The Legal Services Facility (LSF) vowed to invest heavily in paralegal’s legal education and advice, which it described as critical components in enhancing peoples’ access to justice.
LSF, a legal funding instrument designed to offer financial support to legal aid organisations, reaffirmed its commitment to the realization of justice for all at a national two-day paralegal forum which started.
The facility’s latest resolve to pump in more funding to legal education and advice programmes comes as incidents of human rights violations increases in different parts of the country.
Already LSF, a basket fund established in 2011 with funding from the Danish government, has dished out grants amounting to 10bn/- to legal aid organisations that implement paralegalrelated programmes countrywide, but the facility has pledged to increase funding to legal education and advice programmes performed by paralegals.
“We have seen better results from previous projects implemented by paralegals…results which encourage and motivate us to invest more in paralegals’ legal education and advice programmes,” said LSF Fund Manager, Kees Groendendijk, at the official opening of the LSForganized paralegal forum.
Through LSF funding disbursed to legal aid organizations, according to the fund manager, paralegals have so far reached around 110 districts with legal education and legal services, a remarkable achievement which helped millions of poor women and men out of legal and related problems.
He explained that it was through paralegals’ legal education and legal assistance that the national dream of access to justice to all Tanzanians could be realized.
“Well educated paralegals could easily reach many grassroots communities with legal education ( human rights, legal and women rights)…conflicts, divorce, matrimonial disputes would be decreased if communities are educated and the only people who could spread this knowledge and education to communities are paralegals,” said Groendendijk.
He described paralegals as affordable and practical tools when it came to assisting poor people to get out of legal problems and hence minimize human rights violations at the grassroots up to the national levels countrywide.
Aman Olesekiro, a paralegal and planning officer from Tanzania Pastoralist Community Foundation (TPCF), said extensive legal education could reach many people at a low cost compared to other options, such as legal assistance and representation.
“Paralegals are living with the victims, they are close to the people…so, they can serve them and handle their problems better than advocates and lawyers, whose services are very expensive compared to paralegals,” noted Olesekiro.
Another paralegal and an officer from Simanjiro Paralegal Centre (SIMPACE), Hassan Fussah, decried the use of courts in resolving community disputes as too complex, complicated and costly, describing LSF’s paralegals-empowerment initiatives as cost-effective, efficient and effective alternative dispute resolution model.
Since its inception, LSF has so far trained around 2500 paralegals who have been deployed to provide legal aid services throughout the country and according to the fund manager, the facility expects to have recruited about 4000 paralegals by next years.
Source Tanzania Daily News
