Witness support providers meet to exchange experiences as part of OSCE/ODIHR-led War Crimes Justice Project
BELGRADE, 6 May 2011 – Witness and victim support providers from the region and from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) met today to share experiences in working with witnesses and victims as part of war crimes cases.
This first regional meeting ofwitness support providersis part of the EU-funded regional War Crimes Justice Project led by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and aimed at enhancing the capacity of legal professionals in the region in the processing of complex war crimes cases.
The Serbian Minister of Justice Snežana Malović stressed the need to guarantee safety for witnesses in the region in order to provide for fair trials in war crimes cases and ensure that justice is served.
"The protection of witnesses is of crucial importance in war crimes cases, given the sensitive nature of the cases. If we know that testifying in war crimes cases can have serious life threatening consequences, then it is our joint obligation to provide complete protection to all witnesses. The region has to do all possible to provide full protection for war crimes witnesses on all levels, as the guarantee of their safety is key in determining the truth and is a necessary measure and precondition for reaching justice and reconciliation,” she said.
Robert Adams, the War Crimes Justice Project Coordinator, highlighted the important role of civil society: “Providing effective and comprehensive support to witnesses testifying in war crimes cases requires co-operation of multiple actors, including civil society. With this meeting we hope to contribute to fostering ties between various witness support services.”
About 20 witness and victim support providers from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro participated in the meeting. Participants discussed and shared experiences on different models of witness support systems in the region, the development of the witness support after trials, and experiences of witness testifying before national courts and ICTY.
The War Crimes Justice Project is a four-million euro regional project funded by the European Union and carried out by ODIHR in partnership with the ICTY, the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute and OSCE field operations.
This project is funded by the European Union
For more information please call Sanela Tunovic, War Crimes Justice Project Outreach Officer at ++387 61 539 535 or email at wcjp@odihr.pl.