UNMIK/PR/1238
PRISTINA – Today SRSG Søren Jessen-Petersen administered the Oath of Office to 169 lay judges who will be assigned to various district and municipal courts in Kosovo. The swearing-in ceremony, held in the UNMIK HQ in Pristina this morning, was attended among others by the DSRSG/Pillar I Mr Jean-Christian Cady, the Director of the Department of Justice Mr Thomas Monaghan and the President of the Kosovo Supreme Court Mr Rexhep Haxhimusa.
Addressing the ceremony, the SRSG highlighted the importance of lay judges in ensuring the efficient functioning of Kosovo courts and noted that the substantial addition to their numbers today is “a positive step towards achieving the goal of establishing a professional, efficient, independent, multi-ethnic and fully functioning judicial and prosecutorial system in Kosovo, a system that will contribute to the building of public confidence and to the process of reconciliation, and which will also address security concerns in Kosovo.” Mr Rexhep Haxhimusa also addressed the ceremony.
A lay judge is a member of a panel of a court who is not a professional judge. These are citizens with unquestionable reputation who are capable of participating in the trial together with the professional judge or judges. The aim is to introduce “one more opinion” in the trial panel on the punishment and the verdict – an opinion based not only on legal documents, but also on “common sense”. According to the applicable law in Kosovo, the lay judges are involved in multiple cases both in criminal and civil proceedings, in all the instances.
The shortage of lay judges in the Kosovo courts seriously impeded the efficiency of court work when cases had to be postponed due to the impossibility to form panels. To meet this requirement the SRSG appointed the 169 additional lay judges based on the recommendation of the Kosovo Judicial and Prosecutorial Council.
Among the lay judges sworn in today are 138 Kosovo Albanians, 22 Kosovo Serbs, 6 from the Turkish and 3 from the Bosniac communities. 91 of them have been appointed to the district courts and 78 to the municipal courts. With today’s new appointments, there are now 543 lay judges serving within Kosovo courts. 178 are appointed to district courts and 365 to the municipal courts.