A/HRC/27/41
D.
Measures to improve access to justice and basic services
Senegal: strengthening gender equality by reviewing the nationality law
56.
The OHCHR Regional Office for West Africa provided technical advice for the
drafting of a new nationality code, based on recommendations of the Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women, with a view to ending the differential
treatment of men and women with regard to the transmission of nationality through
marriage, childbirth and adoption.
57.
In collaboration with the non-governmental organization, Association of Senegalese
Women Jurists, OHCHR provided technical assistance for the harmonization of the Family
Code with international human rights standards, which resulted in the drafting of a
compendium of national laws to be harmonized, based on the recommendations of
international human rights mechanisms.
Cambodia: strengthening a rule-of-law culture
58.
Since 2012, OHCHR-Cambodia has been providing technical support to the
Ministry of Justice in organizing a series of judicial round tables to create opportunities for
staff of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) to share their
experience with fellow judges, prosecutors and lawyers in the provinces. One of the topics
discussed at every judicial round table has been pretrial detention. Those discussions led the
Ministry of Justice to undertake reform of the pretrial detention process and align the
practice of Cambodian national courts with that of ECCC by introducing the requirement
that judges must provide detailed reasoning in decisions to detain. That was one of the most
successful examples of transfer of good practice from ECCC to the domestic system so far.
59.
In 2013, OHCHR launched the first-ever Cambodia-based course for lawyers on the
right to a fair trial. The Fair Trial Rights Academy, organized at the Cambodian Lawyers
Training Centre in cooperation with the Bar Association, is a three-month course featuring
interactive activities, field trips and guest lectures by national and international experts on
the Cambodian criminal justice system, including from ECCC, various Cambodian nongovernmental organizations and OHCHR. The course is aimed at improving the knowledge
of and commitment to fair trial rights of future lawyers; strengthening their relevant legal
skills; integrating a new human rights and fair trial rights module into the Lawyers Training
Centre programme; and enhancing networking between future lawyers and current
practitioners. The Bar Association and OHCHR also continue to co-host the Legal
Dialogues Series, an annual programme of interactive workshops which focus on
strengthening the quality of legal services. Sessions are developed by the Bar Association,
in cooperation with OHCHR, and facilitated by senior national and international ECCC
defence and civil party lawyers.
60.
In March 2014, to promote the jurisprudence legacy of ECCC, OHCHR launched
the Annotated Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure, which was published with support
from the British Embassy in Phnom Penh and the United States Agency for International
Development. The result of a three-year research project undertaken by several legal teams
from around the world and coordinated by OHCHR-Cambodia, it is the first publication in
recent Cambodian history annotating a law with relevant national and international
jurisprudence. It constitutes an indispensable tool for legal practitioners and for anyone
interested in knowing how the law is applied in practice.
61.
The ECCC legacy activities are being developed and implemented largely to ensure
the promotion of a culture of the rule of law and human rights, using ECCC as an example
of best practice.
12
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents