Messenger.ge, Georgia

Tuesday, April 5, 2005, #061 (0835)

Judges from Caucasus and Germany meet to to discuss improving courts
By Christina Tashkevich

Georgia’s third international conference of judges has opened
discussions at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel. Organized by the German
Technical Cooperation Association (GTZ) the conference, opened on
Monday, focuses on the effectiveness of the judicial system in the
participant countries.

Judges from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Germany are all
participating in the event.

“The conference will review the level of sentences, the organization of
courts, education and the improvement of the skills level of judges,”
said the head of the GTZ project on Judicial and Legal Reforms in
South Caucasus Zeno Reichenbecher while opening the conference.

German Ambassador to Georgia HE Uwe Schramm welcomed a German
delegation at the conference saying their participation “proves the
readiness for cooperation better than words.”

Modern Georgian law is modeled largely on the German legal system.

The judges from Germany included the head of the supreme court of
Berlin and the head of the court of first instance of Bremen.

The conference was opened by the head of the Supreme Court Kote
Kublashvili.

GTZ has been supporting the South Caucasus countries in reforming
their justice systems since 1993. It helped establish offices in the
Constitutional Court of Azerbaijan and in the ministries of justice
of Georgia and Armenia. German lawyers as well the local specialists
are working in GTZ’s offices.

According to GTZ , its project on Judicial and Legal Reforms in the
South Caucasus aims to promote South Caucasian countries’ cooperation
in the field of legal reforms and in doing so contribute to crisis
management and conflict reduction.

GTZ has two other projects in Georgia – support of legal system
and judicial systems implemented in partnership with the Ministry
of Justice.

One of the conference speakers, the head of Tbilisi district court
Giorgi Gogiashvili, presented a report on the amount of appeals in
Georgia in 2004. The appeal chamber of civil cases in the Tbilisi
district court received more than 3,000 appeals last year and the
court overturned decisions in approximately 500 appeal cases.

The conference ends on Tuesday evening.