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Dear Friend,
Too often running a grassroots justice program feels like re-inventing the wheel. It doesn't have to be that way. Today more than ever our movement is producing resources and research we can draw from to make our work stronger.
We highlight some of the latest below, from a veteran paralegal’s memoir, to a video tutorial on legal empowerment, to a photo series on paralegals securing citizenship rights in Bangladesh, to research on the impact of paralegal efforts in South Africa, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
We’d love to hear what you think of these. Let us know, and ask questions of other practitioners, over at the legal empowerment network.
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First up: Namati is dedicated to building a movement of "grassroots legal advocates," or "community paralegals." What are those? We've laid it out in four pages here: What is a Community Paralegal?
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Next is a package we're calling The Legal Empowerment Tutorial. This is a series of short films and a reading list produced in collaboration with Professor Stephen Golub, the academic who originated the phrase 'legal empowerment'. In three short films Professor Golub provides an overview of legal empowerment, looks at how legal empowerment works in action and cites examples of how legal empowerment has helped people. To accompany the films Professor Golub provides a reading list of the core titles practitioners need to read.
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This month we publish a memoir of Case Studies and Stories by Namati's Daniel Sesay. Daniel has worked on paralegal programs in Sierra Leone for ten years. In this essay he uses real cases to show how paralegals brought the law to life in a country recovering from a brutally destructive civil war.
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Want to ask questions about community paralegals? Join us in an interactive online conversation. From August 25 to 29, Namati's Abigail Moy and practitioners from around the world will be discussing the role paralegals play in protecting human rights. We will be joined by members of the networks hosted by NGO partners New Tactics in Human Rights and Reinventing the Rules.
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Namati is working on the first-ever multinational study of paralegal programs. Our partners have completed research in six countries with a rich history of paralegal work. This study assesses how each program has had an impact on individuals, households, and local governance. The study is due to be finished soon, but three chapters are already complete, covering South Africa, Indonesia and The Philippines.
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The UN Development Programme has published three major studies on the linkages between legal empowerment and sustainable development. The reports cover environmental justice, women securing land rights in Africa, and a series of case studies.
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Photos by Namati's Bremen Donovan were recently published by the Guardian's Global Development Section showing the lives of the Urdu-speaking minority communities of Bangladesh and the paralegals who are fighting to secure their citizenship rights .
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We hope you find these resources useful.
In Solidarity,
Vivek, Abby & the whole Namati team.
P.S. - If you haven't signed yet please endorse civil society's Open Letter to the UN calling for justice to be part of the future of development when the MDGs expire. For the latest on our "Justice 2015" campaign check out our recent update about the campaign in Nepal and an in-depth look at where we stand with the UN General Assembly approaching.
P.P.S. - If you work on women's empowerment in Latin America or the Caribbean The World Bank is financing a new award for innovative work.
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