CHAMBERS
Rule of Law Development
Guernica 37 seeks to adopt a principle to promote international justice through investigation, litigation, and transitional justice initiatives. It does this by building effective global networks, empowering victims and local partners to secure their voice in transitional justice mechanisms. It uses legal accountability to incentivise institutional reform and prevent future abuses. This way it develops transnational legal strategies to overcome entrenched impunity, fostering an exchange of expertise between legal cultures, civil society groups, and victim communities to cross-pollinate accountability strategies.
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Guided by these principles, Guernica 37, and through its non-profit entity ‘The Guernica Institute for International Justice’, work through partnerships with a global network of human rights defenders, journalists, NGOs, law firms, academics, investigators, prosecutors and judges. In particular, we collaborate on projects with our partner organisations in London, Madrid, Sarajevo and Washington DC to share the ‘The Guernica Approach’, establishing a footprint in common law and civil law systems.
Guernica 37 recognises that effective accountability mechanisms can only be properly implemented through the willingness of States to reform and address human rights violations in a systematic and strategic way. Judicial Reform, Development, Training and Institutional Building is a central component to this, and members of Guernica 37 have worked on numerous legal reform projects in the Balkans, South East Asia, Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. Guernica 37 provides professional development and training programmes in all areas affecting the rule of law, focusing principally on international criminal investigations, international humanitarian law, human rights accountability, criminal procedure and institutional reform and development.
Guernica 37 works with foreign governments and law enforcement agencies to develop professional and transparent law enforcement institutions that protect human rights, combat corruption, and reduce the threat of transborder and transnational crime and terrorism. Guernica 37 develops bespoke training curricula for law enforcement, prosecutorial and governmental agencies for the investigation of serious crime.
Current development projects include Colombia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Syria.