Project News

Dissemination Seminar hold in Preah Sihanouk Province during 3 to 5 March 2010. (Lecturer Left: H.E. Sophea, secretary of states, Right: Mr. Puthy, Deputy Director of Legislation Department.
On the radio program (Right: Mr. Setha, Deputy Director of the Civil Affaires)

This phase 3 project has one objective that "Ministry of Justice disseminates knowledge for implementing the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure and ancillary laws to relevant parties in the legal and judicial field' as an "output" of PDM.

In 2008, Ministry of Justice conducted dissemination seminars on the Code of Civil Procedure, which started its application in July 2007, for the judges, public prosecutors and court clerks of courts of first instance. After that, receiving the request from local authorities, Ministry of Justice has hold seminars on the Code of Civil Procedure and the Civil Code for the local officials since March 2009. In 2009, six seminars were held in each province, and from February to March 2010 additional seminars was held in three provinces. Besides, Ministry has prepared a dissemination seminar on the draft of Prakas on Court Deposit Procedure, which was under drafting, on 19 to 20 March 2009. (Reference: The seminar on the Code of Civil Procedure for the judges of the Supreme Court and the Appeal Court)

Since 2009, the officials of the Ministry of Justice bear all roles to conduct those series of seminars in logistics as well as providing lectures. New members who joined the project from phase 3　stage, such as Deputy Director General of Technical General Department, Director of Legal Dissemination and Education Department and Deputy Director of Legislation Department, has become to provide lectures in those seminars. Compared with the fact that, the lectures were only from the Committee members which had involved the drafting activities for ten years, and Japanese side had undertook roles in preparation of seminars and conducting the lectures at the beginning of the phase 3, it shows the progresses in strengthening ability of the MOJ officials, which is one of our project phase 3 output.

The Civil Code and the Code of the Civil Procedure is the laws closely related to ordinary people's daily life, thus broader dissemination to the ordinal people is desirable. On 11 February 2010, Mr. Keo Setha, Deputy Director of the Civil Affairs, one of the project's counterparts, jointed in an enlightening radio program and explained about the legal process in the Code of Civil Procedure in understandable manner with two judges from Phnom Penh court who worked as prospective trainers in the JICA project t for the Improvement of the Training on Civil Matters in the Royal School for Judges and Prosecutors of the Royal Academy for Judicial Professions Royal School for Judges and Prosecutors (refer to Project Activities). At first they seemed so nervous because it was for the first time for them to appear on a radio program, beside that it was a live program, but they answered clearly and coherently to the questions from the listener.

During the project terms ahead, the dissemination activities will be ongoing to realize the "Output" of PDM on the dissemination.