Cejamericas.org

What is the JSCA?

The Justice of the Americas (JSCA) is an international agency that was created in 1999 by the institutions of the Inter-American System. Its headquarters is located in Santiago de Chile and its members are the active member states of the Organization of American States.

Over the past twenty years, nearly every country in the region has promoted wide-reaching judicial reform programs. The main areas that have been addressed are criminal justice, government, access to justice, and management. However, there is a widespread perception that the reforms have not produced all of the desired results. Furthermore, systematic and in-depth evaluations of the changes that have been implemented thus far have not been undertaken, which has caused the strong impulse that originally accompanied the reforms to wane. JSCA was created in order to reverse this process and provide new impetus for the modernization of justice systems in the region.

The Center’s mission is to support governments in the region in their justice reform processes. JSCA develops training activities, studies and empirical research projects and other actions in order to meet its three key goals:

• To conduct in-depth studies of justice systems and develop innovative approaches to the discussion of judicial reform.

• To promote cooperation and the exchange of experiences among key justice sector actors at the regional level.

• To generate and disseminate instruments that improve the quality of available information on justice in the Americas.

What information is contained in this section of www.cejamericas.org?

In this section you will find institutional information about JSCA, such as its history, objectives, goals and professional staff, as well as regulations, statutes and the headquarters agreement. The section also contains short biographies of the members of the Board of Directors, the Center’s highest authority, and the results of biannual Board meetings as well as links to annual and quarterly reports and Plans of Action.

We also invite you to review “JSCA at a Glance”, which lists the projects that we have undertaken in the past few years and their main results (pdf).