This Report presents the findings from the research conducted by the USAID/Kosovo Property Rights Program (PRP) in four pilot courts (Courts of Merit – CoM) in Kosovo. That research has been directed at identifying case flow and case management bottlenecks arising in the adjudication of property cases, with the ultimate aim of designing and introducing improvements to courts’ internal processes and to procedural law in order to enable courts to adjudicate property claims more efficiently.
PRP designed and applied a methodology of Differentiated Case Management (DCM) to develop substantive and procedural data elements with which to disaggregate and analyze court procedures to process and resolve property cases, in order to formulate recommendations to improve efficiency and court performance. PRP applied this analysis to a total of 1,829 property rights cases that were disposed within a 30-month period (2013-2015).
PRP has found that on average these cases were disposed over a considerable length of time that far exceeds international standards. PRP has also found that the courts are not using comprehensive case management techniques for managing their caseflow.
Based on these findings, PRP has identified the Next Steps to be undertaken – to introduce basic case management techniques and methods within the CoM, which will then make it possible to apply a more refined DCM analysis to the courts’ caseflow and to develop further specific recommendations for improving the efficiency of the CoM in adjudicating property cases.