Donor: Fund for an Open Society, Belgrade Office
Duration of project: September 2003
The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and the Victimology Society of Serbia, with the support of the Fund for an Open Society, organised a training program for trial monitoring for organised crimes and war crimes. The goal was to equip local lawyers, nongovernmental organisation (NGO) activists, and their associates with the technical skills and methodology necessary to monitor and report on trials, particularly future trials of organised crimes. The program was also conceived to enable this group to understand and be effective in other court procedures related to human rights.Training consisted of lectures on international standards, domestic legislation, and the right to a fair trial, as well as analyses and simulations of foreign and domestic cases. The training was aimed towards specific capacity building for organisations and individuals concerned in any extent with trial monitoring, as well as interested individuals who had no previous opportunity to become acquainted with the material through training or practice.
Fifteen NGO activists from Belgrade as well as other towns (Leskovac, Bor, Uzica, Nis, Novi Pazar, Prokuplja) participated in this project. Lecturers were domestic professionals in the fields of international and domestic human rights standards and fair trial standards.
The program was particularly enriched by the participation of British barrister, Paul Richmond, who works on monitoring and reporting on problematic trials. As his lecture material, Mr. Richmond made use of a court report of a case he had participated in as an observer (Leyla Zana). The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights translated this report into Serbian for the purposes of the seminar as it is a good example of a court report.
