The final report “Strategically strengthening procedural rights – challenges, opportunities, lessons learned” (see downloads) aims to elaborate on how human rights change can be achieved. It was published as part of the project “From law to practice: Strengthening procedural rights in police custody (ProRPC)” and is aimed at representatives of civil society organizations who work towards the enhancement of procedural rights. However, the report it is also relevant for other stakeholders engaged in reforming the criminal justice system.

While extensive literature exists on the subject, very few attempts have been made to study how human rights reform happens. Yet, considering the ever growing implementation gap between international standards and national practice, this project saw the importance of starting this conversation.

The motivation of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR) to write this report comes from the fact that civil society organizations across the EU have played an important role in strengthening procedural rights. This project aimed at better understanding the role of civil society organizations and increasing their effectiveness in change processes.

The final report is based on the principles of the systemic approach and takes into account results from all project activities, including the regional consultations, the national roundtables and the EU workshop with civil society organizations. It draws some lessons that are also relevant for EU Member States that were not involved in the project, as well as for policy makers and civil society organizations.

The final report should be read in combination with the thematic factsheets produced in the same series, which tackle the question of what criminal justice stakeholders can do to strengthen procedural rights in police custody.

The findings of the final report further elaborate on the past initiatives from the LBI-GMR on the application of the systemic approach to enhance the implementation of human rights, e.g. in EU Project ‘Strengthening the effective implementation and follow-up of recommendations by torture monitoring bodies in the European Union’ (2014-2015) and the EU Project ‘Improving Judicial Cooperation Across the EU Through Harmonised Detention Standards – The Role of National Preventive Mechanisms’ (2019-2021).