What is the mentoring programme?

Mentoring is a methodology aiming to empower legal professionals, judges, and prosecutors, to strengthen women’s access to justice. Through peer-to-peer learning, mentees explore innovative approaches and address the gender-based inequalities they encounter in their practice. The Mentoring Programme is designed to enhance the continuous learning of justice sector practitioners, specifically judges and prosecutors. By fostering open dialogue and promoting human rights approaches, the mentoring programmes takes a different approach from that used in formal teaching and establishes a connection between theories about access to justice, international human rights law and the daily practice of the practitioners. The mentoring programme is currently being implemented in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.  

For more information, visit the web page of the Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye regional action on “Women's Access to Justice in the Western Balkans”.

 Download the guide for developing a mentoring programme on women’s access to justice for legal professionals in English.
Also available in: ALB, BiH, MKD, MNE, SRB

 What are the greatest challenges by women as justice users?

Lack of gender-sensitivity and awareness among legal professionals.

The influence of harmful gender stereotypes and bias in the exercise of legal professions.

Women face many obstacles in accessing justice, despite formal commitments in the Eastern Partnership region, as in most Council of Europe member states. These barriers rarely reflect problems with the content of laws and policies formally upheld but rather from procedures and practices in implementing them.

 And in the Eastern Partnership Region?

The mentoring programme has been implemented in the Eastern Partnership Regions since 2019 under the EU and Council of Europe joint programme Partnership for Good Governance. You can access the PGG Mentoring Programme website here

For more information, visit the web page of the Partnership for Good Governance regional project “Women's Access to Justice: implementing Council of Europe’s gender equality and violence against women standards”.

 

 
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Назад Promoting gender equality and women’s access to justice across the Eastern Partnership and the Western Balkan regions

Tirana 20-21 November 2024
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Promoting gender equality and women’s access to justice across the Eastern Partnership and the Western Balkan regions

Judges, prosecutors and representatives from judicial training institutions across the Eastern Partnership and Western Balkans regions met in Tirana, to assess the results of the mentoring programme for legal professionals on women’s access to justice.

A series of thematic exchanges were held on technology-facilitated violence against women, opportunities and risks for gender equality when using artificial intelligence in judiciaries, and efforts to enhance regional co-operation of judicial training institutions in the interest of improving to women’s access to justice.

The 2023 Reykjavík Declaration from fourth Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe recalls that the gender equality and the full, equal and effective participation of women in public and private decision-making processes are essential to the rule of law, democracy, and sustainable development.

In this sense, the European Union and the Council of Europe through their joint work are supporting the progress in access to justice for women in the Eastern Partnership and Western Balkan countries, through tailor-made assistance to the authorities to implement the standards set in the Istanbul Convention.

The mentoring programme for legal professionals on women’s access to justice is a key tool to address the constant barriers at the legal, institutional, and socio-cultural levels that women face when trying to access justice.

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This event is organised within the action “Women’s access to justice in the Western Balkans” and the project “Women's Access to Justice: implementing Council of Europe’s gender equality and violence against women standards”, which are respectively parts of the European Union/Council of Europe joint programmes “Horizontal Facility III for the Western Balkans and Türkiye” and “Partnership for Good Governance”.

TESTIMONIALS  

 

 “In my group, the mentees, all judges and one clerk, brought some samples of their own past cases/judgements to discuss, compare the reasoning and see if there could be ways to improve them” 

Mentor, Judge from Appellate court

“Motivation in my group was high to participate… Exchanging own experiences was important, and the fact that it was not formal made it wonderful. We found legal solutions to improve access to justice for women".

Mentor, Judge

“[Mentoring] is a process. Stereotypes are so deep that they are difficult to identify, and so it is important to showcase progress on how we overcome our own stereotypes. [We can] speak the language of mentees, and come to discoveries together”

Mentor, lecturer

“Our candidates for magistrate are having the certificate of the course on Women access to justice. Under the curricula of Family Law I added as an obligation to fulfil this course and they showed a lot of interest.”

Mentor, Member of the High Prosecutorial Council

“To be mentor...Very demanding and time consuming. The great thing is that my mentees are highly motivated!…. My mentees and I immediately created a joint group to share thoughts and ideas about what we talked about during the meeting. It is good because there we can think together and look for the best solutions for certain issues. This also encourages ideas.” 

Mentor, Senior public prosecutor

*Овај назив је без прејудицирања статуса и у складу је са Резолуцијом Савета безбедности Уједињених нација 1244 и Мишљењем Међународног суда правде о Декларацији о независности Косова.