Researcher joins the Advisory Committee of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee

In June 2023, dr. Anna Matczak joined the Advisory Committee of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC), which is composed of former diplomats, civil servants and political representatives who have worked in fields relevant to human rights and rule of law, and (former) members of the judiciary, academics, and members of other civil society organizations and representatives of the media.

The Committee advises both the Board and Supervisory Board on its mission and strategy, relating to trends in the fields of work covered by the foundation. Currently, NHC is working on an EU-funded project aimed at empowering civil society organizations in Armenia to effectively monitor the implementation of four national strategies in the areas of judicial reform, specifically focusing on police, judiciary, anti-corruption, and prison & probation.

In this project, NHC provides small grants:

1. to CSOs to increase their effectiveness in monitoring, evaluation, and advocacy;
2. to journalists to report on the topics of the national strategies mentioned above;
3. to academic institutions to integrate the topic of access to justice into the curriculum of relevant studies that directly touch upon criminal justice reform, such as criminal law, criminology, psychology, and social work.

Given Anna’s recent involvement in a Council of Europe project on strengthening the probation service in Armenia, this month (January 2024) she was invited by the NHC to join a group of evaluators to assess the proposals to the third theme of the grant.