7 February 7th, Tangiers, Morocco

Dear Colleagues, 

A warm welcome to everyone here in Tangiers, Morocco, and online to our virtual participants! 

Thank you very much for joining us for this exciting UNDP learning workshop on e-Justice. I am really happy to see some familiar faces and also some new ones around the room! I am delighted to welcome you to this event brought to you by the ROLSHR Team in collaboration with the Chief Digital Office and the UNDP CO in Morocco. 

At the outset, let me recognize Lara from the global ROLSHR team and Amel from our rule of law and human rights team in the country office, and thank you for all the hard work! 

I am thrilled we can have this opportunity to meet on the eve of the global conference on e-justice, as a UNDP team. The conference as you know is held in the context of the partnership between UNDP CO in Morocco and the Ministry of Justice to support their reform and in particular their digital transformation to support access to justice for all in Morocco. 

But today, we are gathering for an internal exercise. And, if you are joining today, it is because most likely you are engaged in e-Justice initiatives, at your own level, or at least have an interest in this topic, which is fantastic! 

E-justice is a highly complex endeavor, and we need skills, experiences and perspectives to thrive in this space, and it is already remarkable to see such an expertise and appetite for this area of work across UNDP. So welcome to all our e-justice experts, whether from a RoL/justice background or an IT/tech one. 

This workshop will enable us to exchange promising practices, share perspectives, update one another on ongoing initiatives when it comes to digital transformation of justice systems. 

More specifically, I hope that you will: 

• Learn about existing and planned e-justice /justice digitalization programming at country level; 

• Discuss UNDP’s role and added value in digitalization processes; 

• Identify solutions to address needs, questions and challenges in e-justice programming; and, 

• Find great opportunities for further exchanges and cross-collaboration between UNDP COs and potential synergies at regional and global levels. 

I really hope that as a result of this meeting, new synergies will be found and South-South Cooperation seeds will be planted. UNDP is a powerful, rich, diverse network and I have no doubt that you will find new ways to harness those assets and take this agenda to the next level. 

I thank you very much for your active engagement in looking forward to a fantastic learning experience. 

Thank you very much.