TI BIH PRESENTS AN ANALYSIS ON THE TRANSPARENCY OF JUDICIARY IN BIH: HALF OF JUDICIAL INSTITUTIONS DO NOT PROVIDE INFORMATION TO CITIZENS

Sarajevo, December 6, 2022 – The openness of judicial institutions is important in many ways when strengthening citizens’ trust in public institutions, but also for ensuring the prerequisites for participationof citizensin the decision-making process, as well as in order to establish functional mechanisms of responsibility, is the message of the “Transparency of the Judiciary in BiH” conference, which was held today in Sarajevo, organized by Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) and the Balkan Investigative Report Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH).

The analysis on the level of transparency of judicial institutions was presented at the conference, and contains the first results of transparency Index of courts and prosecutor’s offices measurement, based on the methodology developed in the project “Improving accountability through strengthening civil society networks – SANCUS”.

During the presentation of the Analysis, it was pointed out that the courts and prosecutor’s offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not respond within the deadline to almost half of the requests for access to information and that they respond differently to the requests of civil society organizations and citizens, as well as that it is visible that they respond less to media inquiries. The analysis highlights a different treatment of judicial institutions in relation to the applicant’s profile as a particularly worrying practice. While the “silence of the administration” was recorded in only one case on requests sent by Transparency International, at the same time citizens’ requests were ignored in more than 30 percent of requests.

“Most courts publish annual work plans, while only half publish annual work reports on their websites. The worst results are in terms of financial transparency, 73 out of 74 courts do not have a published annual budget, while only one court has a published but not updated one,” said Emsad Dizdarević, program manager at TI BIH.

During the analysis of the obtained results, it was determined that there are different practices when it comes to reactions of courts and prosecutor’s offices to media requests for information. Almost 40% of the courts submitted the requested verdicts, while almost 45% of the courts did not even comment on the media requests. Over 55% of the courts did not respond at all to the media’s request to provide information regarding detention, and only 12% provided decisions. Only five courts submitted the requested recordings of hearings, while 69 courts did not submit this information. The attached results show different practices of the courts for the same requests, that is, different practices when requesting the same type of information, which shows us that additional engagement is needed in order to standardize the practices of the courts in reactions to media requests for information.

“These results indicate that we have a transparency problem in the judiciary, and this problem is reflected in two important things for the media. One is a problem in reporting and informing the public, and the other is a reduced level of control over the work of the judiciary through the observation of their work by the media,” said Semir Mujkić, BIRN BiH editor.

Representatives of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Basic Court in Banja Luka, the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office of Tuzla Canton and representatives of BIRN BiH and TI BiH participated in the conference at the panel discussion “Transparency of the Judiciary in BiH – how to improve the situation”, during which they tried to identify the key problems and possible solutions for improving the transparency of the judiciary..

The conference was made possible by the financial support of the European Union.

Media release_6.12.2022.

Analysis of the transparency of judicial institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina