management of life-sentence prisoners, classification of prisoners, activities and regimes, contact with families and the outside world, complaint mechanisms, disciplinary procedures, and independent inspections. Suicide prevention is also important.
3. Staffing issues including recruitment, training, and development. Issues such as stress management also belong in this category.
4. Structural issues, such as the legal context in which the prison system operates. Links with ministries of justice, of the interior, and of health are important. De-militarization is another issue that needs to be tackled under this heading.

With this orderly set of issues in view, COLPI’s plans for the year 2000 include a series of seminars for penitentiary training centers focusing on the development of modern training programs and the training of prison staff. At the same time, COLPI will support efforts to reduce the number of inmates in chronically overcrowded prisons in select countries by promoting alternative sentencing and by piloting diversion projects for juveniles. COLPI has made the reform of penitentiary systems a top priority in both its long-term strategy and in immediate activities.
 

In December 1999 in Budapest, COLPI brought together Constitutional Court justices from Azerbaijan and Tajikstan to discuss issues of common concern at a roundtable meeting. The meeting was based on the pattern established by COLPI with the Program for the Development of Constitutional Courts in Central Asia. A bigger regional meeting of Constitutional Court justices from Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan took place in Warsaw last March.

The December meeting came about because the Tajik justices wished to follow up on the issues discussed at the March meeting, and the Azeri justices wanted to discuss new tools and approaches on an international level. Since Azerbaijan’s Constitutional Court was not represented at the March meeting, COLPI, likewise, thought that participating in the international discussion would enhance the ability of both countries’ institutions to deal with new issues. The talks focused on two prominent topics: the independence of the Constitutional Tribunals and the right to individual petition and its implication in the work of the Constitutional Courts.

The participants, building on the importance of the principle of independence of the courts in the context of separation of powers, explored and compared those mechanisms available in their national legislation that provide for independence of the judges. Other issues of concern, such as the high political involvement in the appointment and removal of judges, were also raised. Different ways of securing independence in practice were shared as well.

COLPI  has already conducted a number of regional gatherings and workshops like December’s roundtable talk, and has set the ground for cooperation among the region’s courts. While the topics discussed at these events so far have not exhausted all the concerns Constitutional Courts share across borders, the organization of the events made it possible for the justices to communicate informally and thus establish the close connections that result in fruitful cooperation. COLPI shares the view that the efforts in this direction lead to positive developments in the Constitutional Courts as institutions guarding the applicability of the rule of law in Central Asia.
 

In early March, COLPI welcomed more than 30 law program coordinators from most of the national Soros foundations in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Mongolia to Budapest for a planning seminar. This year’s meeting consisted of two major activities: first, it closely examined some new legal reform areas for the network. Second, the seminar built on the knowledge and skills developed during last year’s training session on project design and management. Ms. Van Le and Mr. Boris Strecansky, program-planning experts who conducted the session last year, returned for this year’s seminar.

This year, the law program coordinators divided into six groups. Each focused on a different topic: Juvenile Justice, National Minorities, Police Reform, Penitentiary Reform, Media Law, or Anti-Corruption programs. Using tools and methods for planning law programs taught by Ms. Le and Mr. Strecansky, the groups worked to create a number of potential projects that could be incorporated into each of the program areas. These were structured so as to ensure that the programs addressed the specific needs of the target group and could be evaluated to determine their impact.

COLPI’s director, Arie Bloed, participated in each day of the seminar. He was impressed with the level of knowledge and sophisticated program-planning expertise demonstrated by the Law Program coordinators. During his closing remarks, he revealed his satisfaction with the rich vein of knowledge that Soros network now possesses, which will greatly strengthen legal reform efforts in the Soros network countries. Mr. Bloed went on to say that continuing to exchange ideas with one another about how best to pursue the network’s declared goals will greatly enhance the efficacy of its programs. COLPI’s website and the OSI Net-Law listserve will continue as valuable conduits of communication and collaboration.
 

OSI-Montenegro (OSIM) was established as an independent organization within the Soros foundations network as of January 2000. While the Fund for an Open Society Yugoslavia (FOSY) has nearly ten years experience working in this part of FR Yugoslavia, it was decided that an independent foundation can better respond to the growing changes in Montenegrin society than a branch office of FOSY based in Belgrade. In addition, needs and political trends now present in Montenegro are much different than those in turbulent Serbia, requiring a more rapid and more operational approach.

The small and enthusiastic staff lead by Executive Director Mirjana Popovic has ambitious plans in practically every area of the broad OSI mandate. The development of a Law Program, with COLPI as the principal partner, ranks high on their agenda. The Law Program priorities include the establishment of a Judicial Training Center (JTC), along with initiatives in the areas of Penitentiary Reform and Legal Education.

The founding of a JTC is already underway in cooperation with the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice, the Judges’ Association of Montenegro, and ABA/CEELI. In addition, COLPI’s project on Public Procurement (for details, see p. 9) will be included among OSIM’s anti-corruption activities. Together with the Network Media Program, the COLPI Media Law Project, and local partners, OSIM Law Program Coordinator and former journalist Sasa Brajovic is likewise developing extensive plans in the area of media law, including support for the drafting of a new broadcasting law.

OSI-Montenegro has certainly wasted no time plunging into the most important streams of OSI policy and successfully combining them with local needs. Everyone at COLPI wishes them a warm welcome aboard, and much success in their programs.
 

COLPI has recently funded a set of country reports covering the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine entitled "Combat of Trafficking in Women and Forced Prostitution," together with an International Standards report. The national reports, coordinated by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights in Vienna, revealed embarrassing dismissals of the problem state by state.

This multidisciplinary investigation of the situation of the victims of trafficking in Eastern and Western European states was intended to contribute to the fight against trafficking in women and sexual exploitation of women and minors. The investigation carefully considered the interrelationships of poor economic conditions, organized crime, and corruption. A study of relevant national, international, and, in particular, European legal frameworks showed the shortcomings of legal protection and aid programs.

Both the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (some of them applicants for EU membership) and the European Union must strengthen their cooperation in building strategies to combat illegal migration and organized crime if they hope to reduce trafficking in women. Keeping in mind that this form of exploitation of women and female minors is an international problem which cannot be dealt with on a national level only, COLPI’s project focused mainly on working out recommendations and strategies for cooperation between the East and the West.

On the international level, recommendations were made to:
 

• redefine trafficking to include the elements of coercion, deception, and debt bondage;
• require preventive measures from states; make a distinction between smuggling and trafficking for more effective prosecution of the latter; and
• expedite the elaboration of the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and draft a Trafficking Protocol to replace the insufficient Trafficking Convention of 1949.

On the state level, governments should ensure humane repatriation conditions for trafficked women and children and consider recognizing sex work as legitimate labor, which would encourage the reporting of abuses.

Finally, both the international community and governments should incorporate provisions into national and international legislation to recognize and protect the human rights of trafficked persons.

These recommendations should ultimately lead to effective measures including appropriate assistance to victims and their families and to witnesses, on national, international, and European levels. The published reports can serve as a means of raising public awareness both in the countries of origin of trafficked women and minors and in the countries of destination, as well as a valuable reference for decision-makers considering the adoption of more effective laws.