History

Commentary on the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct

At its 4th meeting in Vienna, Austria, in October 2005 the Group agreed to prepare and a Commentary on the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct. The Commentary is designed to enable judges and teachers of judicial ethics to understand not only the drafting and cross-cultural consultation process of the Bangalore Principles and the rationale for the values and principles incorporated in it, but to also facilitate a wider understanding of the applicability of those values and principles to issues, situations and problems that may arise or emerge. In 2006, ECOSOC, by resolution 2006/23, requested UNODC to convene an open-ended intergovernmental expert group, in cooperation with the Judicial Group on Strengthening Judicial Integrity and other international and regional judicial forums, "to develop a Commentary on the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct, taking into account the views expressed and the revisions suggested by Member States." 

A draft Commentary prepared by the Coordinator was submitted in March 2007 to a joint meeting of the Group and of an Open-ended Intergovernmental Group of Experts convened by UNODC in terms of ECOSOC resolution 2006/23, and was examined paragraph by paragraph and approved subject to certain amendments.

In July 2007, ECOSOC unanimously adopted a resolution recommended to it by the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in which it commended the work of the Group and requested UNODC to translate the Commentary “into all official languages of the United Nations and to disseminate it to Member States, international and regional judicial forums and appropriate organizations.”

In September 2007, UNODC published the Commentary – a 175-page document – in English. In 2009, the Judicial Training Institute of Kenya re-published the Commentary in its Bulletin and made copies available to every judge and magistrate in the country. In 2011, the Azerbaijan Law Reform Centre translated and published the Commentary, together with the Implementation Measures, in Azerbaijani.