Amal Clooney, Clooney Foundation for Justice Launch TrialWatch® Initiative to Advance Justice in Courtrooms Around the World
On 25 April 2019, the Clooney Foundation for Justice – founded by Amal Clooney and her husband George Clooney – marked the official launch of its TrialWatch® Initiative at an inaugural conference at Columbia Law School in New York. The event convened human rights leaders from around the world to discuss the practice and potential of trial monitoring and opportunities to use technology to facilitate the assessment of fair trial proceedings.
TrialWatch® is an initiative focused on monitoring and responding to trials around the world that pose a high risk of human rights violations – in particular those trials targeting journalists, LGBTQ persons, women and girls, religious minorities, and human rights defenders. TrialWatch® aims to be the first comprehensive program scrutinising criminal trials around the world. CFJ will recruit and train trial monitors, including non-lawyers, who can observe and report on criminal trials around the world, and use a specialised app to record the proceedings. TrialWatch® legal experts will report and grade these trials for their fairness and, where necessary, conduct legal and public advocacy to help defendants whose right have been violated.
At the launch event, Mrs. Clooney spoke about the potential of data to affect change in justice systems around the world. TrialWatch® aims to use the data gathered by TrialWatch® monitors from around the world to eventually create a global justice index that ranks states according to the fairness of their judicial process, incentivising governments to improve their practices.
A full copy of Mrs. Clooney’s remarks can be found here. A video of the event is available here.
Read more about TrialWatch® and the Clooney Foundation for Justice here.
