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Published On: Fri, Jan 15th, 2021

Justice ministers agree to train local candidate-prosecutors

PHILIPSBURG — The Kingdom’s ministers of justice have agreed on a system whereby local Caribbean candidates will be trained for the function of public prosecutor every year. They took this decision during the half-yearly Judicial Four Countries Consultation (JVO), a digital meeting that was chaired by Aruba’s Minister of Justice Bikker.

The ministers also agreed to fine-tune juristic education in such a way that graduates from the universities of Curacao and Aruba get equal access to selection and education for the professions of attorney, judge and public prosecutor in the Netherlands.

The ministers furthermore acknowledged the importance of speedy information exchange between the countries with a strong emphasis on data-protection. They discussed ways to improve the information nodes on the islands.

Modernizing the Code of Criminal Procedures in the three countries and Caribbean Netherlands provides victims with more rights, the Dutch government writes in a press release. The four ministers agreed to give these law books identical contents and to let them go into effect simultaneously.

Strengthening of the constitutional state is part of the country packages that Aruba, St. Maarten and Curacao have agreed to. The Netherlands makes structurally up to €45 million ($54.4 million) available to facilitate this process.

The ministers Grapperhaus (Netherlands), Richardson (St. Maarten), Bikker (Aruba) and Girigorie (Curacao) took part in the JVO. State Secretary Raymond Knops (Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations) also took part.