13 Office of Democracy and Governance 2001. “Guidance for
promoting judicial Independence and impartiality”, pg. 6.
14 United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes 2007. “Commentary
on the Bangalore principles of judicial conduct”, pg.17.
15 Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 2013. “Court Moni-
toring Annual Report”, pg.4.
16 Justice and the People 2013. “Citizens’ Rights and the Ac-
countability of the Kosovo Justice System”, pg.4.
The first problem related to transparency is low us-
age of announcement boards. Balkan Investigative
Reporting Network (BIRN) in their Court Monitoring
Annual Report for 2012 state that courts still failed
to announce trials in the announcement boards.
17
Although LCD projectors have been placed in mu-
nicipal, district and supreme courts in order to elec-
tronically present the schedule of trials and hearings,
BIRN monitors came to the conclusion that the ob-
jective was not achieved.
The second problem is related to the venue of the
hearings. Judges often decide to hold proceedings
in their offices instead of in courtrooms. According to
BIRN (2013), 40% of monitored cases in 2012 (426
out of 1032) were held in judges’ offices. As a result,
members of the public that were interested to attend
the trials were deprived of that possibility.
18
The third problem deals with misunderstanding of
transparency. In Kosovo, there are a lot of cases
when transparency is misunderstood. Quite often it
happens that judges and prosecutors are involved in
public debates where they talk about specific cases
which are in procedure or are under investigation.
Such appearances in debates do not contribute to
transparency since they contradict with the princi-
17 Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 2013. “Court Moni-
toring Annual Report”, pg.4.
18 Ibid, p.30
Diellza Gashi
TRANSPARENCY IN THE
JUDICIARY SYSTEM
A summary of problems that characterize
transparency in the judiciary system of Kosovo
