Anti-Corruption Legal Aid Center

“Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre – ALAC, rejects the notion that people are apathetic in the face of corruption. Rather, they demonstrate that they will become involved in the fight against corruption when they are provided with simple, credible and viable mechanisms for doing so.” ALAC manual guide, Ben Elers

PROJECT FACTS:

ALAC began his implementation in BiH as a pilot project from the end of 2003 and has been active ever since. The project is one of the backbones of Transparency International BiH due to it’s consistency. Within 6 years through active work of the anticorruption line, we have received over 10 000 personal as well as anonimus complaints and reports from citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

GOALS OF THE PROJECT:

• Provide the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina with an effective instrument for combating corruption in their everyday lives;
• Provides citizens with free legal advice for reporting complaints of suspected corruption of public officials, or where the citizen is a victim or has knowledge of corrupt practices;
• Makes information on citizens’ rights easily available and accessible to the public;
• Raises citizen’s awareness of their rights and possibilities to take actions against corruption;
• Opens a dialogue with the national institutions to support the establishment of appropriate mechanisms for citizens’ complaints in order to systemize and organize fight against corruption;
• Monitor the work of responsible public institutions during processing of cases of corruption.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES:

Case studies of citizen’s complaints against corruption, using statistics and qualitative examples (who complains about what, which agencies were involved, which authorities were most vigilant in pursuing corruption, etc.);

Monthly press releases and reports to the public;

“Should I complain?” an ethical brochure for citizens about why individual action is important for combating corruption;

Training manual for government agencies on dealing with citizen’s complaints and obligations under freedom of information and conflict of interest;

Cooperation with journalists and radio and TV broadcasters on small programs about corruption cases.[:]