Between 3 and 5 November 2025, judges, magistrates and other judicial/legal officers from across Namibia gathered in Windhoek for a training workshop organized by UNESCO. The goal: to help the country’s justice sector understand how AI is reshaping the judicial landscape. Topics included AI adoption, legal and ethical challenges, cybersecurity, case‑management, and decision‑making support — aiming to equip participants with tools to responsibly use AI while upholding justice.
The training is part of a broader UNESCO initiative to strengthen institutional capacity across countries for AI governance, helping judicial systems harness AI’s benefits (like legal research, case tracking, efficient data handling) while safeguarding against risks such as bias, discrimination, and lack of transparency.
Crucially, the workshop emphasized that AI should be a supporting tool — not a substitute for human judgment. As UNESCO’s experts clarified: while AI can assist with research and administrative tasks, core judicial decisions must remain in human hands to protect fairness, rights, and accountability.
Overall, this effort reflects a global push — led by UNESCO through its “AI and the Rule of Law” programme — to prepare judiciaries for the digital age. By building awareness, expertise, and ethical frameworks around AI in courts, countries like Namibia seek to ensure that technological progress aligns with human rights, transparency and good governance.
