US-Led Judicial Reform Project for Colombia Planned 2006-2010

The U.S. Dept. of Justice (DoJ) will operate on behalf of USAID as the lead U.S. government agency for the initiative. DoJ subsequently will rely on private contractors to provide technical assistance and training to Colombian law enforcement organizations such as "police, investigative and criminal intelligence agencies, Attorney General and national prosecutor offices, crime scene and forensics organizations," according to a July 21 notice posted to the FedBizOpps database. USAID expects to award contracts totaling $20.5 million to support the project, which is tentatively slated to be carried out from 2006-2010. A more detailed "statement of work," or SOW, will be released toward the end of August 2005, the notice indicated.

Although release of the SOW is weeks away, USAID released a modification of its original announcement that provides further insight about its policy goals. While some of these "lower-level, intermediate results areas," as the agency calls them, are somewhat specific, others border on cryptic.

The vaguely worded "Responsive Judicial Processes for Peace (JPP)" area, for example,  seeks to enhance the "capacity of the Foreign Ministry, judiciary, inspector general office (Procuraduria) and public defense to effectively plan for and manage responses to transition to peace requirements" through the following three sub-areas:

(1) Improved management of human rights cases in both national jurisdictions and international courts.

(2) Strengthened judicial processes related to demobilization of former members of illegal armed groups:

(3) Support administration of new jurisdictions and processes for "truth, justice and reparation", as required by enactment of a "Justice and Peace" law and future implementing regulations.

A second area is being referred to as "Effective National Implementation of the new Criminal Procedures (Accusatory System) Reform (CPAR)." This segment of the project would entail improvements to:

Inter-institutional coordination among justice sector entities; enhanced judicial school capacity to provide functional and specialized skills training for judges, clerks and court administrators; training of public defenders and staff in the new accusatory system; refurbishing and equipping priority courts, Judicial Service Centers and public defense offices, to conform them to the requirements of the new accusatory system.

Third is "Strengthened Court Administration and Management (CAM)," which includes:

Design and implementation of effective caseflow management and delay reduction systems that attend to the issues and complexities of fair case processing in primarily criminal court jurisdictions.

Lastly is "Increased Access to Justice (ATJ):

Especially for the poor and disenfranchised through expanded availability of public defense, legal assistance and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services; also, modest expansion of regional justice houses in priority (isolated or conflict affected) jurisdictions.

For further supplementary data for this project, check USAID's July 19 presolicitation notice for an extensive -- albeit US-government-provided -- list of links to various organizations that USAID says are involved in the inititaive.