Justice Rosa Weber presents the conclusions of the BRICS Justice Forum to the Full Bench

21/09/2022

After participating this morning (21) in the BRICS Justices Forum (a group of countries composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the Chief Justice of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Justice Rosa Weber, presented to the other justices, at the beginning of the Full Bench session, the results of the meeting in which she participated virtually. The event is in its fourth edition and this year is organized by the Supreme People's Court of China, in the city of Haikou, the capital of Hainan province.

In 2019, the meeting of the BRICS Constitutional Courts was held in Brazil, in the dependencies of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), under the coordination of Justice Dias Toffoli, who presided over the STF. This edition of the BRICS Justice Forum discussed topics such as arbitration and mediation in international trade and the advances in information technology in the judicial sphere.

Haikou Declaration

Justice Rosa Weber read to the Full Bench the final document of the event, called the Haikou Declaration, drawn up in the following terms:

1 - Equity and justice are vital lines of judicial work. In these spirits, the BRICS Supreme Courts will continue to equally protect the legitimate rights and interests of citizens and enterprises of all countries, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, strengthen the coordination and harmonization of regional trade laws and rules, and jointly protect regional cooperation characterized by fair competition, integrity and credibility, harmony and mutual benefits;

2 - Given that the digital economy has promoted profound transformations in the mode of production, lifestyle, and governance, the BRICS Supreme Courts see the need to promote the integration of information technology and judicial work and agree that through the appropriate handling of new types of cases concerning the digital economy, cases involving network information and data security, as well as strengthening international cooperation on intellectual property rights protection, an open, equitable, fair and non-discriminatory environment for scientific and technological development in the BRICS countries will be fostered;

3 - Building a beautiful homeland is the common aspiration of mankind. The BRICS Supreme Courts agree to further strengthen the concept of green development, jointly implement the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement, establish a mechanism, in the long term, for judicial exchange in environmental justice, jointly promote judicial governance of the green environment, sustain green infrastructure construction, green investment, and green financing, and contribute to developing an environmental, regional and global governance system that is equitable, collaborative and mutually beneficial;

4 - The BRICS Supreme Courts will further strengthen cooperation on international judicial assistance, within the framework of BRICS cooperation, and adopt IT tools to improve the mechanism of international judicial assistance, with solidity and greater efficiency;

5 - The BRICS Supreme Courts agreed on continuous efforts to further strengthen cooperation in training judges in model case exchanges. With the support of modern information technology, efforts would be made to proactively explore new training methods and support tools, such as distance learning, continuously improving the professional skills of judges, and promoting the overall improvement of law enforcement and judicial capabilities;

6 - The BRICS Supreme Courts are willing to continue holding the BRICS Justices Forum in the future and develop it into a new platform for international judicial cooperation that is inclusive, modern, comprehensive, and mutually beneficial, and to make contributions to building a community with a common future for mankind.

Reliability of the electronic voting machines

In her participation in the Forum, earlier today, Justice Rosa Weber affirmed that the electronic voting machines used in Brazil provide reliability and speed in the voting, guaranteeing the divulgation of the results on the same day. According to her, the Brazilian initiative is a unique achievement that "presents a better performance when compared to any other method, and whose credibility and legitimacy are evidenced by the inexistence of effective demonstration of flaws in the system throughout the nearly thirty years of its application".

The Chief Justice recalled that the automated voting method was implemented in Brazil in 1996, and before this innovation, the electoral system was very susceptible to fraud. According to the Justice, in the last general elections, held in 2018 for the President of the Republic, governors, and congressmen, almost 116 million votes were counted throughout the national territory on the same voting day, thanks to the technology of electronic voting machines and the electronic voting system.

Swift and effective justice

During the event, the Justice also contributed with information about the dynamics and functioning of the Brazilian Justice system, focused on the use of technology and alternative resolution of conflicts. She highlighted the central role of the Judiciary in Brazil's institutional relations after the promulgation of the Federal Constitution of 1988, expressing her concern for providing increasingly swift and effective justice in a country with superlative numbers in different areas, from territory to population, and judicial litigation.

In this sense, she explained, the high level of judicial demands in the country generates growing needs in terms of structure and resources for the Judiciary, which must be solved through the use of technology and alternative conflict resolution, themes chosen for the BRICS Justice Forum and that encompass initiatives adopted by the Brazilian Judiciary.

Justice Rosa Weber highlighted the fundamental role of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) in the sense of instituting judicial policies of national character, elaborating statistics and a database used in the production of national research, and added that the Brazilian Judiciary will greatly benefit from the knowledge of the practices reported during the event. "It is with enthusiasm that I also look forward to the exchange of valuable experiences, which will be shared here by the other members of BRICS, considering the increasingly complex problems brought by contemporary society and requiring resourceful and creative solutions by judicial institutions," he said.

VP,RR,MO/AR,AD - LM/LV/FB

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