NGO Domestic Justice Strategy Session
NGO Strategies for Strengthening National & Regional Justice Systems
This one-year project connects fourteen leading NGOs from seven countries and regions where the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened Preliminary Examinations into mass atrocities – Afghanistan, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Georgia, Guinea, and Kenya. Fourteen domestic NGO, two from each of these situation countries, will join together to learn more about the potential in a timely new instrument for justice: the strategic window provided by intense international attention catalyzed by ICC inquiries in countries struggling to address grave crimes.
This project engages the ICC Prosecutor, senior staff from the Office of the Prosecutor, as well as representatives from international human rights and justice NGOs, however, the focus will be on domestic NGOs who will develop clearer strategies for initiating meaningful justice processes in domestic and regional institutions, a common method and plan for evaluating those strategies over time, and having formed a learning and leadership network among senior officers of domestic NGOs dealing with these notorious instances of crimes against humanity.
A center piece of this project is a week-long strategy session which will bring together domestic NGO leaders to learn more about the potential in ICC preliminary examinations, learn from each other’s experiences, compare and contrast their domestic contexts, and hone practical strategies for
strengthening domestic and regional justice mechanisms in the context of the intense global attention afforded by ICC preliminary examinations.
In the six months following this strategy session the Hauser Center will maintain contact with the participating NGOs and record any experimentation by participating NGOs as preliminary examinations develop in their countries and regions. We will collect and synthesize this information in a Briefing Book which can serve as a field guide for justice and human rights NGOs in countries where new preliminary examinations are begun starting in 2011.
