After more than one year of preparations, a working visit of the Deputy Attorney General of the Maldives on invitation of Mr. Witte in Munich and Berlin, an exploratory talk at the German Foreign Office, with the German Bar Association and the Bavarian justice system, Mr. Witte and Dr. Matthias Kraft (Efficient Publishing) presented a working paper on the basis of which the Republic of the Maldives could build up a justice information system. The project envisages initially publishing legal texts and court decisions in a standardised format and later making them available on the Internet, if possible bilingually (Dhivehi and English). The working paper is currently being evaluated by local decision-makers. If the participating institutions agree, a prototype will be installed in a second phase, which will help to gather first experiences.
RA Witte: “Numerous international organizations have already ‘gritted their teeth’ in the Maldives. The Maldives do not like to impose reform efforts. The country operates according to its own rules, with decision-makers easily accessible and open to new developments thanks to close networking. However, certain traditional and constitutional differences should be respected and not replaced by ‘Western’ standards. Independently of this, reforms according to globally recognised, value-neutral standards in the judicial system could make a further contribution to the rule of law and bring a competitive advantage in trade and tourism”.