01 June 2010

DOMAC Research Project on International Crimes in East Timor

The DOMAC project is a research program funded by the European Union and conducted by the Hebrew University, Reykjavik University, University of Amsterdam, and University College London. The mandate of the Project is to understand the interplay between international criminal tribunals and domestic prosecutions of war crimes. Our hypothesis is that the goals of international criminal justice cannot be met without the strong involvement of national courts and prosecution authorities. We thus attempt to identify factors that impact on prosecution and sentencing policies relating to international crimes, at the national and international levels. Our goal at the end of a three-year period is to propose methods to improve coordination of national and international proceedings and ways to better utilize national criminal procedures. More information about the project is available at www.domac.is.

DOMAC’s work is divided into Work Packages. I am leading Work Package 3 (WP3). Its mandate of WP3 is to provide the data (and subsequently trends) on prosecutions and sentencing in the various case studies, relating to international crimes, to establish (in WP5) what are the factors that affect these trends.

One of our case study countries is East Timor. We are trying to create a comprehensive database of cases adjudicated before the SPSCs, as well as subsequently, before the ordinary district courts (possibly only the Dili court is relevant in this connection). The database will include the dates of indictments for international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes), trial judgments and appeals, results of each individual’s trial as well as appeal, and information on sentencing. We are following each individual indictee, rather than cases or aggregate numbers.

We have more or less completed the collection of data from the SPSCs, up to 2005. However, we have no information on subsequent processes in the ordinary district courts. From certain reports we understand that there have been very few cases, and perhaps even those have been heard by a hybrid bench, of local and international judges. We seek someone who would be able to clarify the situation for us, and collect data from the relevant court files, so we can prepare the domestic database. This person would have to be legally trained so as to understand the legal context and clarify it for us. He or she would need to extract information from court files, a task which requires a command of Portuguese or Tetum (or perhaps both). He or she would need to collate the information on an excel table or a word file, depending on the volume of work and his or her computer skills. And, of course, we would need to maintain contact by email.

This is an offer for a paid job on an hourly basis.

Please let me know if you know of someone who might be interested in this work, and feel free to pass this message onwards.


Yaël Ronen, PhD

Researcher, DOMAC

Contact: yael.ronen@mail.huji.ac.il

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