The Virtual Tribunal
Development of Pilot Virtual Tribunal Collections
Cambodia Pilot
At meetings at the ECCC in January and March 2009, the UN director of Court Administration, the Cambodian director of Court administration, and other court officials discussed a partnership with the WCSC to implement the Vir tual Tribunal while supporting the court with related IT needs. Court officials emphasized the role that the Virtual Tribunal could play in assisting the court in providing a lasting legacy for the people of Cambodia that will extend beyond its projected termination date of 2011.
As a pilot program, we anticipate the Virtual Tribunal’s ECCC collection will be able to serve diverse user groups through menu “modules” aimed at differentiating between the educational and professional needs of Cambodian high school and university students, foreign scholars, civil society organizations, and legal practitioners in domestic or international courts. Through the establishment of Virtual Tribunal “learning centers” in key Cambodian schools and universities, we hope that the project will also provide a model for the integration of IT educational media into Cambodian curriculum nationwide.
The Virtual Tribunal project for the ECCC will be implemented at the court so that Cambodian IT personnel from the court and from judicial and archival institutions can benefit from working with software engineers from Berkeley and Stanford. In this manner we will also be able to work closely with educational institutions to design and implement appropriate modules and to develop learning centers. IT cooperation related to the Virtual Tribunal has already begun, with the WCSC and the Berkeley Department of Computer Science provide “mirror-website” hosting for the website of the ECCC so that it can support streaming video of the proceedings. Other collaborative IT projects are underway that will also provide a foundation for the Virtual Tribunal. Of potentially transformational impact is a project whereby the Berkeley-Stanford Virtual Tribunal team will develop software that will enable Khmer language texts to be searchable through optical recognition (OCR). While this will clearly benefit the ECCC and enhance the educational value of the Virtual Tribunal, it will also provide a major and lasting resource for information access, education, and IT development in Cambodia as a whole.
Sierra Leone Pilot
In 2003, the WCSC began monitoring trials at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone and providing training seminars for the judges of the Special Court. These projects led to a long-term engagement with the work of the Special Court and in particular to our assistance in exploring ways to support the Court’s efforts to leave an enduring legacy for the people of Sierra Leone.
The Virtual Tribunal will go far beyond the current capabilities of the Special Court and all other international criminal tribunals in making records easily accessible in a way that links them all together. In providing additional resources in the form of interviews with participants in the trials and with Sierra Leoneans, as well as expert commentary on the aspects of the trials relevant to particular modules, the Virtual Tribunal will provide a new model for the preservation and the dissemination of the work of international justice institutions. We anticipate the Sierra Leone collection within the Virtual Tribunal will have eight primary modules:
- (i) Background to the Conflict;
- (ii) Establishment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone;
- (iii) Structure of the Special Court;
- (iv) Trials at the Special Court
- (v) Significance and Impact of the Special Court Trials for Sierra Leone and for the Region;
- (vi) Jurisprudential Legacy of the Special Court;
- (vii) “Best Practices” of the Court and Other International and hybrid tribunals;
- (viii)) Trial Advocacy at the Court.
