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Resources

Key documents

• VERIFOR Comparative Case Study 6 - The experience of election observers: Lessons for the process of timber verification (PDF, 273kb)
• VERIFOR Comparative Case Study 7 - Ombudsmen, People's Defenders and Mediators: independence and administrative justice in state transformation (PDF, 402kb)
• VERIFOR Briefing Paper 6 - Convergence between Certification and Verification in the drive to Legality Assurance: assessing the pros and cons (PDF, 272kb)
• VERIFOR Briefing Paper 5 - Ownership in relation to the Design of Verification Systems (PDF, 658kb)

VERIFOR's research into existing verification systems (see Case Studies) helped to identify some key generic dimensions of verification systems. These were abstracted into a conceptual matrix, covering the four key stages of the design process, namely:

• The political mandate for the processes in question;
• Their legal and institutional basis;
• The systems design
• The results anticipated and achieved.

In each case, a single principle was identified which encapsulated the theme, and these have been the subject of in-depth investigations by VERIFOR, comparing case with case to understand the key debates in each.

These principles identified were: ownership, legality standards, independence and developmental impacts. Broadly, these can be defined as follows:

• Ownership is the active support to and ability to control the objectives, process and outcomes of the verification system.
• Legality standards are clear and unambiguous sets of rules for determining compliance.
• Independence looks at generating detachment in the system in ways that are compatible with national sovereignty.
• Developmental impacts describes the way that verification systems influence the economic outcomes for small-scale operators and forest-dependent people.

The conceptual matrix, below, offers more details: