UN Special Rapporteur | United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers

Participants of the “Roundtable Discussion on Judicial Integrity and Independence”, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, discussed in different panels different challenges, such as the prosecutorial  autonomy, institutional and internal independence, as well as immunity and accountability of judges from an international and a Philippine perspective.

In his Keynote Speech, Mr. Diego García-Sayán emphasized that judicial integrity and independence is not a present of governments or a privilege of judges, but a citizen’s right. He underlined that the support of society is necessary to guarantee judicial integrity and independence in the first place. Furthermore, he pointed that judicial independence is not circumscribed to the independence of governmental power in the terms of checks and balances, but also from economic and media powers.