Pavol Žilinčík

Pavol Zilincik graduated from the Law Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1991. In 1993, he co-founded the Center for Environmental Public Advocacy (CEPA), now Via Iuris – Center for Public Advocacy. Pavol worked at the Center as a lawyer and trainer on educational activities.  He was active in several civic campaigns, such as protection of the non-governmental organizations against their liquidation by governmental legislative activities; and citizen’s campaign “For a Good Law on Free Access to Information”.

He worked as the Executive Director of Via Iuris. He coordinated designing and development of key program components: strategic litigation, public legal education, and law reform. Within litigation, Pavol has represented several environmental and human rights cases related to forcible relocation of small municipalities, industrial pollution cases, and cases of legal standing to sue. His training experience involves interactive events for law students and training for victims of human rights abuses. He also leads a comprehensive educational program for judges and judge-candidates focused on implementation of constitutional principles in the decision-making of the judge. He has started cooperation with the Judicial Academy in Slovakia on implementation of first training series focused on Anti-Discrimination and Human rights for Slovak judges, in cooperation with partner organizations from Hungary, Slovenia, Austria and Ireland.

Since 1999, he has been coordinating preparation and implementation of an annual nation-wide conference for judges, constitutional justices, attorneys and legal professionals called „Access to Justice – Barriers and Solutions“. This event is aimed at identifying legal barriers preventing citizens from effective access to effective remedies and at finding creative solutions.

Pavol is a Board member of the Society for Open Judiciary, conducting a pilot project of Civil Monitoring of Courts in Slovakia. This project is aimed at independent evaluation of the performance of Slovak judges from the perspective of the citizen – a participant of a court proceeding.

In 2004 and 2006, he was a Faculty member at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, for the courses “Global Public Service Lawyering”, conducted in partnership with the New York University School of Law. Pavol has been providing training for lawyers from Central and Eastern Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe on reform of institutions for protection of human rights.

Pavol’s cooperation with government agencies encompasses membership in the Advisory Committee to the Minister of Environment, which proposes appellate decisions on nature protection issues. For a Ministry of Finance, he worked in a position of the independent expert observing impartiality of the proceedings in the Selection Committee on Public Procurement for the project “Building Capacities of the Slovak National Centre for Human Rights”. He was a member of several commissions for preparation of new legislation, including the Law on the Public Defender of Citizens Rights and Law on Environmental Protection.

Pavol provided a keynote speech on the role of the international legal cooperation for the Central and Eastern European transition countries at the 2002 and 2005 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, in Eugene, Oregon.
He lectured at workshops on “Comparing Access to Justice in Asian and European Transitional Countries” in Bogor, Indonesia (2005) and on “Strategic Litigation” in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2007).

He is an author of several publications, such as:

• “Slovak Republic” section in “Access to Environmental Information in Europe” (Kluwer Law, London, 1996)
• “Criminal Law” section in “Street Law – Law for Everyone” (co-author, Open Society Foundation, 1998)
• Series of Publications “Access to Justice – Barriers and Solutions”, CEPA, 1999, 2000, 2002 (co-author)
• “Petitions - How to File a Petition in Case of Public Interest”, CEPA 2000, (co-author)
• “The Birth of a Law: Legislative Process and the Citizens’ Role”, CEPA 1999 (co-author)