The International Justice Sector Education and Training Program

The American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative’s International Justice Sector Education and Training (IJET) program brought small groups of justice sector professionals to the United States for month-long fellowships to empower them to implement strategic reform in their home country’s justice sector. Each IJET fellowship followed a highly tailored, structured model that includes a combination of seminars and training, peer-to-peer exchange, institutional visits, and an embedded mentorship with a leading US professional. Following the IJET fellows’ return to their country, ABA ROLI and their mentors continued to support the implementation of their change plans by providing expertise and material resources to help them succeed, including an in-person mentoring and assistance visit to work directly with the fellows in their institutions. The program was funded by the US Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

2021 marked the end of the IJET Program, which began in 2015 as a two-year grant covering six countries. By the end of the program, IJET included 47 fellows across 16 countries, including eight under single-country grants, and eight under the global program grant. These countries included Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Egypt, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Serbia, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The fellows have included judges, prosecutors, investigators, attorneys, researchers, and court administrators, while mentors have included judges, federal and state prosecutors, defense attorneys, academics, corrections officials, and alternative dispute resolution program administrators.

In 2016, ABA ROLI’s IJET Program worked with a group of prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office— Economic Crime and Corruption Department, to improve its response to economic crime prosecution. In 2017, a prosecutor who participated in the IJET program led the team responsible for the indictment of 38 persons and eight legal entities for organized crime, misuse of office, and money laundering.

In 2017, ABA ROLI conducted a four-week study exchange in the US for Vietnamese representatives from the Vietnam Bar Federation (VBF), the Supreme People’s Court, and the Office of the Central Steering Committee for Judicial Reform. The Vietnamese IJET fellows developed a collective change plan to enhance the professional skills of judges, prosecutors, and lawyers in using an adversarial approach in litigation. The plan informed the design of ABA ROLI’s Criminal Trial Advocacy in Vietnam program in Vietnam.

The IJET Philippines program aimed to introduce reforms to the country’s preliminary investigation process to efficiently and effectively prosecution of high-priority, high-impact criminal offenses against high-ranking public officials and employees. These efforts will result in a decongestion of dockets and a more focused, expeditious disposition of cases involving large-scale graft and corruption. Additionally, the reforms will strengthen the monitoring efforts of the country’s implementation of the Ombudsman’s decisions in administrative and disciplinary cases. Other ways the reforms will improve the country’s investigation process are create synergy between national justice sector agencies, increase the survival rate of cases filed before the Anti-Graft Court, improve the conviction rate; and improve public awareness and understanding on the functions of the Office of the Ombudsman.

In 2021, ABA ROLI completed the IJET Philippines and IJET Uzbekistan fellowship activities. In February 2021, ABA ROLI held the virtual Mentoring and Assistance Visit for IJET Uzbekistan, which consisted of a two-day webinar. The first webinar focused on the Role and Significance of Community Relations of Prosecutors in the Sphere of Crime Prevention. The second webinar focused on Public Control on Law Enforcement Activity in Crime. In June 2021, ABA ROLI held the virtual Mentoring and Assistance Visit for IJET Philippines which consisted of a three-day workshop on Prosecutorial Discretion and Case Buildup Approach. The first morning's session was led by a special guest, attorney Joyce Roldan King, Chief Counsel of the Frederick County, MD, State's Attorney's Office. The second day of the workshop focused on prosecutorial discretion as practiced in the United States, as a potential model for the application of prosecutorial discretion in the Philippines. The final day of the workshop focused on a team approach to making cases.

Major Outcomes of the IJET program included:

• training of all Kyrgyzstani trial court presidents on justice for children
• the passage of a new juvenile justice code in Peru
• the implementation of plea bargaining in Mongolia
• a 15.95% increase in the value of financial crimes indicted in Croatia
• the creation of investigative task forces leading to an increase in indictments of corruption crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia