For more than three decades, information and communications technology (ICT) advancements have burst into the operations of courts and prosecutors' offices promising transparency, efficiency and radical changes to working practices, such as paperless courts. Even if in most jurisdictions such promises have yet to be fulfilled, software programmes and algorithms are already executing growing chunks of judicial procedures. The impacts such technologies have on the functioning of justice systems and the values endorsed by the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct are mostly positive.
Children playing team sports together not only get the physical benefits of activity and the advantages of teamwork, but they can also learn valuable skills which they can apply in numerous other settings. Sports programmes have therefore increasingly given weight to these factors, using games and physical activities to teach young people how to resist social pressures to engage in delinquency, crime and drugs, how to cope with anxiety, and how to communicate effectively with peers, amongst other life skills. UNODC's own Line Up, Live Up initiative, has been launched for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa region, in the State of Palestine, in cooperation with the Higher Council for Youth and Sport and the Ministry of Education.
Confidence in the rule of law is a basic element of a culture of lawfulness, and the promotion of judicial independence, transparency and integrity is of utmost importance to UNODC's Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, which works with judiciaries around the world to this end. The Programme's Senior Officer, Marco Teixeira, was invited last month to Argentina to discuss the objectives of the Doha Declaration, at the Judicial Council of the City of Buenos Aires. Mr. Teixeira presented the four components of the Programme, and in particular the work of the Judicial Integrity pillar and the activities of the Global Judicial Integrity Network : "The Global Judicial Integrity Network is a unique platform that provides peer to peer learning and connects judges worldwide".
The concept of judicial independence, in its theoretical sense, may appear to be a banal and non-contentious issue. However, when it is put into practice in the discharge of one's duties as a judge it becomes a loaded issue which is critical in the delivery of real and substantial justice. The reality is that the institutional independence of the judiciary goes to the very root of the ethical and constitutional obligation owed by a judge in exercising their duty of care to those parties who appear before them. It is essential, however, that the judge feels unencumbered by the possibility of negative consequences which may flow from the decision which they may make.
Nearly every aspect of crime and justice was brought up in Vienna during last month's 28 th Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), in what was a very eventful week for UNODC and for its Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration. Of direct relevance to the Programme's component on sports were two resolutions on crime prevention that were tabled and passed by the CCPCJ, the principle policymaking body of the United Nations in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice.
Titled " Strengthening the engagement of all members of society in crime prevention," the first resolution in question stresses the importance of fostering partnerships with civil society and the private sector for prevention.
