Recommendations of the National Forum: Justice for All - 2030 Agenda, submitted to state institutions in charge of justice reform

July 30, 2020

The conclusions and recommendations of the National Forum: Justice for All - 2030 Agenda have been submitted to several state institutions engaged in justice reform – Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Superior Council of Magistracy, National Anticorruption Center and State Chancellery.

The report describes a series of barriers and includes as series of recommendations for the line institutions to ensure fair justice and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, in particular SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. The recommendations were developed by the participants of the National Forum "Justice for All - 2030 Agenda". The event took place on 27 February 2020 in Chisinau and brought together over 120 attendees: representatives of the Moldovan legal system, the Government, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, academia, non-governmental organizations, media, development partners, etc.

The participants discussed the structural challenges and barriers as well as the solutions to overcome them, in three thematic workshops:

  • Increased access to justice for all;
  • Reducing corruption;
  • Safe and secure communities.

The above noted workshops correspond to a number of targets defined to achieve Goal 16, assumed by the Republic of Moldova by adopting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development - promoting the rule of law and ensuring equal access to justice for all, substantial reduction of corruption and bribery in all its forms, significant reduction of all forms of violence and related death rates.

The recommendations for increasing access to justice include among others: to adapt the buildings of courts and prosecutor's offices to the needs of people with disabilities, including to create a mechanism for them to receive personal assistance in court and prosecutor's offices; to introduce pro bono legal services, mandatory for all lawyers; to strengthen a continuous inter-professional dialogue between all legal professions; to introduce a course on legal writing in the university curricula.

The participants in the workshop that discussed the reduction of corruption submitted 18 recommendations, including: to create an effective mechanism for supervising and controlling the activity of political parties: funding, structure of self-administration bodies, etc.; to develop and establish an effective accountability mechanism for the lack of transparency: amendments to the contravention legislation and on decision-making transparency, clear definition of the facts constituting a violation of decision-making transparency and of the bodies authorized to ascertain the violations, etc.

In the context of reducing violence, the forum participants highlighted the need to create mechanisms for inter-institutional and interdepartmental cooperation in order to respond adequately to the criminal phenomenon resulting in violence and victims; and to develop formal education programs for zero tolerance to sexual violence and violence against girls/women at preschool and school levels.

The recommendations are addressed both to the Government and the judiciary and prosecutor's office as well as to the academia.

The National Forum: Justice for All - 2030 Agenda was organized by INVENTO, with the contribution of the American people, the U.S. Department of State, through Freedom House, and Sweden, through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Moldova, in partnership with the Hanns Seidel Stiftung Foundation.