Handover of war crimes training curriculum for judges and prosecutors

BELGRADE, 31 October 2011 – The War Crimes Justice Project (WCJP) delivered the new comprehensive curriculum to judicial and prosecutorial training institutions in Belgrade, Pristina, Sarajevo and Zagreb today.

The curriculum enables the training centres to include war crimes education in their regular programmes. It is available in English, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Albanian. It is one of the outcomes of the four-million euro War Crimes Justice Project which successfully concluded this month.

The modern, practice-oriented and easily-updatable training curriculum on international criminal law integrates the current jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia.

“This is the first curriculum developed to date that incorporates the growing body of regional war crimes jurisprudence into war crimes training materials in a holistic manner,” said Chris Engels, WCJP Regional Coordinator.

Regional war crimes experts worked together with ICTY experts on its development. Consultations with training centres and trainers throughout the process as well as pilot training sessions in different jurisdictions were held to ensure that the curriculum addressed the needs of trainers in the region.

“The curriculum was used for different training across the region and helped to strengthen the capacity of various legal professionals working on war crime cases,” said Romana Schweiger, WCJP Regional Coordinator.

“Such a comprehensive and updateable training curriculum, with a wealth of examples from ICTY and domestic jurisprudence, is something that was missing in the practitioners’ legal training in the region. The curriculum has already helped me greatly in the preparation of a training I recently delivered to my younger colleagues,” said Judge Siniša Važić, the Vice-President of the War Crimes Department of the Belgrade Appellate Court.

"With the delivery of this curriculum, this project has provided the judicial institutions of this region with a very important tool which will contribute to further strengthening national capacities and expertise to handle war crimes cases and deliver justice in line with international standards," said Thomas Gnocchi, the Head of Political Section at the EU Delegation to Serbia.

The Project was funded by the European Union and led by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in partnership with the ICTY, the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and OSCE field operations.

For more information please call Ms. Sanela Tunović, War Crimes Justice Project Outreach Officer at ++387 61 539 535 or email at wcjp@odihr.pl.