This report catalogs the proceedings of the Data Management training organized by the JSCO and NAMATI for Paralegals and their Managers under the Legal Empowerment Shared Framework held from 21st & 25th April 2017, at the Ocean View Hotel in Juba, Freetown. The Legal Empowerment Shared Framework Project (LESF) is funded by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa to increase the provision of primary justice services in communities across Sierra Leone through the use of Paralegals. The LESF Project is implemented in several countries across Africa and South America and in Sierra Leone, six partner institutions are participating in the scheme.
The objective of the training was to introduce and build the capacity of partner paralegals and their managers in the use of the case records forms and the web-based data management platform. This was done to counter varied data and ensure the comprehensive and standardized/uniform collection, collation, analysis and reporting of data generated in communities.
This Case Records Management System comprises of a hard copy data form and a multi-User Web-based Data Management Platform. The system is developed to manage data generated from the work of Paralegals under the Legal Empowerment Shared Framework Project, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa is an intervention that aims to improve access to justice through the provision of primary justice services using paralegals in communities, in a standard and secure environment. During the course of the project, Paralegals will generate data cataloging actions taken to resolve each case as presented to their offices.
This Case Records Management System manual was established to assist paralegals in managing data in a standardized and synchronized manner that will promote uniform data collection and analysis while fostering shared learning.
Namati’s Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli argue that the current system of ‘independent’ environmental regulation in India is failing because governing laws do not articulate clear intended environmental outcomes. They argue for “a practice of outcome-based governmental decision making located within the public sphere of influence” toward a goal of “substantive justice rather than procedural efficiency.”
In September 2011, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) published its first ever decision on a communication, in favor of the Nubian community in Kenya, recommending that Kenya undertake a series of actions to remedy the operation and lasting effects of systemic discriminatory treatment of this community in Kenya’s national civil registration and identity documentation procedures. This is a report on the implementation of the Nubian minors’ decision of 2011 by ACERWC.
This report features case data from the Nubian Rights Forum paralegal project in Kibera from 2013 till date. This policy report shows how paralegal data could be used in regional and international bodies in keeping office bearers and the government officers accountable.
Namati’s Ellie Feinglass makes a passionate case in the New York Times for the role of legal empowerment in healthcare. “Our strategy, if it is to be successful,” she writes, “must recognize that achieving universal access to care and treatment necessarily means addressing human rights barriers to health services. This will require confronting not only the challenges of physical distance and availability of diagnostics and drugs, but also of stigma, discrimination and quality of care.”
Read the full op-ed here.
Based on grassroots data from Namati’s right to health work in Mozambique, this policy brief contains practical recommendations for ensuring patient privacy at health facilities. This resource is in Portuguese.
India’s vibrant coastline is home to the intricate profession of artisanal fishing, and some of the world’s worst land grabs and environmental violations in recent years. On World Fisheries Day, Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli suggest a practical road forward to protect fishing communities and the land they have depended on, leaving hardly a footprint, for centuries.
Read the full op ed, ‘Keep the coasts clear for small-scale fishermen‘, in the Hindustan Times.
The ecologically unique but fragile Mundra region in the western Indian state of Gujarat has seen ferocious industrial expansion over the last decade and a half. A range of multipurpose ports, coal-handling facilities and thermal power plants have been granted approval under various environment regulations and built.
This report from Namati, produced in partnership with Mundra Hitrakshak Manch (Forum for the Protection of Rights in Mundra), MASS and Ujjas Mahila Sangathan, shows that the enforcement of these regulations has been woefully inadequate.
In India, ‘a dangerous precedent’ is being set as companies running large development projects pay ‘compensation’ for ecological damage instead of following environmental regulation laws, argues Namati’s Manju Menon.
The Sierra Leone government’s efforts to promote the country “as an el dorado for international investments” have been a boon to the legal community in recent years, with lawyers involved in the lucrative work of incorporating companies, securing titles and drafting lease agreements. But lawyers must be more careful, writes Namati’s Sonkita Conteh. Unfair lease negotiations have resulted in wide equity gaps and are prompting increased public scrutiny. By shortchanging communities as some have, lawyers risk putting themselves in breach of the legal practitioner’s code.