Annual Trial Monitoring Meeting 2021

On 25 and 26 May, ODIHR will be hosting the Annual Trial Monitoring Meeting of 2021. Practitioners from selected OSCE field operations and NGOs from across the OSCE region will convene in an online meeting to discuss various issues related to fair trial rights and trial monitoring.

The event will serve as a platform for participants to discuss and share experiences in monitoring trials during the unprecedented past year, focusing how they adapted their monitoring activities to the new environment.

Meeting agenda

In this year's meeting, ODIHR will present its most recent pandemic response tool, a brand new policy brief that includes a set of recommendations related to the right to a fair trial and trial monitoring during public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The policy brief is the result of a working process that was initiated following the discussions in the Annual Trial Monitoring Meeting of 2020, which also included an Expert Meeting organised in February 2021

The 2021 event will facilitate discussions in both plenary sessions and breakout groups. As in the previous meetings, a training session delivered by an expert trainer will feature on the agenda. This is aimed at informing the participants of recent jurisprudence from the European Court of Human Rights in the field of fair trial rights and judicial independence.

This year, as a response to discussions taking place in various jurisdictions in the OSCE region, the meeting will also include a session related to the concept of vetting or re-evaluation of judges as a tool to address systemic issues in the judiciary.