Our Justice, Our Leadership: The Grassroots Women’s Community Justice Guide

This resource was designed to serve grassroots women, trainers, and facilitators involved in community justice activities across Africa. It was written by grassroots women, trainers, and facilitators who are members of the Huairou Commission and its Women’s Land Link Africa (WLLA) initiative. Later in the Guide, they’ll share how grassroots women across Africa have achieved justice, especially related to land rights, and how they’ve equipped volunteers who continue to work for justice in their communities. They describe how they work together, talk through issues, and get work done. They share sample activities, case studies, and references to helpful additional resources.

The Grassroots Women’s Community Justice Guide has six broad aims and three specific purposes.

Six broad aims of Our Justice, Our Leadership
• Introduce women with land issues to opportunities for community justice
• Share the experience and wisdom of grassroots women and organizations
• Help women gain ownership of land and property and work on land and
property rights
• Build capacity to mobilize women and communities for justice work
• Support cooperation among organizations focusing on statutory and legal
rights and communities focusing on customary and traditional practices
• Support sustainable initiatives

Three specific purposes of Our Justice, Our Leadership
• Describe what a Community Justice Process involves
• Describe what Community Justice Workers are trained to do
• Provide resources to help grassroots women organize their own Community Justice Process and mobilize their own Community Justice Workers

The Community Justice Guide provides information about (a) planning, implementing, strengthening, and sustaining a Community Justice Process and (b) recruiting, selecting, training, and mobilizing Community Justice Workers. The process and the people are inseparable, but for the purposes of this Guide, we want to distinguish the two kinds of activities — the two paths, the community organizing path and the leadership development path.