A/HRC/14/44 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 72. At the end of 2009 the Supreme Council of the Judiciary was not always meeting regularly, for want of a presiding officer and pending the issuance of the report on certification which the certification committee was to submit to the Minister of Justice, and the Council was thus blocking the judicial reforms. In 2009 a number of dishonest judges had nevertheless been dismissed, while others perished in the rubble of the Palace of Justice; there is therefore an urgent need to proceed with the appointment of new judges, not only in Port-au-Prince but also in the other jurisdictions, and it would be desirable for these new appointments to be made in compliance with the spirit of the 2007 reform. The independent expert recommends that the Supreme Council of the Judiciary should be established and that, with regard in particular to the financing of the reconstruction work, it should be furnished with the trained human resources and the funding to enable it to operate with absolute independence and proceed to recruit judges without further delay. 73. The Judicial Training College has been inaugurated but since the earthquake it has been used mainly as a refuge for the Parliament, whose buildings were destroyed. While understanding the difficulty of the situation the independent expert urges that the question of the initial training of judges should not relegated to the bottom of the list of priorities in the reconstruction of Haiti. The country needs to recruit a number of judges and to look to the future by training women and men to take up new posts or take over from outgoing judges. 3. The prison system 74. During his meetings with President Préval and the Minister of Justice the independent expert recommended the separation of convicts from untried detainees in order to show the way in which the prisons issue was being addressed in Haiti. At the time when the construction of the new prison in Croix des Bouquets had just begun, he suggested that, in the light of the number of places eventually to be available in the new establishment, it should be used exclusively to house convicts with sentences to serve. 75. In the context of the rebuilding of Haiti’s prisons the independent expert recommends that that policy should be continued and that holding centres should be built for untried detainees and prisons for convicts, in order to prevent the mingling of these two populations from fostering criminality and renewal of the violence. 4. The Office of the Ombudsman 76. The independent expert welcomes the support provided by OHCHR in the drafting of the bill on reorganizing the Office of the Ombudsman to bring it into conformity with the Paris Principles. He recommends that greater attention should be given to the development of the Office’s work and that it should be allocated the budget and human resources to set up regional branches. It is essential for this institution to move closer to its clients and thus be enabled to perform the dual function of promotion and protection, supervising and coordinating the field investigations and providing human rights training, in collaboration in particular with the University and civil society organizations. 77. In this period of crisis and endangerment of human rights it is especially important for the national human rights institution to be supported in its role as oversight mechanism, a role perceived by the people as a remedy against any abuses which they may suffer. B. Combating corruption 78. During his various visits in 2008 and 2009 the independent expert gathered a considerable amount of evidence that corruption, one of the scourges of Haitian society, continued unabated at all levels, even though the fight against corruption figured in the 16 GE.10-13204 (EXT)