OSCE Mission in Kosovo publishes third edition of Justice Monitor

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo released today the third edition of its Justice Monitor, a publication presenting qualitative performance indicators for first instance courts in Kosovo.

The third edition covers the period from 1 January 2016 to 30 November 2016 and provides data on the work of judges in the Serious Crimes, General, Administrative, and Juvenile Departments based on monitoring of 2,191 hearings out of 1,257 cases across the departments.

It evaluates the compliance of courts with international fair trial standards, including the rights to access to justice and timely trial, protection for parties and witnesses who provide testimonies, and reasoned court decisions.

The monitoring found that deficiencies remain in most of the monitored areas, including those relating to the rights of a timely trial, access to justice, reasoned decisions and evidentiary protections for defendants and witnesses.

However, there have also been improvements in several monitored areas. The number of unproductive hearings has decreased to 22% – comparing to the last reporting from December 2015. In addition, monitoring indicated that there were clear grounds for appeals based on fundamental rights and freedoms in 15% of the monitored cases, an improvement from the last reporting period when the number of appeals stood at 18%. However, slightly more than half of evidentiary hearings continue not to be recorded as required by the law.

Court efficiency has remained the same as in the previous reporting period, and is marked at approximately 105%, thus for every 100 new cases filed, 105 cases were completed, which means that judges completed not only new cases but also a number of old backlogged cases.

The third edition of Justice Monitor is available online in English, Albanian and Serbian.