CJ Twomey attends conference on ‘Judicial Integrity’ |18 October 2017

The Chief Justice, Dr Mathilda Twomey, accompanied by Assistant Registrar Marie Angele Barbe, attended a conference on Judicial Integrity at Swakopmund, Namibia earlier this week.

The aim of the October 16-17 conference, organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), was to discuss the establishment of a Global Judicial Integrity Network.

As a follow up to the Doha Declaration of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice adopted at the UN Congress in 2015 which calls upon member states to make every effort to prevent and counter corruption and implement measures to promote the integrity and accountability of the criminal justice system, this initiative is aimed at setting up a Global Judicial Integrity Network which will become an international platform to support national, regional and global efforts in strengthening judicial integrity, while fully respecting the core values of independence, impartiality, personal integrity, propriety, equality, competence and diligence.

The UNODC conference also explored the efforts made by the judiciaries in Africa to strengthen judicial integrity and aimed to identify best practices as well as any challenges and emerging issues that they face. This will help design the parameters of the Global Judicial Integrity Network including the resources, services, the development and implementation of codes of conduct and accountability mechanisms for judiciaries and judicial support staff and identify any future opportunities for an exchange of experiences that could be provided by this Network.