CEELI Institute Newsletter

Celebrating Five Years of Innovative Anti-Corruption Training at CEELI
 The November 2017 session of the CEELI Institute’s popular program on “Investigating and Prosecuting Official Corruption” was also a milestone, marking five years that the Institute has been offering this innovative training program. As one UN official recently noted, the course is now considered “the best in Europe.” Since 2013, more than 300 participants from 16 different countries, ranging from Serbia to Singapore, have completed this program. Feedback from our participants has remained consistently enthusiastic, and our participants routinely report that their time in Prague is well spent and is beneficial in their professional work.
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Advising Burmese MPs on legislative reform 
Building on our four-year track record of working with human rights lawyers in Burma, the CEELI Institute has now expanded our efforts in Burma to include support for members of the Burmese Parliament who are working to reform a range of outdated or repressive legislation. Many of these MPs are former dissidents and political prisoners who are now adjusting to new roles as legislators and drafters. Progress in changing these laws and paving the way for a genuine democracy is critical to securing democratic changes in Burma. The MPs are also increasingly aware that the results of the next general election in 2020 will be partly dependent on success in reforming repressive laws.
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CEELI Launches New Initiative to Support Anti-Corruption Activists
The CEELI Institute is delighted to be able to announce the launch of a new initiative to support civil society organizations, journalists and lawyers striving for greater public accountability and transparency in Central and Eastern Europe.  The project is supported by a grant from the US Department of State.  It will allow us to provide training, assistance and guidance to anti-corruption civic activists from across the region as they work to access publicly available  government information, thereby           highlighting and exposing official corruption.  The project will include civil society participants from the Visegrad, Baltic and Balkan regions, as well as the Eastern Partnership countries.
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Strengthening Judicial Capacity to Combat Terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa

In October, the CEELI Institute continued its ongoing efforts to support judges in countries on the front lines in the fight against terrorism, with support from the US Department of State’s Counterterrorism Bureau. The most recent program was designed to support judges from the Middle East and North Africa, and brought together judges and prosecutors from Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. The intensive three-day exchange focused on best practices for judges adjudicating cases involving terrorism and other national security issues, with special reference to The Hague Memorandum on Good Practices for the Judiciary in Adjudicating Terrorism Offenses, a Good Practice document based on relevant international guidance and developed under the auspices of the 30-nation Global Counter Terrorism Forum (www.thegctf.org).

The October program was held in Malta, as part of our ongoing partnership with the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (www.theiij.org), itself a leader in counterterrorism programming efforts. Judges and prosecutors from the United States, France and the Netherlands with specialized experience in counterterrorism adjudication facilitated highly interactive exchanges, using firsthand experiences, case studies, and hypothetical problems to engage the assembled group and drive the conversation.
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CEELI Launches New Judicial Tool
The CEELI Institute is delighted to announce its newest judicial reference tool, The Addendum to the Manual on Independence, Impartiality and Integrity of the Judiciary: A Thematic Compilation of International and National Jurisprudence. This document will now join the original Manual on Independence, Impartiality and Integrity of the Judiciary: The Thematic Compilation of International Standards, Policies and Best Practices as an important reference tool for judges, legislators, government officials and legal scholars. Both documents are hosted on the CEELI Institute web site, where they are available for download.
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The CEELI Institute is looking forward to a busy international schedule. Upcoming events include:
  • Burma:  Legislative Reform Roundtables with Parliamentarians and Media Lawyers, December 3-9, 2017
  • Prague:   Anti-Corruption Compliance and Ethics Training for Lawyers, January 19-21, 2018
  • Prague:  Judicial Training on EU Criminal Justice Instruments, February 1-2, 2018
  • Prague:  Judicial Anti-Corruption Roundtable, CEELI Judicial Network, March 22-24, 2018
  • Washington, DC:   US-India Judicial Exchange: Judicial Adjudication of Terrorism Cases  April 2-6, 2018
  • Prague:  Investigating and Prosecuting Official Corruption. April 23-27, 2018