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Outcome Document of the West Africa Virtual Legal Empowerment Summit 2020

We, the participants of the West Africa Virtual Legal Empowerment Summit, assembled virtually from October 5-9, 2020 to begin a regional conversation on legal empowerment in order to discuss common challenges and realize our collective aspirations to make access to justice a reality for all. The summit took place during the COVID-19 global pandemic, which continues to present unique obstacles that threaten to widen justice gaps throughout West Africa. However, initial responses to the crisis underscore the resiliency of legal empowerment organizations and practitioners, whose adaptations to provide ongoing community justice services were highlighted throughout the week. Summit participants shared experiences, innovative solutions, common challenges, and good practices from legal empowerment projects in the region.

We anticipate that the summit will achieve the following: increased awareness of the essential role of paralegals and other grassroots legal empowerment actors in bridging justice gaps, increase engagement between local and national-level justice communities tasked with designing responsive policies that address citizen needs; serve as a starting point for the development of a peer network of community-based paralegals; and help legal empowerment actors and organizations identify common policy priorities focused on paralegals and legal aid.

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Uploaded on: Nov 11, 2020
Last Updated: Nov 12, 2020
Year Published: 2020


Resource Tags

Resource Type: Practitioner Resources Issues: Governance, Accountability & Transparency, Policy Advocacy Tool Type: Policy Papers / Briefs Languages: English Regions: Western Africa