Justice for all

A couple of Fridays a month, I like to feature non-profits and changemakers on my blog to raise awareness of the great work they do, provide a dose of inspiration, and show that positive change is possible. Catch up on my other Feature Friday posts here.

This week, I would like to feature Global Rights, an incredible international human rights organization which fights for access to justice, women’s rights and gender equality, and racial and ethnic equality in developing countries across the world. Founded in 1978, Global Rights works with local activists and human rights advocates in Africa, Asia and Latin America to protect the rights of poor and marginalized populations. They advocate for human rights by documenting rights abuses, working towards legal and policy reform, and providing legal services to the underserved. Their approach to working alongside local leaders makes them truly unique and highly effective:

Global Rights is unique among U.S.-based international human rights organizations in that we have a long-term field-based presence in the countries in which we operate and work on the ground to build local capacity. We work this way for two reasons. First, we believe that local knowledge and expertise is essential to the successful administration of programming. Our local partners know the communities in which we work, are familiar with their cultures and traditions, and often are already active in promoting the legal rights of the poor and marginalized. Second, we recognize that long-term, systemic change can occur only if stakeholders themselves are involved. By transferring knowledge and skills to local partners, we ensure that they can continue work even after our programming has come to an end.

I am currently volunteering with a small organization that receives funding from Global Rights, and from what I have seen, I know that Global Rights is supporting great initiatives on the ground and truly working in a strong partnership with local leaders, officials, and activists working to change the human rights situation in their countries.

Most of all, I admire Global Rights for their important work in the access to justice field. Quite simply, not enough organizations across the world are working on access to justice and legal rights initiatives, and I am impressed by Global Rights’ work in this area.

Their access to justice work centers around ensuring that the indigent, especially women, have access to high quality legal services regardless of their financial situation or level of understanding of the arcane legal system. Global Rights works to strengthen legal institutions so that the justice system is more easily accessible by vulnerable groups. Some of their specific projects include:

• Training young lawyers in civil, criminal and international human rights law in Afghanistan.
• Also in Afghanistan, creating a pilot program to provide poor family court clients in Kabul with legal services free of cost.
• Promoting the use of legally enforceable marriage contracts to improve women’s rights in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.
• Strengthening the capacity of legal services groups to bring impact litigation in Burundi’s courts, on behalf of victims of land conflict and sexual and gender-based violence.
• Developing court accompaniment and paralegal training programs aimed at increasing access to justice for poor women in Morocco and Nigeria.

Make sure to check out Global Rights‘ incredible work, and support them in their mission. Thanks for reading!

A couple of Fridays a month, I like to feature non-profits and changemakers on my blog to raise awareness of the great work they do, provide a dose of inspiration, and show that positive change is possible. Catch up on my other Feature Friday posts here.

This Friday, I would like to feature an incredible non-profit organization, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR). From their website:

The Southern Center for Human Rights provides legal representation to people facing the death penalty, challenges human rights violations in prisons and jails, seeks through litigation and advocacy to improve legal representation for poor people accused of crimes, and advocates for criminal justice system reforms on behalf of those affected by the system in the Southern United States.

Considering my passion for criminal justice reform and the improvement of access to justice for the poor and marginalized, it’s clear that I think the SCHR is a great and much-needed organization. SCHR uses litigation to improve the criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to the application of the death penalty, unfair and inhumane prison and jail conditions, the right to competent legal counsel, debtors’ prisons (where people are imprisoned because of inability to pay fines), and fear-based policies spurred by policymakers who emphasize the need for public safety.

As you may know if you read this blog regularly, my particular passion centers around the right to high-quality legal counsel for all people, even the poor and marginalized. So it’s no surprise that one project of the SCHR, the Southern Public Defender Training Center (SPDTC), especially impressed me. The SPDTC trains newly minted public defenders throughout the south through a three-year training curriculum. Having worked with international organizations committed to improving access to justice by using a methodology of training public defenders in developing countries, I feel that this model can be incredibly effective in improving and expanding the quality of legal counsel available to the poor.

Check out the organization and it’s various projects, and I’m sure you’ll be impressed by their commitment to equal justice and criminal justice reform throughout the American South as well! The SCHR is a prime example of how litigation can be used to advocate for the rights of disadvantaged populations, and proves an effective model for non-profit law firms throughout the country.

This Friday, I’d like to feature the Equal Justice Initiative, an important non-profit headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, and which works to reform the criminal justice system and defend those on death row. The organization’s about page states that EJI “provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.” EJI also litigates “on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied effective representation,” and other members of marginalized and disenfranchised communities in the U.S. EJI uses the tools of litigation, policy reform, and advocacy to transform the justice system into a more fair one.

The organization’s mission and vision is clearly inspiring, but perhaps what sets it apart even further is the incredible passion and unwavering dedication of the organization’s founder, Bryan Stevenson. After reading this compelling and well-written profile - “Bryan Stevenson’s Death Defying Acts” - in the NYU Law School Magazine, I was amazed by his deep commitment to serving some of the most abused and impoverished populations within the U.S. - and that too, in the South, where attitudes towards prisoners and criminal defense work can be even more hostile and demoralizing.

Bryan Stevenson graduated from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 1985, and he could have had any job in the world. If he so desired, he could have become partner at any one of the nation’s top corporate law firms and made millions. Instead, he chose to work as a death penalty lawyer for a southern human rights organization, deciding upon a career with long hours and low pay. And maybe even few truly rewarding moments. According to the article,

Stevenson stresses how important near-poverty became to him. “Nobody got paid any money, or at least very little,” he says, “and that struck me as the ultimate measure of something genuine.” In contrast to the fancy corporate law firms that charmed so many of his Harvard classmates, he says, “it became clear to me that these death-penalty folks were real. They were serious.”

Later on, when the board of the Capital Representation Center in Montgomery offered him a salary of $50,000 - he refused it. Instead, he only accepted a salary of $18,000. His commitment was so deep that capital representation was not simply a job for him - it was a calling. What a refreshing viewpoint this is, particularly looking at the materialistic and consumer-driven state of our society and education today.

Since founding the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has become a professor at NYU Law and received numerous awards and honorary degrees celebrating his accomplishments. Still, he doesn’t rest, because he knows that there is much work yet to be done in reforming our racially-biased and unjust criminal “justice” system. I’ll leave you with this quote by Stevenson, which I think epitomizes the underlying belief that drives the work of every public defender and death penalty lawyer:

Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done…if you tell a lie, you’re not just a liar. And if you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you’re not just a thief. Even if you kill somebody, you’re not just a killer. And so I think that there’s an obligation to defend the basic human dignity of every human being.

Path to Justice from Penal Reform International on Vimeo.

This quarter, I’m interning with the Northwestern University Center on International Human Rights, a legal clinic in the law school. One of our projects is an access to justice project in Malawi, where we work to improve legal representation for prisoners - particularly those sentenced to death and without access to legal counsel - through a collaborative effort with local actors and organizations. I’m writing my final paper this quarter on our work in Malawi, and through this research I’ve discovered just how acute the crisis of representation really is. Malawi only has about 7-15 legal aid lawyers for the entire country, and these lawyers take on both civil and criminal cases. Thus, while there is technically a legal right to representation for the indigent accused, in practice it is very difficult for legal aid lawyers to spend sufficient time on each case.

Ultimately, the system is extremely overburdened, and most lawyers are only able to meet with their client at trial. Because of the lack of time and resources, it is extremely difficult for legal aid lawyers to conduct investigations; this involves traveling to distant villages to interview witnesses, and is simply not feasible considering the limited time and money that legal aid lawyers have. Malawi also has only one law school, which graduates about 30 lawyers a year; many of them go into private practice, and only a few become public defenders. Turn over is high, and many public defenders leave each year to go on to do different work. Prisons are overcrowded and conditions can be life-threatening, with malnutrition and infectious diseases.

Enter the Paralegal Advisory Service Institute (PASI), which is a project of the non-profit Penal Reform International. PASI is a model that has been SO highly effective in Malawi that it has been implemented in many other countries as well. It is essentially an organization that provides thorough and high-quality training for individuals who want to become paralegals. These paralegals then join forces with the legal aid lawyers to move prisoners through the criminal justice system more efficiently and more effectively. With a focus on alleviating overcrowding and getting remand prisoners out, PASI has proved to be extremely valuable. These highly trained paralegals are able to talk to clients, talk to witnesses, conduct a lot of investigative work on cases, and provide this information to public defenders. Paralegals also conduct trainings in prison where they involve the prisoners in skits that show them how to navigate the justice system, and to help them better understand legal proceedings. Prisoners who know their legal rights are better able to advocate for themselves in court.

Our partner in Malawi is PASI, and they have done an amazing job by implementing a cost-effective and innovative method of improving access to justice and legal services for all. The results are impressive: PASI’s prison clinics between Nov. 2002 and Jun. 2007 empowered about 150,000 prisoners to represent themselves in court, apply for bail, present a mitigation plea, or draft an appeal to the High Court. Even more incredible, PASI has reduced the overall remand population (those imprisoned while awaiting trial) from 40-45% of the overall prison population to only 17.3%.

Due to its success, the model has been replicated in Kenya, Benin, Uganda, and Niger; it is currently being piloted in Bangladesh. The organization is proving an absolutely incredible model for improving legal aid, and I look forward to seeing its worldwide implementation over the years!

When everyone else is obsessing over “building the next generation of leaders” and encouraging Gen Yers to become social entrepreneurs and social change innovators, one organization out there is quietly redefining the careers and lives of the Boomers.

Civic Ventures, founded in 1998 by Marc Freedman, is working to engage our country’s millions of baby boomers as a vital workforce for social change. Boomers have the incredible wealth of experience needed to become leaders in solving our world’s most critical challenges - and Civic Ventures is making sure that this experience is put to good use.

Today, Americans who are retiring generally want to continue working; 4/5 of people over the age of 50 say they want to work or volunteer in some capacity after retirement. And even better, many people seek to focus on work that gives them meaning and contributes to society during their retirement year. Indeed, more than 75% of those who want to work in retirement want to do work that helps the poor, elderly, and others in need. On the other hand, 48% of Americans between the ages of 50 and 70 believe it will be difficult for them to find good and fulfilling jobs at that age.

Civic Ventures is working to address this gap. Here are a few of their programs:

• Encore.org — A network for people who want work that matters in the second half of life. Encore.org provides news, resources and connections for individuals and organizations establishing “encore careers” that combine meaning, financial security and social contribution.
• The Purpose Prize — $100,000 awards for social innovators over 60 creating new methods for solving the world´s biggest problems and contributing to social change,
• Experience Corps — A national service program engaging adults over 55 as tutors and mentors for elementary school students struggling to learn. Today there are more than 2,000 Experience Corps members helping 20,000 students. 
• Encore Career Community College Grants — Grants for innovative community colleges preparing people 50+ for careers in education, health care and social services

I think Civic Ventures has done a wonderful job in targeting a market that no one wants to focus on - the growing population of baby boomers who want a second chance at a more meaningful life and career.

Millennials might be the “next generation of leaders,” but in the meantime, engaging the Boomers who have the right balance of education and passion might be just as effective when it comes to fostering social change.