Description
More than five billion people around the world are denied meaningful access to justice. They are driven from their land, denied basic services, and intimidated by violence. Namati and members of the Global Legal Empowerment Network will advance justice by equipping people to understand, use, and shape the laws that affect them.
Legal empowerment efforts are often carried out by community paralegals, who go by many names, including barefoot lawyers or community legal workers. They are trained in law and policy and in skills like mediation, organizing, and advocacy. They help people to seek concrete solutions to instances of injustice, engaging formal and traditional institutions alike.
Community paralegals are essential to closing the global justice gap. They have proven that they can help communities to access justice, even when systems are broken. With the law on their side, people are able to thrive, seek peaceful solutions, protect the lands and resources they depend on, and hold their governments to account.
The Global Legal Empowerment Network will strengthen and connect community paralegals, and the organizations that deploy them, around the world. We will build spaces for them to meet and collaborate online and in-person. We will host events and activities that help them learn from each other. We will maintain a library of useful resources. We will collectively advocate to secure support and sustainable funding for the field.
Namati will also work in close partnership with network members to take on three urgent issues - health justice, land and environmental justice, and citizenship justice - in six countries: Kenya, India, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, and the United States.
Together with the communities we serve, we will strive to translate the lessons from our grassroots experience into positive, large-scale changes to laws and systems. We will share everything we learn from our grassroots work with our wider community.
By unlocking the potential of community paralegals who provide essential legal support to communities, we will help to make justice a reality for the billions who are being left behind.
Expected impact
Namati, the members of our network, and the communities we serve will grow the Global Legal Empowerment Network into a powerful movement for justice. We will also aim to achieve transformative impact in at least six countries.
The Global Legal Empowerment Network will engage thousands of members in activities that advance the field of legal empowerment, including collaborative learning, programming, research, community-building, and advocacy. We will support hundreds of grassroots organizations with meaningfully deepening the impact, sustainability, or quality of their legal empowerment work. We will transform the policy environment for legal empowerment. In particular, we will work to increase financing and protection for justice defenders at national, regional and global levels.
Meanwhile, in Sierra Leone, by supporting communities in protecting their customary land rights, we will significantly reduce environmental and social harm from mining, agricultural, or development projects. We will change policy nationwide so that people who depend on the land have a meaningful voice in what happens to it. In Kenya, where paralegals are helping communities to secure IDs, we will work to end discrimination in the administration of identity documents. We will also bring a historic community land law to life by helping communities to secure over a million hectares of land and persuading county governments to implement the law. In Mozambique, where paralegals are helping people to understand health policy and to take action to address failures to comply, we will significantly reduce violations and democratize health governance nationwide though the empowerment of village health committees. In India, we will empower communities to use the law to find remedies when industrial projects violate environmental regulations, as well as to demand a more effective and participatory regulatory framework. In Myanmar, community paralegals support farmers to navigate complex administrative processes for regaining access to land that was seized during military rule. There, we will strive to replace a top-down, repressive system of land governance with one that respects the experience and voice of those who depend directly on the land.
Website
https://namati.org
Goal 1
1.b - Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions
Goal 4
4.5 - By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations
4.7 - By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development
4.a - Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all
Goal 5
5.1 - End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
5.2 - Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
5.3 - Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation
5.5 - Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life
5.a - Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
5.c - Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels
Goal 6
6.b - Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management
Goal 8
8.5 - By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
8.7 - Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms
8.8 - Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment
Goal 10
10.2 - By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status
10.3 - Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard
10.4 - Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality
10.5 - Improve the regulation and monitoring of global financial markets and institutions and strengthen the implementation of such regulations
10.6 - Ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions
10.7 - Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies
Goal 11
11.1 - By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums
11.2 - By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons
11.3 - By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries
11.7 - By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities
11.b - By 2020, substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels
Goal 13
13.b - Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities
* Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international,
intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.
Goal 16
16.1 - Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
16.2 - End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children
16.3 - Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all
16.4 - By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets and combat all forms of organized crime
16.5 - Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms
16.6 - Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
16.7 - Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels
16.8 - Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance
16.9 - By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration
16.10 - Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements
16.a - Strengthen relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels, in particular in developing countries, to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime
16.b - Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development
Goal 17
17.1 - Strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection
17.9 - Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation
17.10 - Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization, including through the conclusion of negotiations under its Doha Development Agenda
Start: 15 September, 2019
