4.1 INTERIGHTS' BULLETIN

INTERIGHTS' quarterly Bulletin aims to keep human rights

4.1 INTERIGHTS' BULLETIN

INTERIGHTS' quarterly Bulletin aims to keep human rights practitioners abreast of developments in human rights law. Each issue carries articles and additional information on selected topics, short items on new developments in international human rights law and practice, reviews of recent publications, notes on interesting developments in the domestic application of international human rights standards from around the world and news about INTERIGHTS' activities. Edited by Emma Playfair, the Executive Director, each issue is co-edited by a member of staff or by a guest editor. An extensive central section edited by Jeremy McBride, a founder and Board member of INTERIGHTS, carries summaries of decisions of international and regional tribunals applying human rights standards, with commentaries relating these to earlier decisions. Issues addressed this year include freedom of expression and cyberspace, torture and ill-treatment in police custody, and the development of remedies in Europe.

Editions of the Bulletin in other languages are mentioned under the relevant geographic programmes above.

4.2 COMMONWEALTH HUMAN RIGHTS CASE LAW PROJECT (top)

This programme aims to promote the use of comparative jurisprudence on fundamental rights and freedoms by making Commonwealth human rights judgments widely accessible to judges, lawyers and academics throughout the Commonwealth and beyond. Through its periodical, the Commonwealth Human Rights Law Digest and the Commonwealth Human Rights Case Law Database, which is currently being developed, INTERIGHTS makes unpublicised and even unpublished decisions widely accessible through different mediums. The programme is particularly valuable since few lawyers have access to all the law reports published in the Commonwealth and many Commonwealth jurisdictions do not publish law reports at all.

INTERIGHTS has ensured a broad coverage of Commonwealth judgments by developing a reliable and extensive network of contacts who provide copies of recent human rights decisions to the programme and advise on human rights developments in their jurisdictions. Cases included in the Digest and Database are those referring to international human rights instruments, to provisions of Bills of Rights within national constitutions, or which otherwise have a significant human rights dimension.

During the course of the year the programme has continued to provide the full text of decisions summarised into the Digest and Database on request and give valuable advice on comparative human rights law. The Legal Information Officer presented a paper at the 12^th Commonwealth Law Conference in Malaysia, on the cross-fertilisation of human rights norms, whilst the Database Project Officer presented a seminar on comparative human rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. The programme has continued to liase with similar initiatives, for instance summaries selected from the Database were also published in the case notes section of the Commonwealth Lawyer.

Marie Pool, Legal Information Officer and Editor of the Digest, left INTERIGHTS in November 1999. As a consequence of Marie's departure the programme has been reviewed and restructured. Alice Mayhew, previously the Database Project Officer, is now in charge of administering the programme and has become the Commonwealth Law Officer. Candy Whittome was contracted in March 2000 as external Editor of issue three Volume 2 of the Digest. Vanessa Gosselin started in February 2000 as Programme Assistant. Jeremy McBride continues to oversee the whole programme and act as Consultant Editor of the Digest.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Law Digest

The Digest, which was launched in September 1996, contains summaries of selected human rights decisions from Commonwealth courts. The second issue of Volume 2, published in November 1999, included 53 cases from national courts in 27 Commonwealth jurisdictions. Work began on the third issue of Volume 2 in Winter 2000. [What stage are we at with the Index?] Feedback from users has been enthusiastic and the number of subscriptions is steadily growing.

By maintaining the subscription rate for the Digest at a low level INTERIGHTS ensures that the publication provides an affordable means of accessing Commonwealth human rights jurisprudence. Furthermore, INTERIGHTS continues to supply a number of Commonwealth judges, court libraries and non-governmental organisations with complimentary subscriptions to the Digest, with over 600 copies of each issue being distributed.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Case Law Database

Whilst the Digest supplies judges and lawyers with printed summaries of domestic human rights decision in a more traditional format, INTERIGHTS recognised that the distribution of such summaries could also be undertaken using new and progressive technologies. The Database project, which began in January 1999, aims to supply brief summaries of recent Commonwealth human rights decisions through a search engine available on Interight's website free of charge. Summaries will also be distributed through CD-ROMs, email and print outs. Over four hundred summaries from over 45 Commonwealth jurisdictions have been entered onto the database.

The software developed by Ukko Ltd, who began work in December 1999, is in its final testing stage and will be released after INTERIGHTS has carried out content and functionality trials. The Database's software allows users to either browse the summaries or to search them using an advanced search mechanism. The system by which the Database is administered allows INTERIGHTS to batch reports and case summaries for emailing and printing in order to respond to individual requests for information and to send out case summaries to users who do not have access to the Internet.

Through the pilot project, INTERIGHTS will assess the need and feasibility of developing a larger and more complex Database carrying summaries of human rights decisions from the Commonwealth dating back to the 1960s.

4.3 INTERIGHTS' WEBSITE (www.INTERIGHTS.org) (top)

INTERIGHTS' Website is currently generously hosted by the Public Interest Law Initiative in Transitional Societies (PILI), at Columbia University in New York. However, its maintenance places a considerable burden on PILI, which we wish to relieve them of eventually. With the addition of the Commonwealth Human Rights Law Database, we have decided to take steps to update the Website and then to relocate it, probably in the UK, over the coming year.

5. Organisational Development

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