Minister calls for Community Tribunals

Mozambican Justice Minister Jose Abuso has defended the need to set up community tribunals as a means to improve the performance of the judicial organisms at grass roots level and value their role within the communities country wide. "Accessibility, quick action and informality are characteristics of these grass roots decision-making organs, which makes them particularly important for the solving of the people's problems in the rural areas", he said. Delivering a speech on the theme "The Justice Administration System in a State of Law", he was addressing the participants to a National Seminar on "Torture, Police Brutality, and the Civil Society". He said that because of their importance, it becomes necessary to speed up the reform of the Law of the Community Tribunals, which is already taking place in the country.

Abudo stressed that the experience collected among the communities, strengthened the idea that it is necessary to enhance the functioning of those organs. He added that in general terms, and because it became clear that a lot is yet to be done for the justice system in Mozambique to be able to respond to the expectations of all the people, the government has been doubling its efforts to train competent professionals for the judiciary.

For this end, he mentioned the opening of the Juridical and Judiciary Training Centre, which has been training judicial magistrates for the Attorney's Office, for the Notary and Registry Services, as well as inspector of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC), among other staff of the justice system. He also stressed that justice administration in a State of Law is intrinsically linked to the respect for human rights. (Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique, Maputo)