The President of the Queshadip Ruak Program Center (PCQR), Isabel Ferreira said the aim of the program is to promote grassroots traditional justice and that the center is currently not implementing programs because additional research is needed on traditional justice in Timor-Leste.
“We need to conduct research, collecting more ideas from communities therefore we still not working,” said President PCQR Ferreira in, Dili.
The PCQR was established in 2014.
Ferreira added another objective of the center is to inform the public about the types of cases that can be solved traditionally and what cases have to go through the formal justice system.
She said also that Timor-Leste needs to promote traditional justice because formal justice is slow.
“Everyone has concerns with the current judicial system,” she added.
However, she said also that the program’s commission will shortly makes an effort to reactive activities at the center and present a concrete plan to start discussions on how traditional justice can be implemented adequately in the community.
She added that even though the QUESHADIP Ruak center will begin the debate on how traditional justice would work and be implemented in the community that the government and the president’s office need to take full responsibility for this issue.
Ferreira also noted that many NGOs have conducted research on traditional justice but the center’s commission remains committed to undertake direct research on how traditional justice takes place.
Meanwhile the Director of the Judicial System Monitoring Program (JSMP) Luis Oliveira Sampaio noted that the Queshadip Ruak program center has halted its activities while it conducts research at the grassroots level.
“Sometimes there is a lack of human resources to manage the implementation of the program because we have previously asked for this research to be undertaken,” said Director Sampaio.
He added that there is a real need for this type of research to determine the relevance of traditional justice and how current it is vis-à-vis formal justice so both systems to not clash.
