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German Technical Cooperation (GTZ)
Project: „Support of Legal and Judicial Reforms in Azerbaijan”
Advanced trainings for judges
The improvement of judges’ qualifications is an important component of the project and one of its main fields of activity. GTZ has been conducting workshops for judges in civil and civil procedural law since the year 2000. In the beginning, the workshops were held only in Baku and with large time intervals. Since March 2003, the project - jointly with the Ministry of Justice as well as with the Judicial and Legal Council under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan - has intensified advanced training seminars for judges to improve their skills. Today, GTZ regularly carries out these workshops in other regions of the country, as well.
The aim of the training seminars is to explain to the judges the techniques used in applying the law and the specific work methodology of civil law judges. For this purpose, exemplary cases prepared on the basis of the civil and civil procedural law of Azerbaijan are used. Whereas the Azerbaijani judges have satisfactory knowledge of legal theory, they had neither at the university nor in their professional careers the chance to deal systematically with practical legal cases. As a result of their mainly theoretical education, they are not familiar with the civil law classification of grounds of action. They are thus not accustomed to assessing legal issues on the basis of provisions suitable to found the claim brought by a plaintiff. An additional difficulty for Azerbaijani judges is that they have to deal with new laws, some of which are very broad in scope. This holds true for example for the Civil Code and Civil Procedural Code that entered into force in 2000.
The project has conducted a total of 26 advanced training seminars for judges in Baku, Masalli, Ganja, Sheki and Quba up until now. The seminars were prepared and implemented under the supervision of Thomas Herman, the head of the project, and with participation of Elchin Usub as a translator and legal expert. The seminars in Baku, in which judges of the Court of Appeal participated, were carried out in the project's Law and Media Training Center. In addition, two seminars were organised in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in March 2003 and June 2004. Judges from the Supreme Court and the Economic Court of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic participated in the training alongside with judges of first instance courts. Both workshops were opened by Mr. Fikret Mammadov, the Minister of Justice of the Azerbaijan Republic, Mr. Togrul Musayev, Deputy Minister of Justice, and Suliddin Aliyev, Minister of Justice of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
In the first part of the seminars, participants were given general information about the German judicial system as well as the education and professional career and the legal and economic situation of German judges. In the second part, the methodology of case solving was described. In the third part, the judges had to solve a sales case using the suggested methodology. The cases used in the following two seminars were taken from the law of obligations and related mainly to proprietary interests.
Since 2003, Azerbaijani judges have been participating in the seminars as co-trainers. Mr. Vafaddin Ibayev, judge at Surakhany District Court as well as two judges from the Court of Appeal – Mr. Ilgar Khalafov and Mr. Ilgar Damirov – have been involved by submitting cases they prepared to participants and solved them together with them. A focus in solving the cases was placed on the foundations of the relevant claims.
The advanced training for judges has received positive reactions from all participants. GTZ will continue to hold jointly with the Ministry of Justice conducting advanced training seminars for judges both in Baku and in the regions.
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