On 1 December 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia, UNODC Global Firearms Programme (GFP) held the second regional meeting on firearms case law. The meeting gathered 55 participants from the Western Balkans, representing the judiciary, prosecutor’s offices and judicial academies. The objective of the meeting was to review the ongoing work on the development of firearms case law collections and identify priority areas for future engagement.
During the first session the participants reflected upon UNODC’s work on the 1st edition of the Firearms Case Law collections and identified modalities for further distribution of this knowledge product. UNODC informed about the options to exchange good practices from the Western Balkan region at global level and presented 100 cases from the Firearms Case Law collections that UNODC analyzed, formatted and made available online through UNODC’s SHERLOC portal.
In the subsequent sessions, the participants discussed current contentious legal questions, procedural aspects of firearms cases, the application of special investigative measures and secondary legislation, stressing the importance of continuity in harmonizing the relevant case law and securing legal certainty in criminal proceedings.
The participants outlined the plans for the collection and development of the 2nd Edition of the Firearms Case Law Collections and provided UNODC GFP with the first examples of cases that have been identified as important benchmarks for the harmonization of judicial practice in the Western Balkans.
This activity is implemented with financial support provided by Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, and Norway through the Western Balkans SALW Control Roadmap Trust Fund and supported by the European Union.
