Dear colleague,

The Portuguese Association for Victim Support (APAV) is currently running the Victims & Mediation Project, co-financed by the European Commission under the AGIS Programme. The aim of this project is to contribute to the protection of victims’ rights and interests within victim-offender mediation, by promoting a transnational cooperation and information and best practices exchange, as well as the development of further research in this field (see attached summary of the project).

APAV’s partners in this project are two bodies from the Portuguese Ministry of Justice (the Department for Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Department for Justice Policies), the Portuguese Catholic University, Victim Support Scotland (Scotland), Slachtofferhulp Nederland (The Netherlands) and the Servicebüro für Täter-Opfer-Ausgleich und Konfliktschilichtung (Germany).

This 2-years-project focus on the victims’ role and participation in the mediation process, namely: contacting, informing and briefing victims on the mediation process; training of mediators on victims’ issues; cooperation between mediation services and victim support services.

One of the activities of the Project is the development of a comparative study of the procedures adopted by different mediation services concerning the issues mentioned above. Therefore, we would very much appreciate if you could answer the attached questionnaire and send it back to us till 15^th October.

We know that it’s always hard to find some time to answer to these questionnaires but, although it may seem a little long, most of the questions demand brief answers.

In case you consider appropriate that other organizations / services in your own country answer to this questionnaire, please feel free to forward this e-mail.

If you need further information or have any doubt don’t hesitate to contact me.

VICTIMS AND MEDIATION - QUESTIONNAIRE.doc

VICTIMS AND MEDIATION - SUMMARY.doc

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

Project Manager

Frederico Moyano Marques

assessor técnico da Direcção / senior adviser

Associação Portuguesa de Apoio à Vítima

Portuguese Association for Victim Support

Rua José Estêvão, 135 A, Piso 1, 1150-201 Lisboa

Portugal

tel. dir. +351.21.358.79.20

tel. +351.21.358.79.00

fax +351.21.887.63.51

e-mail: apav.sede@apav.pt

http://www.apav.pt