Scaling access to justice research collaboration

This cost-benefit study was undertaken to assess the outcomes of community-based justice services (paralegal NGOs) and to make recommendations on strategies for scaling up access to justice in Sierra Leone. The project’s outcomes include: evidence for policy makers to be used in decision making related to justice funding priorities; generation of reference material for future research; network building and collaboration with researchers in Canada, Kenya and South Africa; experience in building and managing research teams; and change in the data management system of community-based justice providers. Lack of data limits advocacy capabilities of justice activists, and affects government and donors’ decision making capacities

Costs and benefits of community-based justice in Sierra Leone

Sustainable development goal 16.3 aims to “promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all”. In 2012, Sierra Leone enacted a progressive legal aid law which established a mixed system of criminal and civil legal aid to be provided by a variety of players including paralegals, private and public lawyers, NGOs, and law clinics. By that law, the government committed to place at least one paralegal in each of the country’s 190 chiefdoms to provide legal advice, assistance, and education to the inhabitants. However, fiscal constraints mean that the government funded Legal Aid Board and NGOs delivering paralegal services cannot operate and deliver their services at scale. This research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on approaches to expanding access to justice in Sierra Leone and globally in a cost-effective, strategic, and sustainable manner.Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA

Inhibiting 'progressive realisation'? The effect of privatisation on the right to water in Senegal and South Africa

"Against the preceding background, the phenomenon of privatisation has come to be a particularly important factor with respect to the progressive realisation of the right to water. Privatisation is the process of transferring property from public ownership to private ownership or transferring management of a service or activity from government to the private sector There has been a rapid growth in the privatisation of essential services in many African states, based on the belief that the private sector can deliver growth and efficiency more effectively than the public sector. This supposition has not been borne out by the available evidence. Cote d'Ivorie was the first African state to privatise its water delivery system in 1960. Since then, over 18 major water contracts have been awarded by at least 14 African states, including Senegal and South Africa, to private concernts for the delivery of water. A host of other states are planning to or are already in the process of privatising their water delivery systems. The main impetus behind this spate of sometimes frenzied privatisation, has been the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who make the privatisation of public services or utilities an unavoidable condition for loans to African states. These two institutions have however, quite recently, come under serious pressure to fundamentally rethink the use of conditionality and have initiated a series of evaluations which are expected to result in some critical conclusions. This study aims to demonstrate through the two case studies of Senegal and South Africa that privatisation of water by African states can affect the process of 'progressive realisation' and may actually result in the violation of the right to water guaranteed under international human rights law. It investigates whether privatisation of water by African states affects the obligation of progressive realisation of the right to water. The choice of Senegal and South Africa is based on the fact that studies on the development and impact of water privatisation in both states have been carried out and futher whilst Senegal is an example of 'privatisation forced by the World Bank', South Africa is not. In addition, both states are parties to international human rights instruments that implicitly or explicitly guarantee the right to water. ... Chapter 2 will discuss the 'right to water' and the obligation of progressive ralisation with regard to the overall promotion and protection of economic, social and cultural rights. It will examine whether such a right actually exists under international human rights law, its nature and extent and the content of the obligation to progressively realise it. Chapter 3 will focus on the process of privatisation, its varous forms and the impetus for such a process. It will also explore arguments in support of, and against, privatisation. Chapter 4 will analyse the impact of privatisation on the obligation to progressively realise the right to water by looking at the situation pre- and post-privatisation. Some concluding remarks will be made in chapter 5." -- Introduction.Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2006.Prepared under the supervision of Prof. J. Oloka-Onyango at the Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Kampala, Ugandahttp://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.htmlCentre for Human RightsLL