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Office of the Public Legal Service

Tarawa, Kiribati
Joined April 2023

The Office of the Public Legal Service mission is to provide free and quality legal aid to the disadvantaged people of Kiribati including law reform contributions and community legal empowerment

Presence in: Kiribati
Focus: Generalist Legal Services

OPLS mission is to provide free, accessible, quality and timely legal aid to the disadvantaged people of Kiribati including law reform contributions, alternative dispute resolutions and community legal education on human rights and the rule of law. Our vision is to provide a range of accessible quality legal service for the benefit of the disadvantaged people of Kiribati. The Office of the Public Legal Service (OPLS) is a legal aid office mandated to provide free, accessible, quality and timely legal aid to the disadvantaged people of Kiribati. As a division of the Ministry of Justice, OPLS is responsible for providing legal aid including mediation services to the disadvantaged people of Kiribati. OPLS was established in 1980 as an ancillary branch of the Judiciary and has been operating since then. In 2014, it separated from the Judiciary and run and managed its affairs on its own, with support from Government. When the Ministry of Justice was established in 2016, OPL was incorporated as one of the divisions under the Ministry but was still given autonomous control over the management of its resources and operation.
Providing legal representations and mediation services to the public in all civil, contracts, family, land and criminal cases at all levels of courts in Kiribati are the main functiosn of OPLS. It also has an important function to promote public legal understandings on the rule of law. With the population of over 110,000 people scattered over 21 inhabited islands in Kiribati, OPLS has a huge and high responsibility to provide a range of accessible legal services for the beneift of the disadvantage people across the country.