A/HRC/32/34 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 5 April 2016 Original: English Human Rights Council Thirty-second session Agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Report of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Note by the Secretariat The Secretariat has the honour to transmit to the Human Rights Council the report of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Mónica Pinto, prepared pursuant to Council resolution 26/7. The report is the first written by the Special Rapporteur since she took up her duties on 1 August 2015. In the report, she recalls the origins of the mandate and the international and regional legal framework that has been studied, assessed and developed in the work of her three predecessors. She notes that, despite a comprehensive international and regional legal framework which details the preconditions and prerequisites necessary in order to have an independent, competent and impartial judiciary and an independent and qualified legal profession, such independence and impartiality are still extremely vulnerable, are under attack or are merely non-existent, in many parts of the world. Against this backdrop, the Special Rapporteur explains that it is time to revisit the well-established principles of judicial independence and impartiality, and the important body of work, including the recommendations, left by her predecessors, with a view to helping all stakeholders to take concrete measures to render the independence and impartiality of the justice system more effective. To that end, she proposes to begin working on a set of indicators of independence and impartiality which could be used by State institutions, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, civil society actors, donors and cooperation agencies, among others, to assess the independence and impartiality of specific justice systems, to identify needs for reform, and to allow targeted measures and actions to be taken to improve the administration of justice and the justice system in a more effective way. The Special Rapporteur concludes by recalling the centrality of the independence of judges and lawyers to the promotion and protection of human rights and mentions specific issues that she hopes to continue monitoring or to study in more detail during her tenure. GE.16-05469 (E) *1605469*