Mechanism facilitating judicial cooperation in criminal matters with the Sahel countries.
The Sahel Judicial Cooperation Platform
operates through three bodies:
The Council of Ministers is the decision-making body.
It is made up of the Ministers responsible for Justice in the Member countries.
The Technical Committee is the executive body of the PCJS. It is composed of all focal points and their substitutes. A focal point and a substitute per member country are responsible for facilitating the transmission and execution of requests for judicial cooperation involving their countries. The list of focal points and substitutes is available by contacting the following e-mail address: unodc-pcjs@un.org.
The Committee meets, at least once a year, to review the functioning of the Platform and to make recommendations. It can also meet, in an extraordinary way, upon request of a member country.
Other criminal justice stakeholders of the member countries, as well as organisations such as Eurojust, Interpol, the G5 Sahel and the European Judicial Network may also be invited to take part in this meeting.
The Secretariat is a body whose role is to provide technical advice and administrative support to the functioning of the PCJS, currently provided by UNODC.
It is responsible among others for:
preparing the meetings of the Platform;
ensuring duties related to the Secretariat during the meetings of the Platform;
following up on the Platform’s recommendations;
receiving applications for membership and/or partnership and transmit them to the member countries of the Platform;
maintaining a database of requests for mutual legal assistance and extradition.