Nadejda Hriptievschi
2009 Fellow, Moldova
Nadejda is Legal Consultant for the Public Defender’s Office in Chisinau, Moldova. The Office was created in 2006 with the support of the Soros Foundation (Moldova) as a pilot to test the Public Defender’s Office as a new method for delivering legal aid and to set standards for effective criminal defence in the country.
Her job is to ensure the smooth integration of the ‘public defender model’ into the newly created legal aid system. Nadejda champions the establishment of the Public Defender Offices as an effective strategy to improve the delivery of legal aid and develop and uphold defendants’ rights in criminal proceedings. Nadejda drafted the regulations on providing urgent legal aid to arrested persons, (the equivalent of the UK police station duty advice) and the regulations on Public Defenders. She has also worked closely with the National Legal Aid Council on all the other regulations and model acts adopted in the creation of the new system.
Nadejda is also a consultant with the Soros Foundation Moldova on criminal justice. She was part of the research team that produced in 2009 the report ‘Criminal Justice Performance from a Human Rights Perspective - Assessing the Transformation of the Criminal Justice System in Moldova’ (available at http://www.soros.md/docs/Raport_Criminal%20Justice2009.pdf). She is currently involved in a research on apprehension in Moldova that aims at documenting the shortcomings in the police practice of arrest and providing recommendations to reduce abuse and improve the practice of arrest.
Nadejda (second from right) with Rt Hon David Miliband MP (July 2009)
In 2009 Nadejda was part of the Crisis Group supported by the Soros Foundation – Moldova to document the violations of April 2009 post-electoral events in Chisinau (see for details the report on Entrenching Impunity: Moldova’s Response to Police Violence During the April 2009 Post-Election Demonstrations, available at http://www.soros.md/docs/Raport_Criminal%20Justice2009.pdf). Nadejda is currently cooperating with the Moldovan Institute of Human Rights on a project aimed at representing victims of torture and monitoring the torture cases related to April 2009 events in Moldova.
Nadejda is also interested in issues related to judiciary in Moldova. In 2007 she co-drafted the “Analytic Report: Observance of Fair Trial Standards and Corresponding Rights of Parties During Court Proceedings” and in 2009 the “OSCE Trial Monitoring Programme for the Republic of Moldova. Final Report”, which analyzed the findings of the trial monitoring programme for the period of April 2006 through November 2008, project realised by the OSCE Mission to Moldova and OSCE/ODIHR.
Nadejda's current contact details are: nhriptievschi@gmail.com