RULE OF LAW PROGRAM

MISSION
To contribute to the development of open society in Mongolia through strengthening the rule of law, respect for human rights, and supporting fair and effective justice reform based on the rule of law that are prerequisite for open society.

GOAL
- To promote right-based, fair and effective justice system at policy level through pilot practice of innovative type model projects
- To support community involvement and cooperation with state institutions in criminal justice system
- To improve effectiveness and performance enhancement of law enforcement institutions

HISTORY
Since 1998 Rule of Law Program has supported projects that bring legal reform and institutional change through training, legal education and performance enhancement with close cooperation of the Open Society Institute's Justice Initiative (former Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute-COLPI) The Rule of Law program has been consisted of the following major components in 1999-2002:

· Legal education
· Judiciary reform
· Support for Police
· Criminal Justice
· Legal aid to citizens and critical open society sectors
· Capacity for monitoring and public awareness of corruption
· Human Rights

PAST PROJECTS

Legal education
- Clinical legal education: MFOS/COLPI supported Law School of Mongolian State University to introduce a legal clinic where 3rd and 4th year law students provide free legal aid to clients, who cannot afford legal assistance, under the supervision of qualified law professors and attorneys with the purposes of introducing law students to the practical aspects and skills of lawyering, providing legal assistance to those who need but cannot afford the assistance (e.g., the aged, the disabled, the poor etc.). Shikhikhutug private law school has been established legal clinic under the MFOS support. The students at these law clinics offer free legal aid to any eligible client on a regular basis in areas of criminal, civil and administrative laws. Different modality of law clinic - "Street law type clinic" has been introduced at the State Pedagogical University which runs "teacher of social science - law" class to develop students legal knowledge and skills as they instruct or help instruct non-lawyers about how the laws affect our daily lives.

- Law Resource Center: "Legal Resource Center" has been established together by Ulaanbaatar Metropolitan Library in 1998 with the purpose of creating access to the latest legal information and research materials. Functions of the Center include operation as a centralized law library for law students and legal professionals as well as general public. The Legal Resource Center offers its readers various services, such as search of legal information from Internet, the copying and printing of found information, book checkout service. Every week a course on Internet is being given to interested readers on how to search for legal information on Internet.

- Textbook development and translation : Under the MFOS support publications of legal textbooks on various legal subjects have been developed by Mongolian authors. Translation of the international legal textbooks on human rights and international law has been published and distributed to academic institutions and libraries free of charge. / Book list/

Judiciary reform
- Training of judges: To meet the need for continuous training and retraining of Mongolian
judges, upon the request by the Mongolian Government, the "Judicial Training Center" (JTC) was co-founded in January 2000 by the Association of Mongolian Judges, the Association of Mongolian Lawyers and the Association of Mongolian Advocates. MFOS/COLPI supported the project financially and technically the judicial corps were trained and diverse training programs tailored for needs of specific categories of judges was conducted.

Criminal Justice
- Penitentiary training; MFOS has supported efforts of penitentiary organization the Penitentiary Department to establish training center into long-term, sustainable training structure for the corrections officers through trainers' training and curriculum enhancement and development and distribution of training.

- Pre Trial Detention centers monitoring project implemented by Center for Human Rights and Development that reveals facts and findings of human rights abuses in detention centers and publicized in report form to public.

- "Human rights in prisons" project to provide free legal aid and psychological consultancy to prisoners of juvenile and women's prisons.

Legal aid to citizens and critical open society sectors
- Legal aid to Media ; Legal aid to media activity has been supported on the basis of the project competition to support legal aid to journalists and media organizations. As a result of the competition the Mongolian Journalists Union has been awarded for the purposed a set of activities including a permanent legal aid, legal information service to journalists free of charge.

Capacity for monitoring and public education of corruption
- Public education ; In order to increase public awareness on aspects of corruption the publication of essays and posters of the public competition run by both MFOS and Zorig Foundation has been supported according to request from the Zorig Foundation. The publication contributes in changing public perceptions and attitudes toward corruption and in activating them against corruption.

ONGOING PROJECT
-Community service sentencing; In connection with new Penal Code with provision of the new sentence "community service" based upon the workshop on the concept and the practices of the alternative (non-imprisonment) types of the criminal sentence organized by MFOS, the Community Service Sentencing pilot project has started its first year activities. The project aims to change criminal policy more social and cost effective and promote community involvement which is conceptually new in Mongolia. Under the project framework a successful model of community service sentence will be piloted in the Bayanzurkh district, further hence the government will carry out a nationwide replication of a model.

- Access to Justice ; New initiative- "Access to justice" project to promote right-based justice reform through a support to create new effective system and cooperation of state and non-state actors including legal clinics, human rights NGOs and private law firms being carried out by MFOS addressing a need of legal assistance to vulnerable groups of society. The project aims to improve the scope of legal assistance provided under legal aid scheme in Mongolia namely adequate fee structure, budget of a mandatory legal defense system and quality of legal assistance to indigent.

- Freedom of Information; Considering media freedom is an integral part of civil society in monitoring and uncovering corruption, the project " Right to Know: Access to Information" run by the Globe International has started to create legal ground for access to information that provides citizen's access to government-held information through new legislation on Freedom of Information and amendments to the existing laws, raise public awareness and retain the public focus on their role of controlling and checking government and promote the public's active participation in generating social discussions.