OSCE Centre supports Kazakh judiciary to put Aarhus Convention into action

ASTANA, 10 March 2009 - A two-day training course, co-organized by the OSCE Centre, to support the judiciary in implementing the Aarhus Convention started in Astana today.
The course brought together some 40 participants from the northern and eastern regions of Kazakhstan, including co-ordinators of judicial training programmes and judges specialized in ecological matters, as well as representatives of government agencies and non-governmental organizations, to learn about practical mechanisms to implement the three pillars of the Aarhus Convention with a special focus on the third pillar, access to justice in environmental matters.
"The judiciary has an important role to play in promoting compliance with environmental legislation, and ensuring the ecological accountability of state and private actors to the public," said Kairat Mami, Chief Justice of the Kazakh Supreme Court.
At the training course, the OSCE Centre presented guidelines for judges on access to justice in environmental matters that were developed jointly with the Kazakh Supreme Court last year, as well as a training module, developed by an OSCE expert.
"The developed guidelines are the first innovative and universal training tool that can be used to implement the Aarhus Convention provisions practically, not only by the judiciary but also by other relevant stakeholders, including higher education establishments," said Ambassador Alexander Keltchewsky, the Head of the OSCE Centre in Astana.
The training course, organized by the Centre jointly with the Supreme Court and the TACIS project "Strengthening Public Participation and Civil Society Support to Implementation of Aarhus Convention", will be followed by a series of similar courses for the southern and western regions of Kazakhstan.