Next meeting to be held in Trebinje
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The sixteenth meeting of the Association of Court Reporters (AIS) was held on Wednesday, March 19, 2008.
The meeting focused on further plans relating to the exchange of experiences with local communities, taking the February meeting between AIS members and judiciary and media representatives from Doboj and Zenica as a model.
The next meeting of AIS representatives and members of the local judiciary and the media is planned to take place in Trebinje in the second half of May.
The first meeting, in a series of meetings on “The Transparency of District and Cantonal Courts and Prosecution” planned for this year, was held in Doboj.
During these meetings, the reporting of court processes is first discussed in separate meetings of journalists, judges, prosecutors and lawyers, and then in a joint meeting attended by all of them.
The meetings came as a result of the project launched by BIRN and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung early this year.
The planned meetings present an opportunity to strengthen cooperation between the Association of Court Reporters and local judiciary and media representatives, with the aim of achieving better and more efficient work from both parties and the better flow of information to the public regarding the procedures conducted at the courts.
This will, at the same time, enable the AIS to extend its cooperation with journalists and media agencies from small local communities, which cooperate with local level courts.
Although the system of work implemented by the Court of BiH is much better than the system deployed at local courts, AIS representatives said, at the last meeting, that the State Court must be asked to improve the working conditions for journalists in the judicial institutions building.
Bearing in mind that there is no separate room for journalists, professional reporters from the Court of BiH must spend their free time between hearings in corridors.
AIS representatives have raised this issue on several occasions over the past year.
Representatives of BIRN, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and court reporters from BH Radio 1, Nezavisne novine, FENA and Justice Report news agencies participated in the AIS meeting held on March 19, 2008.
The Association of Court Reporters was established in 2005 in order to acquaint the public, through coordinated activities, with the work of the Court of BiH and its Prosecution. AIS is financially supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation as part of the BIRN BiH project on “Media, Civil Society and War Crime Trials”.
