| Press Release |
TRIBUNAL
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| (Exclusively for the use of the media. Not an official document) |
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VE/MOW/1414e
Appeals Chamber Case Law Research Tool Now Online in Local Languages
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The Tribunal is pleased to announce that its Appeals Chamber Case Law Research Tool (ACCLRT) database is now available on its website in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language. Alongside its English version, the database provides legal professionals and the general public from the former Yugoslavia and beyond greater access to the most significant legal findings of the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
The ACCLRT provides summaries from all appeals judgements, as well as the most significant decisions rendered by the ICTY Appeals Chamber since July 2004. It also contains appeals judgements and key decisions from the ICTR since January 2006. As a public tool, the database will be of crucial assistance to national jurisdictions dealing with war crimes cases.
The ACCLRT was translated into B/C/S after receiving positive feedback from all national judiciaries of the former Yugoslavia, who found the database’s precise contents and accessibility to be of great value to their daily work. The database was translated as part of the War Crimes Justice Project.
Mirza Hukeljic, a Prosecutor from District Prosecutors Office Eastern Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina said: "The translation of the ICTY documentation into local languages will significantly improve and simplify the work of judicial institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through facilitating access to the Appeals Chamber’s legal findings, the database will greatly contribute to increasing the efficiency and quality of proceedings.”
Commenting on the value of the ACCLRT, Svetlana Martynova, Legal Officer in the ICTY Appeals Chamber, said: "The ACCLRT can be of material assistance for national jurisdictions prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, both as a research tool with respect to the elements of the relevant crimes and modes of liability, and as a source of inspiration for resolving practical procedural matters.”
The ACCLRT was originally developed as an internal research tool for the ICTY’s Appeals Chamber. Since then, the ACCLRT has grown to a comprehensive, detailed and easily searchable database of the Tribunals’ jurisprudence. It can be used as an on-line tool or through downloading a ZIP file to allow off-line operation. Its content can be accessed through a list of summarized judgements and decisions or through an Index of legal categories. The database is updated on a regular basis.
Expanding further on how to use the database, Linda Murnane, Acting Head of Chambers, said: “The Appeals Chamber Case Law Research Tool provides another method to look for legal decisions using a legal notion as the tool to arrive at the relevant law. For example, in one basic search one can find all of the key material related to a notion such as joint criminal enterprise. The fact that this is now available to those involved in war crimes cases in the region will be a great help in conducting research on the Tribunal's case law.”
The War Crimes Justice Project is a 4-million euro regional project funded by the European Union and carried out by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), in partnership with the ICTY, the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, and OSCE field operations.
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For more information please call Ms. Sanela Tunović, War Crimes Justice Project Outreach Officer at ++387 61 539 535 or email at wcjp [at] odihr.pl ()
For more information on the War Crimes Justice Project please visit http://www.icty.org/sid/240
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War Crimes Justice Project Partners |
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 This project is funded by the European Union |
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