Members of Project Bosnia give
special
thanks to the American Bar Association's Central East European Law Initiative
("CEELI") office in Sarajevo for their continuous support of our project.
It is in large part to their efforts that Project Bosnia has been able to
make such impressive progress toward accomplishing our goal of connecting
courts in Bosnia via the Internet. |
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Project Bosnia team members (from left to right) Alex
Rozman, IV Ashton,
Dean Henry H. Perritt, Jr., and Suzanne Price discuss with Ombudsman Vera
Jovanic` of the Federation Ombudsman's Office, the most effective way to
utilize the Internet in the enforcement human
rights.
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The
common good in this case is
helping to restore peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country torn apart
by ethnic tensions and nationalism emanating from the break up of the former
Yugoslavia. Seem lofty and impossible? Some law school faculty, administrators
and students at Chicago-Kent College of Law and the Villanova University
School of Law don't think so. For more than two years, a student volunteer
group led by Chicago-Kent Dean Henry H. Perritt, Jr. and recent Villanova
graduate April Major, have been utilizing Internet technology to help restore
a rule of law in Bosnia..
During the war, Bosnia became a land where neighbors
suddenly became enemies; where bullets and mortar shells exploded without
warning on residential streets; where for days there was no electricity,
heat or water; where going to the communal marketplace sometimes ended in
death; and where entire families lived in one room. For Bosnian attorneys,
judges, professors |
and law students, the elements of
a legal infrastructure which
we so often take for granted have been shattered by war. There, members of
the legal community were forced to reform even the most elementary of legal
tasks in an environment where law books, law libraries, legal records or
legal institutions are merely fading memories.
While the Dayton Accords and an international military
presence have ended the fighting in the region, accomplishing a strong and
lasting peace may prove impossible unless a rule of law is restored successfully.
To that end, Project Bosnia is waging a new battle. In an effort to rebuild
what was lost in the brutal conflict, citizens from Bosnia and Herzegovina
are working vigorously with student-volunteers from the United States to
reshape the institutions that will anchor a civil society. Not only are the
people of the former Yugoslavia digging out from the horrors of this conflict,
they are constructing their political, legal and economic systems from scratch. |
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