TİKA Provided a Virtual Court System to the Lebanese Judiciary

Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) provided IT equipment and software to enable audiovisual hearings in 12 courtrooms in different parts of Lebanon.

TİKA, which carries out activities to improve the institutional capacities of public institutions and organizations within the scope of technical cooperation in countries where it operates, has implemented another project within this framework. Implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon, the project aims to enable court hearings to be held via videoconferencing, thereby accelerating judicial services, and to reduce the overcrowding in prisons and jails, which have been operating under unfavorable conditions due to the historical economic crisis in recent years.

The project, which allows hearings to be held remotely through audiovisual transmission using technological means, instead of hearings in which parties are physically present, was implemented within the scope of the “Information Technologies in Judicial Systems Module” of the Judicial Services Training Program, conducted by TİKA.

As part of the project, which was launched with a ceremony attended by Marie-Claude Najm, Minister of Justice of Lebanon; Ali Barış Ulusoy, the Republic of Turkey’s Ambassador to Beirut; Rola Jadayel, Director-General of the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon; Elias Helo, Chief Prosecutor of the Baabda Palace of Justice; and Orhan Aydın, TİKA’s Beirut Coordinator; a virtual court system will be provided to 12 courtrooms in the palaces of justice of Beirut, Baabda, Zahle, Baalbek, Sidon, Tripoli, and Jdeide. During the launch of the project, an audiovisual hearing of 2 detainees in a prison was also held.

Parties, witnesses, and experts will be able to attend hearings from wherever they are, thanks to the cameras, sound systems, projectors, microphones, computers, televisions, printers, scanners, various network equipment, and audio and video conferencing software provided by TİKA.

As part of the project, experts from the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Turkey will train the experts who will use the system, and will share Turkey’s experience in informational technologies systems in the field of justice.