When I took up post in Monrovia last summer, what struck me most was that I found a committed and cooperative judiciary, but one handicapped by a lack of resources. Often, people erroneously think that Liberia has no legal framework, but that is not true.
The real challenge is under-resourcing, which limits what the judiciary can actually do. There were a lot of delays in the court system, particularly with respect to Criminal Court E, the special court set up to prosecute SGBV, yet these were down equally to a lack of resources as well as inefficiencies.
It is true that the court faces difficulties in processing cases, in fact a second judge was assigned to help with the backlog, but there is still only one courtroom so they cannot sit concurrently. In terms of infrastructure, there is tiny cramped room for filing, without a proper filing system, making it hard to locate documents. In fact, one of the areas where I would say that IDLO has made the most difference in has been around support to court administration, in terms of establishing standards and procedures and training staff.
In the jury management office itself, our consultant identified a number of challenges, in particular, in relation to a lack of common understanding of how to run a jury office. He went on to develop a manual on procedures and created systems to objectively select jurors; work is continuing on consolidation of the jury management system and the creation of a national juror database.
We identified, and are addressing, capacity gaps for the judge herself and other circuit court judges where they were facing challenges introducing international standards into the management of SGBV cases, for example how to make the pre-trial process more efficient.
