Chief Justice Carl Ingram and the Pacific Judicial Strengthening Initiative (PJSI) hosted a local Access to Justice Workshop in Majuro, Marshall Islands last week.
The Workshop was well attended by fifty members of the community, prosecutors, defenders and members of the bar together with the judges and court staff from the High, District and Traditional Rights Courts of the Marshall Islands. Prior to this workshop, other community consultations were conducted on remote islands including Ebeye, Ebadon, Mejatto and Arno.
The aim of the program is to provide outreach and an opportunity for the community to supply feedback to address unmet needs to improve the quality of the justice administered by the courts. The workshop provided a valuable forum to exchange experience and assess public satisfaction with access to justice and court services.
This workshop is one of the many conducted by the Pacific Judicial Strengthening Initiative across the region. The initiative is funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade which has supported promoting the rule of law around the Pacific in recent years.
Following the private consultations on both Ebeye and Majuro and the public meeting on Wednesday, the court judges and staff conducted their own workshop on Thursday and Friday to address and respond to the issues that arose from the consultations and public meeting.
“The RMI Judiciary is committed to improving its services and the administration of justice for the people of the Marshall Islands,” said Court Clerk Ingrid Kabua. The goals of the Pacific Judicial Strengthening Initiative are “to develop more accessible, just, efficient and responsive justice services.”
Read more about this in the March 23, 2018 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.