INTRODUCTORY NOTE
It is with pride that the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention ofCrime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFEI) offers to the international community theResource Material Series No.63.
This volume contains the Annual Report for 2003 and the work produced in the 123rd
International Senior Seminar that was conducted from 14 January to 13 February 2003. The
main theme of this Seminar was, “The Protection of Victims of Crime and the Active
Participation of Victims in the Criminal Justice Process Specifically Considering Restorative
Justice Approaches”.
The need for the criminal justice system to protect victims of crime was specificallyrecognized by the United Nations by the adoption of the “Principles of Justice for Victims ofCrime and Abuse of Power” at the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of
Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in 1985. This focused the international community on
the domestic situation of member states in relation to the role, support and protection ofvictims of crime.
The development of victim support and protection heavily influenced and added impetus to
the restorative justice approaches that had been growing. Countries are starting to create freshapproaches to justice as well as looking to the history of their own societies where restorative
justice was once often practiced. In 2000 “The Vienna Declaration on Crime and Justice:
Meeting the Challenges of the Twenty-first Century” was adopted by the Tenth United Nations
Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders. This declaration provided
for the introduction of action plans to create mechanisms for restorative justice and theencouragement of restorative justice policies. Based on this Declaration, the working group onthe Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice drafted “Basic Principles on the Useof Restorative Justice Programmes in Criminal Matters”, as a United Nations standard forrestorative justice which was formally adopted by the U.N. Economic and Social Council in July
2002.
Although the United Nations has laid an important foundation and great progress has been
made in some countries, major parts of Asian, African and central and southern Africancountries do not have adequate systems for the protection of victim’s rights and the active
participation of victims in the criminal justice process. In this Seminar the participants held
seven general discussion sessions in which they identified and clarified problems and foundpractical solutions and more effective ways to protect victims and involve them in the criminal
justice process, particularly in regard to restorative justice. The essence of these discussions
was then crystallized in the recommendations of their General Discussion Paper.
In this issue, papers contributed by visiting experts, selected individual presentation papers
from among the Seminar participants, and the General Discussion Paper are published. I regretthat not all the papers submitted by the Seminar participants could be published. Also, I mustvrequest the understanding of the selected authors for not having sufficient time to refer themanuscripts back to them before publication.
I would like to pay tribute to the contributions of the Government of Japan, particularly theMinister of Justice and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the Asia Crime
Prevention Foundation for providing indispensable and unwavering support to UNAFEI’sinternational training programmes.
Finally I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all who so unselfishly assisted in thepublication of this series; in particular, the editor of Resource Material Series No.63, Mr. Simon
Cornell (Linguistic Adviser).
July 2004

Kunihiko Sakai
Director of UNAFEIvi