Soros Foundation Moldova launches project on state guaranteed legal aid

The Justice Program of Soros Foundation Moldova has announced the launch of the operational project “Strengthening of instruments for managing and ensuring the quality of legal aid in Moldova”. Within the project, the National Council for State Guaranteed Legal Aid will receive a grant to strengthen the institutional and managerial capacities, Info-Prim Neo reports, quoting a communiqué from Soros Moldova. The project is designed to answer the priories of the justice sector reform strategy for 2011-2016. Emphasis will be put on strengthening the capacities for organizing and administering the state guaranteed legal aid system and for improving the quality and accessibility of the state guaranteed legal aid in criminal and non-criminal cases. The second objective of the project is to improve the standards and eligibility criteria for legal assistance with a view to directing the legal aid to persons entitled to it. Stress will be laid on research and advocacy activities and on the cooperation with international institutions in the filed. In the process of reviewing the eligibility and admissibility, the project will benefit from international and national expertise and from the support of the Legal Aid Reformers’ Network. The project will plead for instituting the method of assisting the quality of the services provided by lawyers and for reviewing the applicable normative framework. There will be created mechanisms for transferring the knowledge from public lawyers to the private one, to lawyers who just entered the system and to those doing their probation. The project will be implemented until December 2014. Its total budget is US$270,000.