Justice sector training in the Philippines in November 2016.
Since its original founding nearly two decades ago, the Handa Center has supported judicial capacity building in international criminal tribunals and domestic courts. Past training programs have included judges from the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Special Panels for Serious Crimes in Timor-Leste, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the Supreme Court of the Philippines.
Our training programs are built around interactive seminars and workshops, which bring distinguished senior judges, prosecutors, and other experts from courts such as the International Criminal Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court together with their colleagues in other courts.
ASEAN Judiciaries Initiative
The ASEAN Judiciaries Initiative is another component of our justice sctor capacity building portfolio. The initiative was launched with expert input from the Handa Center in 2012, when representatives from all 10 ASEAN judiciaries met in Phnom Penh to discuss ASEAN integration, the result of a collaboration between USAID and the ASEAN Secretariat. Delegations agreed to an action agenda of priority areas that need to be addressed including legal harmonization, enforcement of judgments, facilitating cross-border investment and transactions, and increasing transparency in the judicial process.
A second meeting was held in Singapore in March 2014, funded by the Singaporean Government, USAID, and the Handa Center. From there, the group has formed working groups to outline concrete policy recommendations and draft regulations over the next several years as integration process evolves. Now brought under the framework of the new association of ASEAN Supreme Court Chief Justices, and with the collaboration of USAID and the Handa Center, working groups from the 10 ASEAN judiciaries most recently convened in Manila in February 2016.
