Community Paralegals Advancing Access to Justice for the Poor

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.

Objectives of the Summit

  • Share experiences, best practices, and challenges from legal empowerment projects throughout the West African region
  • Develop policy agenda priorities for harmonization at the regional and national level in West Africa on paralegals and legal aid
  • Establish technical skills sharing through a peer network
  • Exchange on innovative solutions utilized by community paralegals
  • Examine performance best practices and M&E solutions
  • Brainstorm on sustainability initiatives

Outcomes

Potential outcomes include:

  • Declaration statement of priorities presented to the Ministers of Justice of the West Africa region
  • People-centered justice solutions integrated into national COVID-19 responses and strategies
  • Joint Action Plan for West Africa Practitioners
  • Individual commitments by practitioners & organizations on access to justice for all
  • Commitment by practitioners and governments in the region to engage with OGP Action Plan processes in advancing access to justice as an integral part of opening government to citizens

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

The high-level opening session will set the tone for the week and allow participants to introduce their work around the region and network.

This session will also explore how justice practitioners are effectively engaging with each other to address the legal needs of communities, and the opportunities and strategies for strengthening collaboration. It will also discuss why justice solutions that are transparent, inclusive, and accountable tend to be more impactful.

Click here to access session recording

2: Tuesday, October 6: Legal empowerment, COVID-19 and Beyond: Solutions to Challenges and Necessary Adaptations, including Technology

This session will explore adaptations and innovations that have been utilized in legal empowerment work; especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The session will reflect diverse experiences across both urban and rural contexts.

Click here to access session recording

 

3: Wednesday, October 7: Financing for Legal Empowerment: Options & Opportunities for Lasting Impact

This session will present sustainable financing options, including regional examples of public financing, both from donors and governments, social enterprises connected to legal empowerment organizations, and uses of various program innovations that achieve scale or cut costs and make programming more financially sustainable.

Click here to access session recording

 

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

This session will highlight various legal empowerment service delivery models, how they’ve been able to deepen impact, and what opportunities exist for sharing good practices and models across various partners moving forward.

Click here to access session recording

 

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

This session will draw together key lessons and priorities emanating from the substantive sessions. Justice sector actors from the region and national government, international and local organizations including grassroots justice actors will speak to commitments for the region, sharing, learning, collaboration, and the way forward. An outcome document capturing regional commitments and recommendations will be developed and shared with the public for their input.

Click here to access session recording

 



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.