News from CEELI Institute

“Judiciaries in Peril”: CEELI Spotlight Series Continues with a Look at Romania

Our ongoing Webinar Spotlight Series on Judiciaries in Peril in Central & Eastern Europe has taken an in depth look at pressing issues challenging the judiciary in key countries of the region, including Bulgaria, Poland, and Montenegro.
On Monday, March 8 at 3pm CET, the Institute is delighted to offer the next in this series, focusing on the situation facing the judiciary in Romania.The event also allows us to appropriately mark International Women’s Day with a stellar panel:
  • Judge Andrea Chiș, Judge at Cluj Appellate Court, Member of the Romanian Superior Council of Magistracy
  • Ramona Strugariu, Member of the European Parliament
  • Laura Ștefan, Executive Director, Expert Forum

The event will be in English and Romanian.

This panel is co-organized with our partner, Expert Forum, a Bucharest based think tank focused on administrative reform, public sector integrity, justice and anticorruption reform, and social policy to name but a few areas of their work.

Digital Justice: Calling all Judges in Central and Eastern Europe, Register Now!

We are excited to announce the launch of our first large scale online course for judges on the topic of Digital Justice in Central and Eastern Europe: Achieving Fairness, Accountability and Transparency. As part of our support for the region’s judges, the Institute has organized this five-week course to provide an overview of the challenges and solutions that technology can provide for courts.
This course is geared to active, busy judges, and participation is limited to a manageable 2.5 hour commitment each week. In addition to live sessions consisting of a weekly webinar panel featuring subject matter experts (each Wednesday at 6pm CET), we will provide access to recorded interviews, practical guidelines, a resource hub and discussion forums. Active participants will also be considered for participation in subsequent in-person programs in Prague, once those programs can resume.
 
If you are a Judge in Central and Eastern Europe, a Trainee Judge, or Court Personnel, registration is now open for you to join us on April 12.

CEELI Institute Annual Report – Hot Off the Press!

We are happy to share the release of our 2020-2021 annual report. The report details our activities for the past year and highlights the Institute’s resilience and adaptability in the face of the worldwide covid-19 pandemic. Over the past two years, we conducted almost 100 individual programs, reaching over 2,500 participants from over 40 different countries.

To quote Executive Director Christopher Lehmann: “We quickly pivoted in the spring and summer of 2020 to develop CEELI Online, our dedicated eLearning platform. As the pandemic continues, we have developed and offered a diverse portfolio of online courses, webinars, podcasts and publications tailored to deliver the training, development and peer exchange programs that the Institute is known for. We have done so without sacrificing program quality, and without compromising the interactive training opportunities that make Institute programs unique.”

Addressing Corruption in Public Infrastructure Projects: A New Online Offering

Large public infrastructure projects offer unique opportunities for public corruption. This problem has particularly plagued the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where public outlays for such projects often exceed comparable expenditures in the richer countries of Western Europe.
 
To address this issue, the CEELI Institute is debuting a new entry to its growing portfolio of online anti-corruption courses. The new program, Combating Fraud and Corruption in Infrastructure Projects: Procurement, Implementation and Money Laundering Schemes, launched in February and is a five-week online course designed to improve the practical skills of the region’s investigators and prosecutors.

CEELI Online: CEELI Launches New Online Course for Lawyers on Intellectual Property Rights

In early 2021 the CEELI Institute launched a long-requested course for lawyers on comparative intellectual property rights law. This new online course will run for 12 weeks. The target audience is lawyers from the region who work in mostly small or medium-sized practices which do not have training budgets and where there is a training need that is not being met.

The CEELI Institute is pleased to continue to lead the way in providing state-of-the-art online training programs for judges and lawyers in Central and Eastern Europe with this introductory IPR course, and to provide ongoing opportunities for quality continuing legal education, even in an environment shaped by pandemic constraints.

CEELI Institute staff have identified as faculty top subject matter experts from the United States and Europe. We are keen to provide participants a comparative view of international practice and to hone in on approaches and methods that will work best for their own jurisdictions.

20 Years Supporting the Rule of Law

The founding of the CEELI Institute 20 years ago was driven by a desire to create a permanent base of support for the rule of law throughout the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as they emerged from decades of communist rule. Today, we not only continue to play an active role in the region, but have expanded our efforts to support countries around the world who are struggling to contend with challenges to democracy and the rule of law in the forms of authoritarianism, backsliding, and hate speech.
 
2020 was as challenging a year for the Rule of law as there has been in recent memory, but because of support from organizations, foundations, and individuals like you, we remain steadfast in our commitment to help lawyers, judges, activists, and other reformers stand up for equitable justice and incorruptible governance. Our goals remain ambitious, but they are absolutely achievable with your generous support. The Institute’s 20th Anniversary Fundraising Campaign is now six months in and because of your tremendous outpouring of support we have raised just under $650,000 of our $1,000,000 goal.
 
Every contribution, no matter the amount, helps us continue the fight for respect of the rule of law in places where that support is most needed. We hope that you will consider joining the Campaign and helping us reach our $1,000,000 goal so we can continue our important work with the next generation of lawyers, judges, and civil society activists for years to come.