Ministry of Justice Minister Speech script regarding National Conference on High Quality Justice and Legal Services

Honorable Deputy Minister, internal and provincial directors of MOJ, national and international colleagues of JSSP, national and international advisors and my other colleagues present in this “National Conference of the Ministry of Justice on providing better legal services”, Greeting!

I am grateful to almighty Allah who has given me the opportunity to hold such an important conference in order to discuss the reform of the judicial and justice system.

Though, I have met you all occasionally, but this is the obligation of the MOJ’s leadership to hold regular meetings with you.

From the beginning of The national unity government, according to the promises made to the international community in London conferences and the conference of its high-ranking members, the relevant documents on accession of Afghanistan to World Trade Organization, our commitments to process the important laws, such as: Penal Code, comprehensive child act, public private partnership law, law on combatting  the administrative corruption, and for the laws that the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is committed against the International Monitory Fund, all these are the reasons the leadership of ministry is busy with and could not hold such conferences on regular basis.

In our country, the ministry of Justice constitutes the third pillar of the justice and judicial system beside attorney general office and Supreme Court. Ministry of justice has taken the first steps in reform of civil and family cases and has strived to solve them before their submission to the courts. If these cases are not solved, after preparing the fundamental documentations cases are submitted to the court. Following this, these cases are referred again to the legal departments of the ministry for implementation.

Different sections of the general directorate of government cases in relation to the government properties, has defended the cases before the courts and in the following has referred them all to the legal departments for implementation. Ministry of justice provide legal aid (defense lawyer) for the juveniles violate the law, the indigent juveniles in criminal cases in each step of the cases. It also provide the legal aid to the vulnerable groups of women and children in civil cases.

Legal awareness and rehabilitating juveniles  aged less than 18 years and re-presenting them to society as helpful and good people, is one of the another responsibility of the ministry of Justice. Failing in any of these areas of justice and judicial system, faces the country with failure, and this proves the important position of the ministry of justice within the justice and judicial system of our country. I want to state explicitly that, corruption in the ministry of Justice and its relevant administrations is corruption in the justice and judicial system.

Corruption in the judicial system damages the political image of the government of Afghanistan before our nation and international community. A corrupted judicial system would disappoint our nation in ensuring justice and would make them refer to informal trials and join insurgents’ forces. Our security and defensive forces who fight to protect its territory, for independence, respect and human dignity would become disappointed.

Indeed, the justice and judicial system is that has cracked up the credibility of the country before nation and international community.    

I would like to attract your attention to the saying of Prophet Mohammad who says:

“Beware of the supplication of the oppressed, even if he is an unbeliever, for there is no barrier between it and Allah”.

Dear colleagues, please do not forget that, any kind of neglect in ensuring justice and carelessness in granting rights of entitled individuals, or changing the nature of the cases for courts which mislead them and results to violation of the rights of the individuals are deemed assistance to the cruel against innocents and will result to almighty Allah’s anger.  

Judge shall be in the picture of the case and shall be aware of its every aspect, until he/she decides correctly. In case a judge decides in dark, it will cause difficulties in implementation phases. Besides, it will cause cases’ rotation in governmental administrations and will consume the time of defendant and plaintiff which pave the ground for corruption.

I have always reminded the donations of international community for judicial system, recently, international community has donated around 30 milliard $ in last two conferences, London and Brussel.

Half of the above mentioned amount will be consumed in strengthening defensive systems and the rest will be consumed in development programs which is being consumed by the governmental administrations. And this is only possible if we ensure transparency and combat against administrative corruption.

From the beginning of National Unity Government (NUG), Ministry of justice, in order to ensure meritocracy, has been monitoring the recruitment process of MOJ employees. According to the (100) days plan of the president, His Excellency instructed the leadership of the ministry of justice (Minister,  administrative and professional deputies)  to not recruit those who hold  degrees lower than bachelor. Even, those with lower degrees than bachelor, should be introduced to the ministry of Labor and social affairs to be recruited in other administrations. In some insecure areas of the country, efforts have been made to recruit bachelor degree holders and avoid recruiting lower than it.

In order to recruit competent candidates, Ministry of justice has tried to avoid the interferences of the powerful men by sending its inspection Teams to the remote areas of Afghanistan, or has held exam sessions in center, Kabul. Or in some cases, ministry of Justice interviewed the successful candidates directly.  

I would like to request my colleagues especially heads of the ministry of Justice, to only consider talent and faithfulness of the candidates. Besides, please report the probationary period of the candidates to the ministry of Justice.

Make sure to accomplish monitoring and evaluation of your employees accurately and ignore the instructions and recommendation of other officials in this regard. This will result to identify the substandard, incompetent and opportunist individuals in the ministry of Justice and will help us make decisions immediately about their terminations. 

Illiteracy and Low level of education results to unawareness of the provisions of law in our country. I would like to request all my colleagues to pay attention to the awareness of law for the citizens besides their Jobs until we lower the level of the crimes and make them use their rights.

I ask the MOJ Heads seriously to have a direct attention about enhancing medical, educational, religious and psychological services of the rehabilitation centers and ensure better environment for juveniles.

At the end, by using this opportunity, I would like to have my colleagues’ advises on below issues:

1. Expansion and improvement in delivery of services of departments of justice in organizational arena.
2. Legalizing the informal justice system and showing the practical and adaptive areas of this system.
3. Quantitative and qualitative work improvement of the high commission of combatting against abduction, human and immigrants trafficking in provinces.
4. To show practical ways of recruitment of 23% personnel with high qualifications among the females.
5. To present the accurate report about those colleagues do not have relevant education in their work filed, and to advise them about their fate.
6. Raising the level of legal aid services in provinces and districts.
7. To determine and introduce the professional employees to the training programs for capacity building.
8. To give information regarding the universities that can provide in-service education for employees.

In the field of finance and procurement planning, and other sectors, each of the officials will have some discussions with you; I hope you will pay attention to it and consider its practical and implementation aspects; and to provide the context of success and prosperity to yourselves, your administrations and the ministry of justice. With prayers for your more success, may God bless you all.