Lulu Ng’wanakilala speaks during an interview with The Citizen in Dar es Salaam recently. PHOTO | ERICKY BONIPHACE
Summary
- Legal Services Facility (LSF) has been implementing its “Access to Justice Program” across the country through a legal empowerment approach by providing grants to non-governmental organizations which are providing legal aid and paralegal services. Through this program 60,000 people have received legal aid and a further 4.6 million have benefitted from legal education. To facilitate these two crucial services which are provided free of charge to beneficiaries, the organization has invested TSh 42.5 billion in the program between 2016 and 2020.
Legal Services Facility (LSF) has been implementing its "Access to Justice Program" across the country through a legal empowerment approach by providing grants to non-governmental organizations which are providing legal aid and paralegal services. Through this program 60,000 people have received legal aid and a further 4.6 million have benefitted from legal education. To facilitate these two crucial services which are provided free of charge to beneficiaries, the organization has invested TSh 42.5 billion in the program between 2016 and 2020. The Citizen sat down with the LSF Chief Executive Officer, LULU NG'WANAKILALA for an in-depth look at the essence of this program. Read on...
Q: LSF was established nearly 10 years ago and has been implementing its Access to Justice Program across the country; briefly, how would you describe the program and its benefits to Tanzania? What are the organization's priorities today?
A: The Legal Services Facility (LSF) is a basket fund established in 2011 as a non-governmental organization that strives to increase access to justice for all, in particular for women through legal empowerment approach. LSF issues grants to other non-governmental organizations that provide legal aid and paralegal services on Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar.
Precisely, LSF has been implementing its Access to Justice Program throughout the country which has effectively enabled Tanzanians to benefit a great deal through these legal aid and paralegal services that are designed to facilitate more fluid access to justice, the elimination of hurdles or such legal challenges and protecting human rights.
In this regard, the most paramount priority today is obviously active cooperation and partnership with the government and vital development partners as well as other international institutions in looking for ways to continue supporting our Access to Justice Program so that we can all build stronger foundations for human rights, good governance, gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Q: Which vital areas does the program focus on in its implementation?
A: Our program is centered on delivering in four key areas; first, it aims to increase access to legal aid services for all in particular for women; secondly, it intends to build legally empowered communities and individuals in particular for women; thirdly, creating conducive environment for legal aid services provision; and finally, to contribute to institutional sustainability of legal aid in the country.
Q: The Access to Justice Program has been implemented through legal empowerment which includes extending grants to organizations that provide legal aid. To date, how much has LSF provided in the form of these grants?
A: Legal empowerment is our core area of program implementation. In the last five years LSF has made available TSh.42.5 billion as grants for numerous organizations on the mainland and in Zanzibar to enable them to provide legal aid services free of charge to everyday people who face a wide variety of legal problems. LSF funds paralegal organizations which provide these services in almost 169 districts and councils, and around 1,700 wards across the country.
Q: How does LSF collaborate with other stakeholders, including the government, in implementing its program?
A: LSF maintains a very cordial relationship with the government in implementing the program and by that I mean from the local right up to the highest levels of government. Through the President's Office - Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG) LSF works with councils which are responsible for coordinating legal aid services and effectively facilitating the close links between paralegals and local authorities such as village and ward executives as well as village chairpersons.
LSF works with the Ministry of Home Affairs through its "Criminal Justice Project" that provides legal aid to individuals in remand or already serving prison sentences. Between 2012 and 2015 at least 1,500 pre-trial detainees (PTDs) were granted bail and out of that number 500 were acquitted as a results of paralegal work in 24 prisons.
LSF has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tanzania Police under which it will review the Police General Order (PGO) with the aim of formalizing police gender desks that provide rapid help to victims of gender-based and domestic violence particularly women and children.
We also work with the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children where we have played a significant role in a range of activities under the Eradication of Gender-based Violence against Women and Children Program which culminates in 2021.
Noteworthy, this year LSF has signed an MoU with the Ministry of Constitution and Legal Affairs of Zanzibar for the purpose of improving access to legal aid services on the islands and enhancing the paralegal policy, an agreement that will run for three years.
Furthermore, recognizing the relevance of the agricultural sector in the country, LSF and the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) have signed an MoU through which both entities will work together to help small holder farmers, agricultural markets cooperative societies (AMCOS) and other entrepreneurs in the sector realize value chain sustainability. Through this facility LSF and TADB are developing the capacities of 6 cooperative societies which are in cotton production in the Lake Zone. To date we have reached 152,000 farmers and 679 AMCOS.
I can't thank our major development partners enough for remaining by our side since our establishment. The Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) has made huge contributions to LSF, and alongside them the European Union (EU) and the Department for International Development (DfID) of the United Kingdom have also provided funding for the implementation of our Access to Justice Program.
Q: Having a legally-empowered society is one of LSF's objectives; to what extent has the organization increased the capacity of ordinary Tanzanians to surmount the challenges they face so that they can grasp their rights and access them?
A: Frankly-speaking over these past five years we have done everything in our level best to reach people who are in dire need of legal redress around issues such as inheritance, child maintenance and gender-based violence (GBV). During this period, paralegals have provided legal aid to some 60,000 people countrywide and have also extended legal education to a total of 4.6 million individuals 54% of whom are women.
Q: Are there any positives that LSF can point to that have emanated from its Access to Justice Program?
For a long while paralegals worked without any formal recognition; consequently this portrayed them as shady, untrustworthy characters or effectively as invaders of the legal profession. As a result of the tremendous amount of work that LSF did with the government through the Ministry of Constitution and Legal Affairs, three years ago the Legal Aid Act, 2017 was enacted. This Act officially recognizes the paralegal and provides the guidelines under which they can work and conduct themselves. To us the enactment of this law stands as one of the biggest accomplishments of our program.
Q: As a lawyer who specializes in human rights and leadership, what is the one thing that you would like to LSF accomplish in Tanzania in the context of a middle income economy that is driven by industrial development?
In one way or another, the progress in economic growth that we are witnessing as a nation has germinated from the involvement of everyone in their own capacities irrespective of their gender. It is accepted the world over that we cannot eradicate poverty if the society in question isn't versed in their rights and cannot access them. For this reason, access to justice has a significant role in the development of the nation particularly as we knock on the door of a upper middle income economy. What I would like or would prefer to continue seeing is that LSF continue to empower women in the legal sphere so that they can enjoy equal rights and opportunities in society. This would help them to participate fully in the national development discourse without having to endure any obstacles.
Q: In many instances there are programs that don't yield sustainable impacts; how does LSF intend to turn this situation around?
A: That assessment is true of many programs, and to counter that reality we have gone to great lengths to ensure that sustainability drives our program agenda. To ensure that legal aid services remain sustainable, our program implementation approach is such that our grantees benefit from capacity building in crucial areas such as innovation through which they can generate income from long-term economic projects. These sustainable initiatives will allow them to continue providing legal aid services without the need to rely upon external financial help which has traditionally come from the grants we extend to them.
Q: For over twenty years you have worked with non-governmental organizations around the country; how would you characterize the current state of civil society?
A: Civil society has played a remarkable role in our nation's development benefitting an array of sectors including politics, our social fabric, the economy and even culture. Education and health have equally been enhanced through civil society also. In essence civil society organizations have been a ready hand in assisting the government to plug holes wherever they show up particularly in those vital aspects that directly pertain to our communities.
As part of civil society, LSF has been working with the government in various aspects with the objective of benefitting ordinary citizens and bringing the vision of development closer without anyone's rights being trampled upon.
In the not-so-distant future we will conduct a comprehensive assessment of our program to determine how adequate it has been in these last five years. This exercise will provide us with a genuine picture of the contribution non-governmental organizations make towards national development.
Q: Drawing from your personal experience within the civil society sphere in the country, how relevant do you think this sector is? What impediments does it face, and what would eliminate them?
A: Just as I pointed out earlier, civil society has an enormous contribution in our nation as can be visualized in its relevance in the realm of development. In spite of that, however, there is a formidable challenge in regard to the significant decrease in funding of late to civil society organizations (CSOs) as a result of changes to policies or to the political environment in countries that provided these funds most of which are now responding more to their domestic needs. This has led to programs either ending or being shortened reflecting the shortage of funds. In order to overcome this predicament there is a need for CSOs to revise their strategies and ensure that they undertake programs that are sustainable, and more importantly empower beneficiaries of those programs to own and implement them directly and by doing so wean them away from dependency. This will greatly help realize long-term progress in our communities and the nation as a whole.
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