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The Ibero-American Network for International Legal Cooperation (IberRed) is a cooperation tool, for both civil and criminal matters, at the disposal of judicial operators from 22 Ibero-American countries (including Spain, Portugal and Andorra) and the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico.  

The IberRed benefits over 500 million citizens and has two official languages: Spanish and Portuguese.

The IberRed was constituted on 30 October 2004 in Cartagenade Indias (Colombia), with the approval of the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB),theCumbre Judicial Iberoamericana (Ibero-American Judicial Summit)(CJI) and theAsociación Iberoamericana de Ministerios Públicos (Ibero-American Association of Public Prosecutors) (AIAMP).

The Network is composed of:

a)    Secretariat General: this is a permanent Secretariat run by the General Secretariat of the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries  (COMJIB), based in Madrid.

b)    Members:

-     Contact Points

-     Central Authorities

-    Any other judicial or administrative authority with responsibility for judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters whose membership of the Network is considered appropriate by the existing IberRed members.

The Contact Points are persons appointed by the Ministers of Justice, the Public Prosecutors’ or Attorney Generals’ Offices and by other judicial bodies of the Ibero-American countries.

These appointed persons (Judges, Public Prosecutors and Civil Servants from the Ministries of Justice) will carry out the Network’s operational actions.

The Central Authorities are those established in instruments of International Law to which the countries of the Ibero-American community are party, or in rules of Internal Law concerning judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters.

IberRed works in coordination with the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB), which forms a part of the network; in this way all international legal cooperation activities undertaken within the scope of IberRed will be addressed jointly.

OBJECTIVES

IberRed has the following objectives:                

a)    To optimize judicial cooperation on civil and criminal matters between the Ibero-American countries:

-       By contributing to the smooth functioning of the procedures which have cross-border impact and by speeding up judicial cooperation requests.

-       By improving the effective, practical application of the Cooperation Agreements in force between the Ibero-American States.

b)    To establish and keep updated an information system about the different legal systems operating in the Ibero-American Community of Nations.

The Contact Points will provide the following for the judicial authorities of their own countries on request, and for any other contact points interested:

1.    The information necessary for efficient, fast legal cooperation

2.    Identification and information regarding the judicial authority or public prosecutor responsible for executing legal aid applications.

3.    Practical solutions to any difficulties which may arise from a request for judicial cooperation.

4.    Coordination of the examination of the requests for judicial cooperation in the States concerned.

The Central Authorities act within the framework of transnational proceedings, in which IberRed provides support in order to improve coordination between them and achieve greater efficiency in their operations. These Authorities work, from IberRed, on five areas:

1.    Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance on Criminal Matters

2.    Abduction of Minors

3.    Transfer of Sentenced Persons

4.    The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime

5.    The United Nations Convention against Corruption

Characteristics of the IberRedregarding members’ activities:

a)    Informality: The members’ activities are not supposed to become a part of the procedure but rather to bring matters forward, provide extra information or solve problems which, independently of IberRed’s intervention, must have their own formal ways of being handled.  In other words, they do not replace formal cooperation but speed it up.

b)    Complementarity: members’intervention does not take the place of the operations of the authorities concerned, but is complementary to these. That is to say, IberRed’s intervention does not affect the initial responsibility of the authorities appointed in each country as competent to issue or provide assistance.

c)    Horizontality: the Network functions without a hierarchy; there is a coordinator for each of the three institutions in each country, but their function is non-hierarchical; instead, they serve to ensure the operational coordination of the contact points on a national level, and to foster more efficient international legal cooperation, without placing one cooperation actor above another.

This coordination also applies to the non-operative aspects of the contact points’ activities, and to their relations with the General Secretariat, in order to optimize relations between everyone involved.

d)    Flexibility: IberRed’s activity is tailored to suit the characteristics of each judicial organization. Each State can arrange its appointments according to its characteristics, choosing from among judges, public prosecutors and civil servants who, due to their responsibilities and knowledge, are qualified to perform the functions required of them as contact points. 

e)    Mutual trust: TheIberRed runs on trust - the trust its members have in each other, generated by knowing each other personally; we encourage informal contacts between judges, public prosecutors and other members from different countries involved in the same proceedings, who communicate on a daily basis both by conventional channels and using the secure communications channel which has been generated on the intranet of IberRed’s website.

Iber@ - The secure communications system

IberRed has a website with open, public access and separate private access which constitutes a secure communications system, called Iber@, for the contact points and central authorities. This system is outstanding for its security, user-friendliness and accessibility, without these features jeopardising the security of the communications system or its confidentiality; it provides a “2.0 collaborative environment” thanks to which members can interact in order to optimize knowledge management with respect to IberRed’s activities. Furthermore, the secure system does not need special software; it can be used from any PC, guaranteeing the security required for communications between operators thanks to its authentication system; it allows real time communication, wherever the contact point may be located.