National Consultant to Support the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro in Developing... Tender

Procurement Summary

Country : Montenegro

Summary : National Consultant to Support the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro in Developing Country-Specific Indicators on Children in Justice Proceedings and Their Integration into the New Judicial Information System (ISP)

Deadline : 27 May 2019

Other Information

Notice Type : Tender

TOT Ref.No.: 32909760

Document Ref. No. :

Competition : ICB

Financier : United Nations Secretariat

Purchaser Ownership : -

Tender Value : Refer Document

Purchaser's Detail

Purchaser : UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND
Stanka Dragojevica bb, UN Eco House 81 000 Podgorica Tel: + 382 20 447 400 Fax: + 382 20 447 471
Montenegro
Email :podgorica@unicef.org
URL :http://www.unicef.org/

Tender Details

Tenders are invited for National Consultant to Support the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro in Developing Country-Specific Indicators on Children in Justice Proceedings and Their Integration into the New Judicial Information System (ISP).

Job title: National Consultant to support the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro in developing country-specific indicators on children in justice proceedings and their integration into the new judicial information system (ISP)



Background and Context: Montenegro made considerable progress in the reform of the country's judicial system with juvenile justice as an integral component. The comprehensive juvenile justice system reform started in early 2004 with a strong commitment of the Government of Montenegro, under the leadership of the Ministry of Justice and with the UNICEF technical assistance.

One of the important interventions during the juvenile justice reform process was the improvement of the juvenile justice data collection and information system as part of the overall Judicial Information System (PRIS). A uniform methodology for improvement of data collection on monitoring situation of children in conflict with the law, children victims and witnesses of crime was developed based on internationally recognized indicators developed and agreed among the UNODC and UNICEF and integrated into the Judicial Information System (PRIS). The existing Judicial information system (PRIS) is now outdated from both a technical and functional point of view and is not covering the current needs of the judiciary.

The Government of Montenegro (Ministry of Justice) therefore adopted a Strategy on information and communication technology for the judiciary (2016-2020) aimed at establishing a new, customized and user-friendly information system for the judiciary of Montenegro (hereinafter ISP). ISP is conceptually conceived as a unique information system that will cover the needs and key business processes of the Ministry of Justice, courts, state prosecutor’s office, misdemeanour court and the Institute for execution of criminal sanctions.

In line with Montenegro's commitments under international treaties, it will be necessary to develop a set of indicators related to children in justice processes (criminal, civil and administrative). These indicators should be an integral part of the new ISP so that situation of children in justice proceedings can be monitored, documented and that related policies are developed based on evidence.

In December 2018 UNICEF Montenegro became part of the sub regional initiative ‘Equitable Access to Justice for Children in the West Balkans States of Albania and Montenegro’ (2019 -2020) funded by the Government of Norway. This initiative is focused on two key result areas: 1) Justice and social welfare systems are adapted to the rights of children participating in justice processes; and b) Children, especially the most vulnerable, have knowledge and support to enable them to access justice. A strong emphasis of this initiative is on strengthening of administrative data in the country, primarily data related to children in the justice system. Â

UNDP supports the Ministry of Justice in the process of developing a new ISP system and its intervention will be focused on developing two subsystems for the judicial information system (Courts and Institute for the execution of criminal sanctions); business intelligence module for analytics and statistics and provision of technical assistance in business continuity and integrity of the data.

In partnership with UNDP, UNICEF will provide technical support to the Ministry of Justice to assess existing juvenile justice indicators and develop a full set of indicators related to children appearing in all court proceedings (criminal, civil and administrative). The ultimate aim is to develop a child rights related module and integrate it into ISP. Once the indicators are proposed and agreed with the Ministry of Justice’s IT Department and Judicial Council, it will be necessary to harmonize definitions proposed for the new ISP system with definitions used by the Montenegrin National Statistical Office (MONSTAT), so the two systems correspond to each other and report the same data on children in contact with the law. The national consultant will work in partnership with an international consultant who will be engaged for the assessment and development of indicators for children in justice proceedings.



Purpose and Objective(s)

The purpose of this assignment is to support the Ministry of Justice and judicial institutions to improve the data collection on children participating in all justice proceedings so that decisions are made in the best interests of children.

1. The objective of this assignment is to:

§ identify, assess and develop a sector relevant set of indicators on children participating in justice processes with reference to international standards and guidance;

§ Integrate indicators concerning children appearing in all court proceedings in the new Judicial Information System (ISP) to be used by the Ministry of Justice, courts and state prosecutors’ offices;

§ Enhance evidence-based planning and monitoring on the situation of children appearing in all court (including misdemeanor courts) and administrative proceedings.

§ Support the Montenegrin National Statistical Office (MONSTAT) in harmonizing definitions on children in justice proceedings with data/indicators developed for ISP.



Methodology and Technical Approach: The methodology will include:

§ desk review of the relevant legislative and policy documents and available statistics, surveys, and publications/reports on access to justice available through administrative data sources,

§ interviews with representatives of relevant sectors at the national level (primarily judiciary, Ministry of Justice, MONSTAT and others), UNDP and insight into reporting mechanisms and registries (without identifiable data); interviews will be scheduled with UNICEF support and conducted together with international consultant;

§ assistance to international consultant in assessment of the current situation and preparation of the report with proposed indicators to be integrated into the new judicial information system -ISP and MONSTAT;

§ validation of the proposed indicators and the methodology for data collection by national stakeholders. Â



The Consultant is expected to work as part of a team together with an International Consultant to be recruited for this assignment.



Further details are presented in the section below Activities and Tasks.



Activities and Tasks: The activities of the assignment will be conducted under the supervision of UNICEFs Child Protection Officer, and in close cooperation with the relevant representatives of the Ministry of Justice, Judicial Council.

The consultant is expected:

§ To review and get familiar with relevant international instruments (UN CRC and other UN, CoE and EU instruments), and in particular CoE Guidelines on Child Friendly Justice, UNICEF Strategic Plan – Goal Area 3 (internal UNICEF document, will be provided by UNICEF) and related Manual/Guidance for the implementation of the Strategic Plan (Goal Area 3); MONSTAT’s Transmonee Country analytical report on Access to Justice (2016), both regional Synthesis Report and the Report for Montenegro; INSPIRE Indicator Guidance and Results Framework - Ending Violence Against Children: How to define and measure change(https://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_102933.html), UNICEF Manual for the Measurement of Indicators on Violence against Children (internal UNICEF document, will be provided by UNICEF), a set of Juvenile Justice indicators and sub-indicators developed by UNODC/UNICEF during the juvenile justice system reform in Montenegro including Guidance on Justice in Matters involving children victims and witnesses of crime; UNICEF MNE internal documents containing all indicators proposed globally and regionally, etc.;

§ To get familiar with available MoJ/UNDP project documentation related to ongoing process of development of the new ISP system;Â

§ To review and use as a framework: Act on the Treatment of Juveniles in Criminal Proceedings (2010), Criminal Code of Montenegro (2017); Amendments to the Family Law of Montenegro (2016), Bylaw on the education of the Support Persons to the Child in Family Law related proceedings, Law on Free Legal Aid; Law on civil proceedings; Law on Administrative Proceedings; Law on Misdemeanours, Law on Police and other relevant policy documents such as: Strategy on Informational and Communicational Technologies of judiciary (2016-2020); National Plan of Action for Children (2014-2018); Strategy on the Reform of Judiciary (2014-2018);

§ To assist the international expert in developing a uniform methodology for data collection with a list of definitions and country-relevant-specific indicators that will refer to children in all court proceedings (civil, criminal and administrative) in terms of:

§ more active and frequent engagement with stakeholders to obtain all necessary/additional information required for the final product;

§ providing clarifications and additional inputs to international consultant on national legislation, data collection and reporting;

§ translate parts of legislation and policy papers to English language for international consultant, if needed;

§ Based on the feedback received by stakeholders on the draft list of indicators and the methodology, to address counterparts' feedback in consultation with international consultant, which will be further validated by national stakeholders;

§ To work intensively with the Ministry of Justice, judicial bodies and MONSTAT, so that both ISP and MONSTAT have harmonised definitions and indicators on children in contact with the law which correspond to ea

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