Legal Empowerment might offer a different response to the injustice if we scale advocacy at national level with the Minister of Justice, the legal Aid Board etc,etc.
Traditional response has been mediation and local level advocacy. Additionally, the law to officially permit stronger network between paralegals and the law enforcement bodies. What is there is personal relationships with the law enforcing bodies.
Yes, we can sit together to address issues. Courts and police can refer civil matters to the paralegal and paralegal can follow up even criminal matters at both police and court level.
The direct role of communities in any advocacy efforts would be a perfect and ideal implementation of legal empowerment. It’s also the concrete implementation of community-based approach of the legal empowerment which is one great option in any empowerment efforts and implementation. Direct actions for communities may lead to an efforts based on the communities necessity and efforts of communities rights protection efforts.
Strengthening the capacity of people to exercise their rights is about ensuring that law is available to everyone either as individuals or as members of a community. Community activism is a means of making changes in society, practices and policies and removing barriers. Activists recognize the injustice and take action to address it. Addressing the injustice I mentioned at the beginning of the course it is something that paralegals detected while grass-root working. It is the problem with delaying of the procedures upon the submitted applications for citizenship. Although the requests by citizens with regulated residence and who have fulfilled all legally prescribed conditions, in practice a response from the competent institutions is waited for several years. An example of this is the recorded cases in the past period, especially the persons from rural areas and families at social risk due to unreasonable procrastination of proceedings by the authorities and postponement of decision-making upon submitted requests. This practice seriously affects the quality of life of individuals who are applicants as well as their children due to lack of citizenship of the parent for which they have limited rights and it is to the detriment of the most vulnerable citizens who remain without enjoying basic social and economic rights.
On a historical perspective, legal empowerment work came as an approach to solving community issues or injustices within communities in 2003 immediately after the civil war. The use of community-based paralegals was seen as an alternative primary justice delivery service mechanism to the strict formal court system of seeking redress. This approach demystified complex laws and brought the agency of the people through building leaders to take collective action. With the current global climate challenge, and the existence of my repressive government, the vulnerability of communities to violation by their governments and corporations remains a critical concern of which I believe legal empowerment can play a central role in building the power of the people through organising and knowledge of the law. Legal empowerment can change communities from being powerless to powerful in the face of seeking redress and being part of the governing process. For example, in a practical experience in Sierra Leone, legal empowerment was able to make communities who never knew what it means to make laws where empowered by paralegals were to detail the content of a lease agreement which formed a binding contract between them and a multinational (Agric business) company.
I think if the people in the community would be empowered to understand the constitutional the Bill of rights, and are then empowered on how to make the respective constitutional provisions a reality, this would make a huge difference in terms of bridging the injustice gap and advocating for the implementation of the relevant constitutional proviions.
Communities facing displacement may firstly enforce their rights to consent to the displacement, which would mean that the allocation of that land to a private entity without the consent of the community that inhabits the land is outside of the constitutional rights to property, and to fair and equal treatment. A traditional response would be for a lawyer to seek redress n behalf of the community. A legal empowerment approach would likely include the community members approaching the private company to discuss how their rights have been violated and what that means for the transaction. Where there is no remedy provided by the company (this will likely be the case), the community leaders can step up and directly approach the courts for redress. This can play out similarly to the example at the beginning from the community in Sierra Leone.
This will be through legal education in the affected communities. Teach people to know the law so that they will defend themselves if they face any illegal challenge.
The issue I mentioned in particular was the phenomenon of gender based violence (GBV) experienced in the country. Advocacy work could assist drastically in not only educating the community and police on aspects of human dignity and the legal rights of victims that are infringed but assist in changing the narratives that exist that allow violence directed at women to persist.
The experiences that I had with the Indigenous People community made me realize that it is very important to organize people to come together in reclaiming their rights. As a paralegal, I would like to agree that legal empowerment is a continuous struggle that we must work together. In addressing the injustices in the community we must enable people’s participation by involving them in the consultation and at the same time by providing human rights education. Through this engagement, we will be able to make them realize their capacity and their rights in working towards community development.
Leveraging on the work of community paralegals to connect victims/survivors of gender-based violence to legal resources, services and justice would advance legal empowerment in my community
Community paralegals are the right approach to driving change in our laws right from the grassroots,for countries and communities that have them,there is only need for consistent training of the paralegals so that they can get well acquainted with the laws and changes in the statutes,from this they can be able to bring the communities alive to the facts that are happening in the country.Empower them to empower the civilians!
Community paralegals possess the capacity to fuel a social mobilization in terms of accessing civil rights by the poor, marginalized people. In Bangladesh, they can empower rural, disadvantaged people by empowering them with knowledge on how to get government services or how to get enrolled in different social safety schemes, conducting awareness raising campaigns on gender, women and human rights, etc. However, it is important to train up a group of paralegals who are motivated to give back to society and build a strong network. Besides, a long term approach must be taken to realize the full results of this activism.
Enhancing the capacity of Paralegals at grassroots level to identify human rights violations and defend human rights is key in growing Legal Empowerment at a local level. The Paralegals must also be guided in protecting themselves through the “do no harm” principle.
Legal Empowerment being more than just knowledge about the law, but including the application of these elements to everyday life and achieving transformation in people’s lives, provides other points of view on civic space, access to information, freedom of expression, freedom of protest and freedom of assembly. All these rights strengthen democracy and bring together those who used to ignore some institutionalized spaces before, and help to think about politics more than the electoral period.
In the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, people living in informal settlements experience significant human rights violations, such as lack of access to health, to education and to a clean environment. We therefore started working with people to get them to know what they could require to the State, and that changed their lives. They now know what they can ask for, where to go to seek redress human rights violations, and what to do if that was not effective. Another aspect that is worth mentioning was that people participating in our workshops soon became multipliers in their own communities and we achieved a powerful group of people generating critical mass and a culture of demanding the fulfilment of human rights.
Emmanuel and few others made mentioned of the work of community paralegal that their work strengthens legal empowerment at the community level. This resonates with what someone else said that justice is before all a feeling, we can achieve collectively as a process of building our communities, families and villages. Paralegal can influence this to happen.
The historical injustice that women precluded women in the provincial/rural communities, and the Krios from accessing land in those areas has been largely addressed by the passing into law two of our country’s most progressive Acts – The Customary Land Rights Act, and the National Land Commission Act of 2022. That particular milestone is as a result of continuous work carried out by paralegals across the country in years past. That process has also made use of the Legal Empowerment approaches of advocacy, lobbying, organising, which cuts across various sectors in the country. The big task at hand now is to ensure that the citizenry, especially the most vulnerable people living in deprived communities are aware of the key provisions of those laws, and that those fine laws are implemented by the government.
Legal Empowerment might offer a different response to the injustice if we scale advocacy at national level with the Minister of Justice, the legal Aid Board etc,etc.
Traditional response has been mediation and local level advocacy. Additionally, the law to officially permit stronger network between paralegals and the law enforcement bodies. What is there is personal relationships with the law enforcing bodies.
Yes, we can sit together to address issues. Courts and police can refer civil matters to the paralegal and paralegal can follow up even criminal matters at both police and court level.
Thanks for being critical
The direct role of communities in any advocacy efforts would be a perfect and ideal implementation of legal empowerment. It’s also the concrete implementation of community-based approach of the legal empowerment which is one great option in any empowerment efforts and implementation. Direct actions for communities may lead to an efforts based on the communities necessity and efforts of communities rights protection efforts.
Strengthening the capacity of people to exercise their rights is about ensuring that law is available to everyone either as individuals or as members of a community. Community activism is a means of making changes in society, practices and policies and removing barriers. Activists recognize the injustice and take action to address it. Addressing the injustice I mentioned at the beginning of the course it is something that paralegals detected while grass-root working. It is the problem with delaying of the procedures upon the submitted applications for citizenship. Although the requests by citizens with regulated residence and who have fulfilled all legally prescribed conditions, in practice a response from the competent institutions is waited for several years. An example of this is the recorded cases in the past period, especially the persons from rural areas and families at social risk due to unreasonable procrastination of proceedings by the authorities and postponement of decision-making upon submitted requests. This practice seriously affects the quality of life of individuals who are applicants as well as their children due to lack of citizenship of the parent for which they have limited rights and it is to the detriment of the most vulnerable citizens who remain without enjoying basic social and economic rights.
On a historical perspective, legal empowerment work came as an approach to solving community issues or injustices within communities in 2003 immediately after the civil war. The use of community-based paralegals was seen as an alternative primary justice delivery service mechanism to the strict formal court system of seeking redress. This approach demystified complex laws and brought the agency of the people through building leaders to take collective action. With the current global climate challenge, and the existence of my repressive government, the vulnerability of communities to violation by their governments and corporations remains a critical concern of which I believe legal empowerment can play a central role in building the power of the people through organising and knowledge of the law. Legal empowerment can change communities from being powerless to powerful in the face of seeking redress and being part of the governing process. For example, in a practical experience in Sierra Leone, legal empowerment was able to make communities who never knew what it means to make laws where empowered by paralegals were to detail the content of a lease agreement which formed a binding contract between them and a multinational (Agric business) company.
I think if the people in the community would be empowered to understand the constitutional the Bill of rights, and are then empowered on how to make the respective constitutional provisions a reality, this would make a huge difference in terms of bridging the injustice gap and advocating for the implementation of the relevant constitutional proviions.
Communities facing displacement may firstly enforce their rights to consent to the displacement, which would mean that the allocation of that land to a private entity without the consent of the community that inhabits the land is outside of the constitutional rights to property, and to fair and equal treatment. A traditional response would be for a lawyer to seek redress n behalf of the community. A legal empowerment approach would likely include the community members approaching the private company to discuss how their rights have been violated and what that means for the transaction. Where there is no remedy provided by the company (this will likely be the case), the community leaders can step up and directly approach the courts for redress. This can play out similarly to the example at the beginning from the community in Sierra Leone.
This will be through legal education in the affected communities. Teach people to know the law so that they will defend themselves if they face any illegal challenge.
The issue I mentioned in particular was the phenomenon of gender based violence (GBV) experienced in the country. Advocacy work could assist drastically in not only educating the community and police on aspects of human dignity and the legal rights of victims that are infringed but assist in changing the narratives that exist that allow violence directed at women to persist.
The experiences that I had with the Indigenous People community made me realize that it is very important to organize people to come together in reclaiming their rights. As a paralegal, I would like to agree that legal empowerment is a continuous struggle that we must work together. In addressing the injustices in the community we must enable people’s participation by involving them in the consultation and at the same time by providing human rights education. Through this engagement, we will be able to make them realize their capacity and their rights in working towards community development.
Leveraging on the work of community paralegals to connect victims/survivors of gender-based violence to legal resources, services and justice would advance legal empowerment in my community
Community paralegals are the right approach to driving change in our laws right from the grassroots,for countries and communities that have them,there is only need for consistent training of the paralegals so that they can get well acquainted with the laws and changes in the statutes,from this they can be able to bring the communities alive to the facts that are happening in the country.Empower them to empower the civilians!
Community paralegals possess the capacity to fuel a social mobilization in terms of accessing civil rights by the poor, marginalized people. In Bangladesh, they can empower rural, disadvantaged people by empowering them with knowledge on how to get government services or how to get enrolled in different social safety schemes, conducting awareness raising campaigns on gender, women and human rights, etc. However, it is important to train up a group of paralegals who are motivated to give back to society and build a strong network. Besides, a long term approach must be taken to realize the full results of this activism.
Enhancing the capacity of Paralegals at grassroots level to identify human rights violations and defend human rights is key in growing Legal Empowerment at a local level. The Paralegals must also be guided in protecting themselves through the “do no harm” principle.
Legal Empowerment being more than just knowledge about the law, but including the application of these elements to everyday life and achieving transformation in people’s lives, provides other points of view on civic space, access to information, freedom of expression, freedom of protest and freedom of assembly. All these rights strengthen democracy and bring together those who used to ignore some institutionalized spaces before, and help to think about politics more than the electoral period.
Agreed
In the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, people living in informal settlements experience significant human rights violations, such as lack of access to health, to education and to a clean environment. We therefore started working with people to get them to know what they could require to the State, and that changed their lives. They now know what they can ask for, where to go to seek redress human rights violations, and what to do if that was not effective. Another aspect that is worth mentioning was that people participating in our workshops soon became multipliers in their own communities and we achieved a powerful group of people generating critical mass and a culture of demanding the fulfilment of human rights.
Emmanuel and few others made mentioned of the work of community paralegal that their work strengthens legal empowerment at the community level. This resonates with what someone else said that justice is before all a feeling, we can achieve collectively as a process of building our communities, families and villages. Paralegal can influence this to happen.
The historical injustice that women precluded women in the provincial/rural communities, and the Krios from accessing land in those areas has been largely addressed by the passing into law two of our country’s most progressive Acts – The Customary Land Rights Act, and the National Land Commission Act of 2022. That particular milestone is as a result of continuous work carried out by paralegals across the country in years past. That process has also made use of the Legal Empowerment approaches of advocacy, lobbying, organising, which cuts across various sectors in the country. The big task at hand now is to ensure that the citizenry, especially the most vulnerable people living in deprived communities are aware of the key provisions of those laws, and that those fine laws are implemented by the government.