Belarusan human rights activists have worked out an observer’s diary

With the help of this diary anyone regardless of age and education will be able to monitor administrative trials.

Monitoring research requires special tools, like questionnaires, report forms and other documents. However, in some cases a completely new set of tools has to be created. And it is in this situation that Belarusan human rights fighters found themselves when starting systematic administrative trial observation.

In April 2012 Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend”, Human Rights Centre "Viasna", the Belarusan Helsinki Committee, “Committee "Salidarnasc’" and Center for Human Rights got down to developing of common unified toolbox aimed at collecting data about administrative trial. Under three months of work the developers arrived at the common variant of the Observer’s diary. On consulting the sociologist and the designer the diary appeared in its final form, the one which is most convenient for using in filed conditions.

The main goal of the observer’s diary is to enhance the delivery of administrative justice with the help of the received and processed data.

The diary is convenient for everyone regardless of his/her age and education; it has simple and logical structure. It consists of 12 pages with a juridical glossary, code of observer’s conduct and a questionnaire that repeats the chronology of a trial. Thus, in order to put down necessary information the observer merely has to fill in the blanks in consecutive order.

Among the benefits of the diary is the fact that it can be applied universally, which means that any of human rights organizations can use it.

The creation of a new tool for monitoring provided Belarusan human rights activists with an opportunity to perform qualitatively new research, which can be used not only within monitoring reports, but for larger research into the Belarusan court system, as well as be applied in the international analytic papers.