Dysfunction of the judicial and prison systems: the RNDDH argues for the right to judicial guarantees

The report follows the judicial year 2021-2022 through the events that marked it: the partial installation of the Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire and the start of the process for designating the civil society representative, the installation of a new justice minister, an appointment to the Cour de cassation, the appointment and renewal of judges' mandates, the certification process for magistrates, the strikes and work stoppages, and the release of a named detainee from the Fort-Liberté civil prison.

The counts are specific. Scandals ran through the judiciary all year and irregularities marked the process meant to make the Cour de cassation and the CSPJ functional; despite recommendations to appoint or renew eighty-five judges the executive acted on fifty-four. At least four work stoppages were recorded, and insecurity struck the judicial year directly, with at least ten lawyers and two magistrates kidnapped. The report then turns to the human rights violations recorded during the year and to detention. Its recommendations are to hold criminal hearings with and without a jury to reduce the number awaiting trial, to improve conditions of detention with sound food, the medicines detainees need and hours in the open air, to secure the buildings housing the courts, and to meet the demands of judicial actors so that work stoppages become rarer.