ACTIVITIES OF THE DIRECTORATE/page 2

Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee and cases handled:

The Directorate performs administrative services for the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Society established in terms of section 34 of the Legal Practitioners Act, 1995. The requests Committee consists of four members drawn from the legal profession and the Directorate provides a secretary to the Committee who also serves as full member of the Committee. The functions of the Disciplinary Committee are:

  • To control the conduct of Legal Practitioners and candidate Legal Practitioners on allegations of alleged unprofessional, dishonourable or unworthy conducts.

Board for Legal Education:

The Directorate provides secretarial services to the Board for Legal Education pursuant to

Section 14 of the Legal Practitioners Act, 1995. The role or function of the Board of Legal Education is to deal with Legal Education for candidate Legal Practitioners enrolled at the Justice Training Center. The administrative work pertaining to the functions of the Board are performed by officers in the Ministry of Justice made available for that purpose by the Permanent Secretary. The Permanent Secretary may designate an officer in the Ministry of Justice to act as secretary of the Board.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process and Namibia's involvement:

The Universal Periodic Review is a major innovative development of the United Nations Human Rights system created in by the General Assembly Resolution 60/251 2006 of the Human Rights Council with the purpose of reviewing the human rights situation in all United Nations member States and to assess the implementation of international norms and treaties in the respective countries. Namibia participated in the first UPR cycle in 2011 when she rendered an account of the state of human rights in Namibia and the extent to which the country co-operated with other human rights mechanisms and treaty bodies whose work the Human Rights Council also reviews.

Membership to the Human Rights Council (HRC) 2014-2016

In 2014, Namibia was elected as a Council member of the HRC in Geneva and will hold this position until December 31 2016. As a member of the HRC, Namibia serves as a member and troika during the review of other UN member States. A senior staff member of the Ministry of Justice is attached to the Permanent Mission of Namibia to the UN Office at Geneva as a Legal attaché and representative of Namibia on the HRC.

Namibia's co-operation in the suppression of transnational organized crime, corruption and terrorism.

  1. Namibia participates in the work of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, the deliberative body of the United Nations (UN) on the development of policies in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice.
  2. In the framework of the Crime Commission, the UN developed binding legal instruments on transnational organized crimes, corruption and terrorism. These efforts culminated in the adoption of UNTOC, United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and numerous terrorism conventions. The Commission reviews implementation of these instruments during its annual sessions.
  3. Namibia signed and ratified the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and two of its supplementary protocols relating to trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants. Namibia did not ratify the Firearm Protocol to UNTOC.
  4. Namibia has established a regulatory administrative framework to facilitate implementation of the UNTOC in order to suppress money laundering. In this regard, Parliament enacted the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, 2004 (POCA) and the Financial Intelligence Act (FIC) Act, 2012 to facilitate, detect suspicious financial transactions and impose reporting obligations on accountable institutions. The prosecution of money laundering activities and to seize proceeds of crimes. The Bank of Namibia which hosts the FIC oversees the work of an inter-ministerial and stakeholder council known as the Anti-Money Laundering Council to which the FIC reports on Namibia’s obligations to curb money laundering and financing of terrorism activities.

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