National Legal System Monitor responsible to monitor vetting hearings and court hearings
Alert
Vacancy
Background:
The monitoring of the vetting process and high profile cases of corruption and organized crime is carried out as part of the Presence’s continued support to the Albanian authorities to implement the on-going comprehensive justice reform aimed at ensuring an impartial, independent and accountable judiciary. This support entails, inter alia, providing technical assistance and expertise to the vetting bodies and respective courts in order to ensure the vetting process and court proceedings in cases of corruption and organized crime are conducted in an effective and efficient manner and in compliance with the best international fair trial standards. Given the complexity and sensitivity of the vetting process and judicial response to the cases of corruption and organized crime, the vetting bodies and respective judicial bodies have stressed the need for the development of a comprehensive systematic and objective monitoring of the vetting and court hearings, including conducting in depth analysis of the final decisions, aimed to assist the vetting bodies and respective courts to effectively address the persisting issues and shortcomings.
Additionally, the monitoring of cases of corruption and organized crime shall provide input to a bigger component of the Presence’s work, namely an assessment to examine cooperation between prosecutors and judicial police on cases of corruption and organized crime. The data collected through this monitoring exercise shall supplement other findings that will fundamentally serve to develop recommendations for an improved cooperation between judicial police and prosecutors in order to advance investigation practices on the said cases.
In order to carry out the monitoring of the vetting process, as well as the monitoring of court cases related to high profile corruption and organized crime, the Presence will engage three National Legal System Monitors. The three monitors will be hired on SSA and will operate on specific instruction communicated by the Presence’s Project Manager or by a delegated legal officer. The Terms of Reference applicable to each National Legal System Monitor who will be responsible to monitor vetting hearings and court hearings in cases of corruption and organized crime; to produce monitoring reports to the project team in line with the trial monitoring methodology including analysis of final decisions of the bodies involved in the vetting procedure.
The selection of the vetting/court hearings will be done by the hiring department based on the pre-defined selection criteria, respectively:
Category 1: Cases selected based on the position of the assesse/defendant and cases of a wider public interest.
Category 2: Cases monitored at requests received by assesses/defendants, NGOs, or other interested parties
Category 3: Cases selected based on the weekly hearing schedules published by the vetting bodies/respective courts.
Cases from Category 1 will be given the highest priority in the process of case selection. The assesses who should fall into this category include judges and prosecutors who hold high level judicial functions based on the hierarchy of the courts and prosecutor’s offices, as well as the internal structure of the courts/prosecutors’ offices. More specifically, the assesses from this category include includes: (i) judges of the Constitutional Court; (ii) judges of the High Court; (iii) judges of the Appellate Courts; (iv) chief judges of the district courts; (v) prosecutors from the General Prosecutor’s Office; (vi) prosecutors from the specialized prosecutors’ Office for fight against organized crimes and corruption (SPAK) and Specialized Court of First and Second Instance.
The monitoring of cases of corruption and organized crime shall focus on the subjects and offences listed under Article 75/a of the Albanian Criminal Procedure Code. The project team will pay particular attention to these cases where there’s an overlap of qualifying articles between the articles of the Criminal Code and those of the Criminal Procedure Code. Furthermore, cases which are of particular interest for a wider public scrutiny should also be considered as Category 1 cases, and should be selected by default.
Particular consideration will be given to the cases which do not fall under Category 1, but which have been referred to the OSCE for the purpose of monitoring by the third parties, i.e. assesses, NGOs, group of citizens, or other relevant parties (Category 2).
Cases from Category 3 refer to assesses/defendants who do not fall under Category 1 and 2. These cases should be selected based on the weekly hearing schedules published by the vetting bodies/respective courts. Nevertheless, the total number of selected cases from Category 3 should not exceed the total number of selected cases from Category 1 and Category 2.
Objective
Through the Terms of Reference at hand, the Presence is seeking to engage a National Legal System Monitor who will be responsible to monitor vetting hearings and court hearings in cases of corruption and organized crime; to produce monitoring reports to the project team in line with the trial monitoring methodology including analysis of final decisions of the bodies involved in the vetting procedure.
Tasks and responsibilities
The NSLSM is expected to:
- Participate in a two-day preliminary training in February 2019 organized by the OSCE Presence in Albania (OSCE PiA) on the trial monitoring methodology and trial monitoring and reporting techniques.
- Attend the vetting/court hearings and collect relevant data in objective, impartial and professional manner following the explicit instructions as well as the implicit purpose of the monitoring outlined in the present term of reference and detailed during the initial training and respecting any possible specific instruction communicated by the project manager or by a delegated legal officer. The selection of the vetting/court hearings the expert is expected to report on will be prepared by the hiring department on a weekly basis and communicated to the NLSM via email at least 48 before the first vetting/court hearing, unless exceptional circumstances (such as, for example, late schedule/communication of the schedule of the hearings) require or impose a shorter notice. In this regard, the expert is fully responsible to provide a valid e-mail address to the Contact Points - which shall be used for the abovementioned purposes - and to communicate any change regarding that e-mail address in due time
- Prepare and submit the Daily Hearing Report (DHR: template developed and provided to the expert by the Presence) within 48 hours after each monitored vetting/court hearing
- Provide necessary clarification and additional information regarding the Daily Hearing Reports to the project manager upon his/her request
Expected Outputs/Deliverables:
To prepare and submit the Presence’s Contact Person daily hearing reports (DHR) for each attended hearing no later than 48 hours after the monitored vetting/court hearing
Necessary Qualifications:
- University degree in Law (BSc degree or higher education);
- At least 2 years of professional working experience pertaining to court proceedings and legal analysis. Previous experience working as legal officer/assistant for judicial institutions or international organizations is desirable;
- Very good legal and report drafting skills;
- Working knowledge in English;
- Very good communication skills.
Remuneration
The fee for this consultancy will be of 480 Euros per month upon submission of the above mentioned deliverables and approval by the Project Manager.
How to apply
All applications are due by 13 February 2019. If you wish to apply for this position, please use the OSCE's online application link found under link https://jobs.osce.org/. The OSCE retains the discretion to re-advertise the vacancy, to cancel the recruitment, to offer a contract with modified Terms of Reference or for a different duration. The OSCE is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious, ethnic and social backgrounds to apply to become a part of the organization. Please be aware that the OSCE does not request payment at any stage of the application and review process.