PEOPLE-CENTERED JUSTICE IS KEY TO REALIZING THE AFRICA WE WANT

“Increase Financing and Recognition of  Community-Based Paralegals”

November 12, 2021 – Virtual Convening

2PM GMT / 3PM WAT / 4PM SAST/CAT /5PM EAT

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The African Union, through Agenda 2063, identifies justice as a key aspiration for member states. The AU 2063 agenda: The Africa We Want, is a shared strategic framework for inclusive growth and sustainable development. Aspiration 3 focuses on An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice, and the rule of law. It aspires for Africa to have a universal culture of good governance, democratic values, gender equality, and respect for human rights, justice, and the rule of law.

Agenda 2063 to a great extent, is aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. Of particular relevance is Aspiration 3. One of its enabling goals, Goal 11, and its priority areas, correlates significantly with SDG16, especially 16.3 and 16.5. as shown below:

AGENDA 2063: ASPIRATION 3

An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law.

AGENDA 2063: GOAL 1

Democratic values, practices, universal principles of human rights, justice and the rule of law entrenched.

AGENDA 2063: GOAL 11 PRIORITY AREAS

Democracy and good governance Human rights, justice, and the rule of law

SDG 16 TARGETS: ALIGNMENT TO GOAL 11

16.3: Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all 16.5: Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms

 

 

The above correlation amplifies the commitment to access to justice, on the continental and the global level, of the member nations of the African Union who also belong to the United Nations.

Access to Justice in Africa

A significant amount of access to justice work is led by community-based paralegals who work directly with communities. They raise awareness of rights, laws, and policies; help clients to navigate legal and administrative processes in the pursuit of remedies; and support citizen engagement in law and policy reform. In many African countries, there is a low ratio of advocates to the general population. In addition, most lawyers are too expensive, too specialized, or too far away to serve the millions in need of assistance. A partnership between community-based paralegals and advocates helps to resolve the imbalance between the supply of, and demand for, legal services.

Nationally, member states of the AU such as Zambia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa,  Rwanda, Nigeria among others enacted legislation that not only recognizes community-based paralegals as legal empowerment actors but also sees to it that the State provides adequate financing for the provision of legal aid services.

Despite solid frameworks and firm commitments made by member states to the African Union, the situation on the ground with respect to access to justice remains dismal. According to the FIRST CONTINENTAL REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF AGENDA 2063, a weak performance score of 16% was registered on the continent’s efforts towards realizing its aspiration for good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice, and the rule of law, in light of the 2019 targets.

The majority of Africans are still unable to access justice due to a myriad of factors i.e. socio-economic, legal, and political. The cost of accessing formal justice is expensive.

To advance the access to people-centered justice dialogue, a group of local, national, and international CSOs have come together to organize a virtual meeting seeking to bring together paralegals and organizations that support paralegals from across Africa, AU representatives, policymakers, and State officials to continue a continent-wide conversation on how we can work together to support and bolster the important work of community-based paralegals.

The fact that the first 10-year plan of the AU 2063 agenda comes to an end in 2023 signals that this is an opportune time for this dialogue. The outcomes of this meeting can guide the implementation of Aspiration 3 for the next 10 years, with a focus on how we can collaborate to address the justice needs of everyday Africans. The SDG Summit also will take place in 2023 and, as the midpoint of Agenda 2030, is an opportune moment to take this discussion and its momentum forward and to make a case on the international level as well.

Two main challenges hinder this important work of justice: financing and legal recognition of community-based paralegals. It is critical that this multi-stakeholder meeting allows for an exchange of ideas and practices that support an enabling, efficient framework for community-based paralegals to thrive in Africa’s justice systems.

Objectives of the Discussion

  • Create awareness of the AU 2063 agenda with a special focus on Aspiration 3:An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice, and the rule of law.
  • Advocate for increased financing and recognition of community-based paralegals
  • Develop recommendations that will guide the implementation of people-centered justice in the next 10-year phase of Agenda 2063.
  • Identify ways in which legal empowerment organizations can collaborate with the AU and State officials to increase support and funding for Aspiration 3.
  • ​​Strengthen the linkages between Aspiration 3 and SDG 16 to support advocacy on the global stage.

 

Outcomes

  • Adoption of resolutions and recommendations from the session, which will be presented to the 69th session of the African Commission of People and Human Rights for consideration.
  • A Joint Action Plan for the realization of Aspiration 3 and SDG 16 – with a specific focus on people-centered justice.

Format

A two-hour virtual panel discussion. Participants will include paralegals, representatives of legal empowerment, and paralegal support organizations from Africa. Representatives from the government, civil society, and the donor community will also participate in the session. The format will be interactive to enable a discussion between moderators and participants.

 

 

Summary of the Discussion Statement Presented to the African Commission On Human And People's Rights

Featured Resources

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Outcome Document of the West Africa Virtual Legal Empowerment Summit 2020

Outcome Document of the West Africa Virtual Legal Empowerment Summit 2020

By: Legal Empowerment Network, Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative, The Carter Centre, Pathfinders, National Coalition for Community Legal Empowerment (NaCCLE), Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), Justice Empowerment Initiatives, Open Government Partnership


Read more

The Case to Fund and Protect Grassroots Justice Defenders

The Case to Fund and Protect Grassroots Justice Defenders

By: Namati (on behalf of the Justice For All campaign)


Read more

Access to Justice and Legal Aid in East Africa: A comparison of the legal aid schemes used in the region and the level of cooperation and coordination between the various actors

Access to Justice and Legal Aid in East Africa: A comparison of the legal aid schemes used in the region and the level of cooperation and coordination between the various actors

By: Danish Institute for Human Rights


Read more

Kampala Declaration on Community Paralegals

Kampala Declaration on Community Paralegals

By: Legal Empowerment Network


Read more

Access to Justice For All? Now That Would be a Measurably Good Thing

Access to Justice For All? Now That Would be a Measurably Good Thing

By: Stacey Cram, Vivek Maru


Read more

Best Practices of Community Legal Advice Programs, Program Assessment and Recommendation

Best Practices of Community Legal Advice Programs, Program Assessment and Recommendation

By: Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic


Read more

Lilongwe Declaration on Accessing Legal Aid in the Criminal Justice System in Africa

Lilongwe Declaration on Accessing Legal Aid in the Criminal Justice System in Africa

By Penal Reform International


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DECLARATION OF THE 1st PAN-AFRICAN CONFERENCE ON “COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE JUDICIARY AND INDIGENOUS/HOME-GROWN COMMUNITY JUSTICE INSTITUTIONS”

DECLARATION OF THE 1st PAN-AFRICAN CONFERENCE ON “COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE JUDICIARY AND INDIGENOUS/HOME-GROWN COMMUNITY JUSTICE INSTITUTIONS”

By: The African Centre of Excellence


Read more

Navigating Complex Pathways to Justice: Community Paralegals and Customary and Informal Justice

Navigating Complex Pathways to Justice: Community Paralegals and Customary and Informal Justice

By: International Development Law Organization (IDLO)


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The Justice for All Report calls upon all countries and partners from all sectors to work together to prevent and resolve people’s justice problems, while using justice systems to help people, communities and societies fulfill their potential. A people-centered approach to justice can help close the justice gap for the 5.1 billion who lack meaningful access to justice and help transform how governments serve their citizens.

Across West Africa numerous organizations work at both grassroots and national levels to promote access to justice for marginalized populations including the urban and rural poor, persons living with disabilities, sex-workers, the LGBTI community, and others. While each organization’s strategies and tools are distinct to meet the specific needs of the populations they serve, they all use elements of legal empowerment to promote legal awareness, education, and support advocacy initiatives aimed at placing communities at the center of solving their own justice and development challenges. Nevertheless, formal and informal justice systems remain out of reach for many.

Access to justice for all in the region is further challenged by the unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic. The pandemic poses a tremendous threat not only to public health and human rights, but also to global justice. Major COVID-related shocks dealt to justice systems, both formal and informal, have posed unique challenges and obstacles that threaten to widen the global justice gap.  However, where there are pitfalls, there are also opportunities for innovation and recalibration towards people-centered justice. As reinforced in the Justice for All and the Public Health Emergency briefing, justice workers and systems on the frontline of the pandemic must work together and support each other through this difficult challenge and ensure that justice remains at the heart of building back better.  The values of transparency, accountability, and participation must also remain at the center of responses, with good examples of how some countries are doing so in the Open Government Guide and the Coronavirus: Justice.

In an effort to bridge the justice gap, a group of local, national, and international CSOs have come together to organize an Inaugural West Africa Legal Empowerment Summit seeking to bring together paralegals and organizations that support paralegals from across West Africa to begin a regional conversation on legal empowerment and how together we can better face common challenges and realize our collective aspirations in making access to justice a reality for all.

Further supporting this initiative at the regional level – the 2004, the Lilongwe Declaration on Accessing Legal Aid in the Criminal Justice System in Africa underscored the role of paralegals in providing access to justice, and sought to ensure that quality standards were developed. In 2017, the Africa Declaration on Collaboration Between the Judiciary and Indigenous/Home-Grown Community Justice Institutions made considerable mention of community-based paralegals and the role that they play in the region’s justice systems, especially at a local level as “enablers of healing, reconciliation, peace-building and mediation” and drivers of legal empowerment.

Also signaling that the time is ripe for an inaugural summit in the region, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission is in the process of developing a regional framework on Access to Justice and rule of law, which will guide ECOWAS member states in policy development. It is critical that legal empowerment organizations in the region exchange their experiences, harmonize good practices, and ultimately advocate for an enabling, efficient framework for community paralegals to thrive in West Africa’s justice systems.

The Summit will be convened virtually over the first week in October 2020, and include a series of virtual discussions organized around key topics identified by legal empowerment practitioners across the region as priorities. These topics will include 1) regional advocacy and networking, and the role of the ECOWAS justice agenda 2) financing for legal empowerment, 3) common challenges and solutions, especially in light of COVID-19, 4) benchmarking, and scaling legal empowerment, and 5) strengthening partnerships with government. A high-level opening session will set the tone for the week and allow for participants to introduce their work around the region and network with each other. The concluding session will draw together key lessons and priorities emanating from the substantive sessions and chart a clear set of regional actions and outcomes to feed into broader advocacy.

Objectives of the Summit

 

Outcomes

Potential outcomes include:

 

Format

 

The format will be a series of 1.5-2 hour virtual gatherings (total of 5) over a one-week period beginning October 5, 2020. Participants will include representatives of legal empowerment and paralegal support organizations from anglophone and francophone West Africa. Representatives from government, civil society and the donor community will also participate in the sessions. The format will be interactive to enable a discussion between moderators and participants.

 

The organizers seek to convene an in-person summit to follow-on this virtual summit when doing so becomes safe and practicable – in order to continue building regional momentum around collective access to justice priorities. 

 

Agenda

A survey was conducted in advance of the virtual gathering to capture the priority interests of participating organizations and to help inform the development of the agenda and topics for discussion. The sessions to make up the agenda are informed by the survey.

 

  1. Monday, October 5: High-Level Opening Session; Strengthened Partnerships with Government on Legal Empowerment: How Practitioners are Effectively Engaging

 

  1. Tuesday, October 6: Legal empowerment, COVID-19 and Beyond: Solutions to challenges and necessary adaptations, including technology

 

  1. Wednesday October 7: Financing for Legal Empowerment: Options & Opportunities for Lasting Impact

 

  1. Thursday, October 8: Benchmarking & Scaling Legal Empowerment Projects: Good Practices

 

  1. Friday, October 9: Closing Session – Regional opportunities, Networking and the ECOWAS Justice Agenda: Building West Africa Connections for Advocacy & Synergy

 

Collaborating Partners 

 

Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI)

JEI is a non-profit, non-governmental organization empowering urban poor communities to provide grassroots legal aid and education by training and supporting a network of community paralegals across urban informal settlements in Nigeria and Benin. Since 2016, together with government and non-governmental partners we have convened annual inter-city paralegal summits to bring together paralegals to share challenges and learn from one another through participatory exchange, and to build on their achievements and strengthen partnerships.

 

Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative (IWEI)

IWEI’s mission seeks to transform the society by enabling women, youth and children escape the cycle of poverty and ignorance mostly fostered by harmful traditional practices, by attaining a state of well being and having a voice through innovative, qualitative and sustainable empowerment programmes. The Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative is a non governmental and non profit organization established with the aim of transforming the lives of the most vulnerable groups (women and children), through the provision of access to improved healthcare, education, economic empowerment programmes channeled at boosting their confidence and self esteem, and enhancing capacity building in order to motivate them towards a life of economic self reliance and sufficiency.

 

NAMATI 

Nearly every nation in the world has declared its commitment to the basic human rights of its citizens. In reality, governments rarely deliver on that promise. Billions of people live in impoverished communities, outside the protection of the law. They can be driven from their land, extorted by officials, denied essential services, and intimidated by violence. Governments, rather than upholding and executing the law, often are stymied by inefficiency, chronic underfunding, and insufficient data. Namati places the power of the law in the hands of the people. Namati trains and deploys grassroots legal advocates who work with communities to advance fundamental rights such as citizenship recognition, land tenure, and access to quality health care. Drawing on data from thousands of cases, Namati advocates for improvements to policies and systems that affect millions of people. Namati convenes the Global Legal Empowerment Network, more than 2,100 groups from 150 countries learning from one another and working together to transform the relationship between people and law.

 

The Carter Center

A nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in more than 80 counties by preventing and resolving conflicts, enhancing freedom and democracy, and advancing health. With almost 20 years of experience, The Rule of Law Program aims to increase good governance and trust to transform lives through enhanced accountability, transparency, and inclusive access to information and justice, all critical ingredients to strengthening the social contract between governments and the citizens they serve. Since 2006, the Center has implemented multi-faceted programming in Liberia to help government and civil society partners address some of the key challenges to citizen access to and understanding of the rule of law, including its long-running Access to Justice Project, which targets citizens in rural areas, with a particular focus on women and marginalized populations.

 

Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies

The Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies is a member state-led platform for the implementation of the SDG targets for peace, justice and inclusion (SDG16+), hosted at the New York University’s Center on International Cooperation. It brings together 35 governments and over 100 partners committed to national delivery of SDG16+ and our grand challenges on halving global violence, promoting justice for all, and tackling inequality and exclusion.

 

National Coalition for Community Legal Empowerment (NaCCLE)

The mission of the NaCCLE is to enhance the capacity of members in order to promote the development of just and empowered communities through collaboration, partnership, research, joint advocacy, resource mobilization and capacity building. It was established in 2018 as an advocacy organization in matters relating to, but not limited to, access to justice, legal empowerment and human rights and other areas of advocacy. It aims at enhancing the capacity of members in order to promote the development of just and empowered communities through collaboration, partnership, research, joint advocacy, resource mobilization and capacity building for the creation of better communities with citizens that have the greatest awareness of their rights and legal knowledge. Founding members include: Centre for Access to Justice, Peace and Human Rights (CAJPHR); Justice and Peace Commission, Kenema; Lady Ellen Women’s Aid Foundation (LEWAF); Methodist Church, Sierra Leone (MCSL); Movement for Resettlement and Rural Development,  (MoRRD); Namati, Sierra Leone; Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD); Youth Aries for Rural Development Empowerment and Peace Building (YARDEPB).

 

The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) 

OSIWA’s mission is to promote and support open societies, inclusive democratic governance based on transparent and accountable institutions, active citizenry and economic advancement. OSIWA is part of the global network of Open Society Foundations, and is active in ten countries in West Africa (Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Senegal) with offices based in five of them. Through grant-making, research, advocacy, litigation, and the provision of technical support, we are committed to supporting and standing in solidarity with those who seek justice, accountability, equitable distribution of national wealth, sustainable and environmentally-friendly development, economic and legal empowerment, promotion and protection of basic rights, freedoms and liberties of its citizens and public participation.

 

Open Governance Partnership

In 2011, government leaders and civil society advocates came together to create a unique partnership—one that combines these powerful forces to promote accountable, responsive and inclusive governance. Seventy-eight countries and a growing number of local governments—representing more than two billion people—along with thousands of civil society organizations are members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). OGP’s coalition on justice was launched at the Open Government Partnership’s Summit in Ottawa in May 2019. Stemming from this, OGP works to expand responsiveness, accountability and inclusion into all systems of justice. Justice is an emerging area in open government with a growing number of potentially high impact commitments.