OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan conducted international conference on training legal professionals
Sharing experiences in the field of in-service training and the training of legal professionals was the focus of an international conference organized by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan in co-operation with the Lawyer’s Training Centre of the Ministry of Justice on 17 and 18 May in Tashkent and Samarkand.
Around 50 national and international experts from the judicial, law-enforcement and educational sectors participated in the first day of the event in Tashkent. The second day of the conference, held in Samarkand, brought together over 150 legal professionals from the Samarkand region for further presentations by international experts.
Over the course of two days, participants were familiarized with the experiences of different countries across the OSCE region in improving the skills of legal professionals. They engaged in in-depth discussions on how to achieve the highest level of professionalism in the legal sector. Specific topics in this regard were the use of modern technologies and other innovations when training legal professionals and the development of feedback mechanisms, models for which were presented by experts from Belgium, Turkey, the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Germany.
In his opening speech in Samarkand, Juergen Becker, Senior Project Officer at the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan, stated: “The importance of training legal professionals cannot be overstated. An effective judiciary system benefits a society in all its aspects. It establishes trust of a society in the state and is a very important factor in the social, economic and political stability of a country.”
The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan has been supporting the Lawyer’s Training Centre in Uzbekistan since 2009. This partnership intensified after the introduction of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s reform agenda and the signing of the decree “On the Strategy of Actions to Further Develop Uzbekistan in Five Priority Areas in 2017-2021”. The strategy specifically highlights the need to further strengthen legality in the judicial and legal system.“The on-going reforms require the establishment of a quality-based new system to train legal professionals, in particular in the most required and specialized fields, the introduction of innovative forms of training in the field of jurisprudence as well as providing opportunities for internships at leading foreign institutions,” noted the Director of the Lawyer’s Training Centre, Mirzatillo Tillabaev.
The conference was conducted within the framework of the Project Co-ordinator’s project Support to the Lawyer’s Training Centre under the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Uzbekistan – Phase IV.