Integrity through justice: Independent civil society monitoring and assessment of judicial response to corruption

In the last ten years, domestic institutions and international donors undertook a number of initiatives to establish and support judicial institutions capable of dealing with the most serious and complex forms of crime affecting BiH, including high profile corruption. Despite these extensive efforts, it is generally recognized that “investigation and prosecution in high-profile cases remain insufficient and the overall level of effective investigations, prosecution and convictions is low” and that “there is little political will to move beyond rhetoric and tackle corruption, including investigations and convictions in high-profile cases”. Nonetheless, comprehensive data on and systematic assessments of the processing of corruption cases is still missing.

Against this background, it can be fairly concluded that there is a remarkable absence of reliable, comprehensive and publicly available information on both quantitative and qualitative aspects of judicial response to corruption.

Project “Integrity through justice: Independent civil society monitoring and assessment of judicial response to corruption” is aiming to empower judicial response to corruption, while specific goal are: straitening capacities of NGO's for assessments of the judicial response to corruption efficiency and advocating for targeted and efficient measures and reforms focused on strengthening judicial response; and increasing quality and comprehensiveness of media reporting on high-profile corruption cases.

Except for training for media and CSO's representatives, different analysis and media reports, comprehensive method for measuring efficiency of judicial response to corruption in BiH will be developed within the project. Afterwards, collected data will be compiled and published in form of annual report on corruption cases prosecution in BiH.

The project is funded by the European Union and Open Society Fund Bosnia and Herzegovina.