Background

Over the past fifteen years, the Government of Tajikistan has undertaken a number of legislative and policy reforms to create the framework for an effective justice system. These legislative reforms are of relatively good quality; however, full implementation of laws is of a much poorer standard, and judicial and legal institutions remain constrained by the low level of resources budgeted for this sector.

UNDP has launched the Rule of Law and Access to Justice Programme composed of two interrelated projects aiming at strengthening the capacity of state bodies and the justice sector to better provide access to justice and uphold the rule of law in compliance with international commitments, and protecting the rights of  people through establishing sustainable mechanisms for capacity development and oversight of justice and penitentiary institutions and ensuring greater accountability and transparency.

In 2018, a National SDG Report was developed based on thematic consultations through a broad participation of the Government, development community and CSOs. During these consultations, the possibility of using the National Policy Dialogue platform for monitoring and reporting on SDG16 was extensively discussed. Since then, the Platform is increasingly being viewed as a solid inter-agency infrastructure for SDG16 related coordination, monitoring and reporting. On July 3, 2018, at the meeting of the National Development Council under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan, the Government instructed ministries and departments to develop a list of basic indicators, including for SDG 16 and take measures for their implementation. UNDP Tajikistan intends to support the efforts of the Government in developing the selected SDG 16 indicators to nationalize and integrated into the existing strategic and policy documents of the country. Thus, the review of quality of judicial decisions aims to support the development of methodology and data collection under SDG 16.3 through measuring effectiveness of the Judicial and Legal Reform Programme in the Republic of Tajikistan adopted by the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan in 2019.

Currently, the Rule of Law and Access to Justice Programme has been working with the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tajikistan on provision of capacity building activity to promote better quality services from the courts.  On April 19, 2019, the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan adopted the third Judicial Reform Program for 2019-2021 which provides the continuous improvement of knowledge and professional skills of judges.

Analysis of the free legal aid provided to the vulnerable population has revealed that although a legal basis for the implementation of judicial decisions is in place, there are still shortages due to a range of systemic problems. A lack of sufficient implementation of judicial acts creates not only legal problems but also social problems. When vulnerable people ask for legal assistance, the most popular claims are alimony, divorce, and housing. In cases where judges’ decisions are not enforced, women and children are at risk of being deprived of their livelihoods and homes.

The results of the study “Execution of court decisions on civil and family law in Tajikistan”, conducted with the support of the Programme in 2016, revealed that poorly formulated court decisions are causing problems for their enforcement. Therefore, these comprise serious problems in guaranteeing human rights and vulnerable populations’ access to justice.

In addition, most often, the context of court decisions are overloaded with duplicated from case materials. So hereby, judges of different district courts of the same instances and levels issue court decisions of different formats, and with different timeframe

Therefore, UNDP intends to engage an International consultant and national consultants to assist the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tajikistan in improving the quality of court decisions on family and civil cases. The International consultant and national consultants will work as a team in carrying out this task.

Duties and Responsibilities

PURPOSE

The International consultant will support the national consultants to carry out a review of court decisions and elaborate a Guide for Producing Quality Decisions, containing recommendations to improve the quality of decisions and reduce the time required to render decisions.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

International consultant will present and discuss drafts of the Guide to judges of the Supreme Court in Tajikistan before producing a final version. S/He will then develop training modules to transmit the recommendations contained in the Guide, on the basis of which international and national consultants will hold seven trainings for judges, in cooperation with the Judicial Training Center under the Supreme Court. Finally, following the trainings, International consultant will review the analysis of decisions of judges who attended trainings, in order to measure whether and to what extent judges have improved the quality of their decisions.

Two additional independent National Consultants will be recruited to support the mission of International Consultant.

The detailed ToR is presented

Competencies

Corporate Competencies

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Functional Competencies

• Strong background in conducting legal analysis, reporting and justice/legal surveys;
• Good knowledge of the judicial system, especially in post-soviet countries;
• Experience of work in the judiciary is an advantage;
• Demonstrable knowledge of facilitating and planning consultations;
• Demonstrated analytical and writing skills;
• Excellent interviewing and oral skills;
• Reliability and timeliness in keeping deadlines and delivering high quality products.

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:

• Advanced university degree preferably in Public Administration, Law, Management or other relevant discipline;

Experience:

• Extensive experience in providing consultation to countries in transition in judiciary system and/or rule of law areas (at least 10 years).
• Successful practical experience in writing and conducting analysis/review of policy/strategic documents on rule of law including experience in planning and conducting surveys, studies on judiciary.
• Experience in post-Soviet context is required; Tajikistan specific development experience would be a strong advantage.
• Excellent analytical and drafting skills.
• Demonstrated facilitation, training and presentation skills

Language:

• Excellent knowledge of English or/and Russian is required; knowledge of Tajik would be an advantage