Press Conference on Monitoring

Institute of Law and Public Policy has organized a press conference on the implementation of the Project "Strengthening Access to Justice for the Poor and Socially Vulnerable". This press conference took place in Institute of Regional Press in St. Petersburg on 6 November, 2009.

The key speakers of the press conference were:

• Olga Sidorovich, the director of Institute of Law and Public Policy and director of the Project
• Irina Lodyzhenskya, the Chief Justice of the Leningrad Regional Court and a member of the Project Coordination Board
• Lyubov Ezhova, director of the Agency "Expertiza", which is responsible for the monitoring in Leningrad and Perm regions

Olga Sidorovich has opened the conference by presenting the Project goals and the first results of its implementation. Lyubov Ezhova has described the goals and methodology of the court hearings monitoring. Such monitoring is done within the second component of the Project. The monitoring will commence in December, 2009 and finish in March, 2010. A critical feature of the monitoring is that it will neither identify the pitfalls of the judicial proceedings nor evaluate fairness and lawfulness of the decisions. It will merely collect information for the methodological recommendations on optimization of the courts treatment of the poor and socially vulnerable, a brochure which is planned to be issued within the Project.

Irina Lodyzhenskya has supported the idea of monitoring and underlined that since the Project targets the poor and socially vulnerable groups, those groups are in most need of the courts careful attitude due to their financial status and psychological characteristics. This monitoring will provide valuable information on the difficulties faced by the courts and litigants who belong to the poor and socially vulnerable groups.

More information on the press conference could be obtained under this link (text in Russian).