Quarterly Report #7: Palestinian Justice Enhancement Program

During the quarter, PJEP contributed to this goal through targeted assistance to justice institutions, legal professionals, civil society, and the public. PJEP upgraded 12 West Bank courts and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) Hebron office. The program also continued to upgrade the Ramallah Conciliation Court in partnership with the USAID Palestinian Authority Capacity Enhancement Project (PACE). PJEP provided Information Technology (IT) equipment and furniture, and paid the associated engineering and structure design fees, while PACE will completely remodel the physical structure of the court. To assist the High Judicial Council (HJC) and reduce the case backlog, PJEP's 43 interns continued entering data into the Al Mizan 2 program and scanned backlogged documents using the heavy-duty scanners provided by PJEP. To date, PJEP interns have entered 135,488 documents in the Al Mizan. PJEP also continued to provide assistance to the MOJ Authentication Department's "Filing Backlog Document Project." PJEP's 4 data entry interns have entered 8,354 documents into the Document Management Archiving System. An inauguration ceremony of the MOJ new facility in Ramallah took place this quarter. The ceremony was attended by the USAID Mission Director and PJEP's Chief of Party (COP) as well as other distinguished guests. Assistance was also provided to the Deputy Minister's Office (DMO) through PJEP's advisor, who is embedded at the MOJ working to improve the administrative procedures at the DMO. PJEP provided technical assistance to the HJC and MOJ through the IT consultant, who continues to advise the MOJ, HJC, and the Palestinian Judicial Institute (PJI) on their IT needs, including developing software specifications for the PJI Diploma Information Management Software (DIMS). In addition, PJEP's statistical consultant assisted the HJC Technical Office statistics staff to analyze court data and produce reports using the Al Mizan software. PJEP's research consultant, who is embedded at the HJC, assisted the Research Department to conduct legal and judicial work as well as assist in improving the research processes in the department. PJEP's International Senior Court Administration Advisor worked with the HJC to create a comprehensive Model Court approach for development and implementation of best practices in court administration and improved caseflow procedures. Additionally, the Justice Sector Institutions Specialist is preparing a report to help develop solutions to the notification problems in the courts. PJEP also provided Case Weighting consultants developed a case weighting study that will be used by the HJC to assess judicial staffing needs. The report includes a statistical model defining the needs for judgeship positions needed to address current case load and a formula to calculate the number of judges needed to address case backlog. Through the work of the Joint Legal Committee (JLC), the Senior JLC Specialist continued to provide support to the committee, which is housed at the MOJ. The Specialist followed up on the mutual legal assistance coordination between the Palestinian and Israeli counterparts, in addition to developing the JLC three-year strategic manual. During the quarter, PJEP completed 15 Customer Service trainings for 322 court staff from all over the West Bank. The training aimed to improve the staff's communications, professional conduct, and customer service skills to provide better services to the public. Additionally, PJEP provided Notary Public, Civil Judgment, Notification, and Court Registration staff with a number of trainings that aimed to build the capacity of the staff as well as assist in providing more efficient and better quality of services to the public. PJEP also finalized the first draft of the court Unified Procedures Manual for the Notary Public, Civil Judgment, and Notification Departments and the Court Registry Office, which will be used by court staff to help standardize the court procedures and transactions of all the courts. To assist the PJI, PJEP completed the development of the Civil Law course material that will be added to the PJI's Diploma Information Management Software (DIMS). This will enable the PJI to provide training to judicial staff on civil law procedures and improve the quality of justice services provided to the public.