LEGAL
EMPOWERMENT
NETWORK

Meanwhile, through our flagship Justice For All campaign, network members shaped a set of policy recommendations for increasing the financing and protection of justice defenders. These recommendations influenced key reports by The Elders, the Pathfinders’ Taskforce on Justice, and the OECD, as well as a global declaration on action to justice endorsed by 22 countries, including Rwanda, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom. To keep grassroots perspectives at the forefront of global dialogue, the campaign secured the participation of network members — in particular the winners of the Grassroots Justice Prize — in high-level events and a ministerial dinner at the U.N. High-Level Political Forum and General Assembly.

Task Force on Justice members stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Grassroots Justice Prize Winners during the Justice For All event at the UN High Level Political Forum

Then COVID-19 arrived.

The pandemic created new injustices–prisoners subject to mass infection, returning migrant workers at risk of starvation—and it made many existing ones worse, including housing insecurity, unequal access to basic services, and corporations using the chaos to grab people’s land.

At the same time, restrictions on movement and free expression hampered civil society’s ability to defend fundamental freedoms, leading to the harassment and persecution of grassroots justice defenders globally. Members of the Legal Empowerment Network struggled to rise to these challenges while keeping their people safe.

A young woman covers her mouth while riding a public bus in Dhaka, Bangladesh

In this moment of crisis, our community has shown its resilience and ingenuity. Across the world, grassroots groups pivoted in resourceful ways to address emerging justice needs during the pandemic. In a survey of network members in May 2020, 91% of respondents reported that they continued to conduct legal empowerment work, despite navigating dwindling funds, restrictions to movement, and limited access to technology, transportation, and protective equipment. A chorus arose from our community. Members said, “we can do this, but not alone. We must find ways to come together. We must support each other and learn from each other during these unprecedented times.”

With misinformation about COVID-19 proliferating, we launched an online discussion hub and retained a pandemic expert to address members’ live questions. Network members rapidly organized a series of peer-support calls as the pandemic intensified. Later in the year, they collaboratively designed and led the West Africa Legal Empowerment Summit, the Asia-Pacific Justice for All webinar series, and a course on community lawyering in Latin America. All told, over two thousand people took part in the Network’s virtual convenings in 2020. Members learned from each other’s experiences and strengthened solidarity across borders.

Still more was needed to guarantee the survival of legal empowerment groups and the continued protection of vulnerable communities. Nearly half of respondents in our network survey faced serious funding shortages, with 88% seeking to fill financial shortfalls to adequately serve their communities during the pandemic. Drawing on the demands and insights of network members, Namati rallied multiple donors and partners to establish the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund, with the goal of supporting grassroots groups to adapt their work to the changed circumstances. In December, the Fund announced the first 30 inspiring recipients, selected by grassroots justice leaders themselves.

Photos from three of the recipients of the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund: BLAST (left), This Life Cambodia (top right), and Nazdeek (bottom right)

In 2020, we added 7 new members to the Network Advisory Council, a core group of legal empowerment organizations that leads the network’s major initiatives and shapes long-term strategy. The new council members bring fresh perspectives as well as deep expertise — each will serve as an anchor member for their respective regions or themes. New members include Denise Dora, founder of the Brazilian women’s rights group THEMIS, Sara Hossain from the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, and Sukti Dhital from NYU’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights.

During 2020, we laid the groundwork for three major multi-year initiatives which we are launching in 2021:

1. The Global Environmental Justice Corps. Environmental destruction is a growing source of deprivation and injustice for ordinary people, and the top area of focus among our network members. Yet much of the global response to the environmental crisis is technocratic and top-down. Over the next five years, we will support a corps of 50 exceptional organizations from 25 countries to pursue environmental justice through legal empowerment. We will invest deeply in these groups, helping them to sharpen their methods, grapple with difficult organizational challenges, and win against powerful interests. Learning from each other and acting collectively, the corps of organizations and the communities with whom they work will form a powerful force for environmental justice globally: with inspired leadership, tangible results, and the potential to build new global norms for environmental governance. The corps will include Namati’s land and environment-focused programs in the U.S., India, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Myanmar. We conducted extensive consultations in 2020 and will launch in 2021.

2. Shared Learning Agenda on Legal Empowerment. In partnership with IDRC-Canada, we are launching a multi-year collaborative learning effort, through which a cohort of network members will use action research to improve their own work and grow the evidence base for our field as a whole. The learning will focus on what we call the legal empowerment cycle: how movements can build from grassroots casework addressing specific violations (knowing and using law) towards transformative changes in laws and systems (shaping law), despite steep imbalances of power and rising threats to democracy.

3. The Legal Empowerment Fund. Building on years of advocacy by network members, including the network’s Justice For All campaign, the Hewlett and Mott Foundations are spearheading the world’s first multi-million dollar, multi-donor, multi-year fund focused on grassroots legal empowerment organizations, to be managed by the Fund for Global Human Rights.