Global Project Databases
As mentioned in my last post, we continued with our Legal Empowerment(LE) research this week. We have completed the requested LE databases. In total, five databases were created. The first is the global database which includes projects in all areas of LE. The latter four correspond to each of the four pillars of LE (Access to Justice, Property Rights, Labor Rights and Business Rights). I felt it would be more useful if the projects were organized in this manner so that each pillar can be isolated and considered separately, before consolidating information for future recommendations.

The format for this database was borrowed from the Judicial Training Centre materials provided to us, and included: Country, project name, partners/donors, budgets and project descriptions. The projects were derived from various Thematic Clusters, including Poverty Reduction sectors, Governance departments and Gender development groups, among others. Our next task will be to research how Serbia measures up to the progress of other UNDP countries on the LE front. We will have a meeting with supervisors in the near future to draw conclusions before going ahead with that analysis.

Free Legal Aid Fund
One of the first projects we worked on was the Free Legal Aid Fund. Prior to our arrival, Parisa and I had answered a questionnaire concerning Ontario’s Legal aid legislation. Upon our arrival we received much more information about the project, which is now at its conclusion. At the moment a government Working Group is deciding on recommendations to put forth to assembly for new legislation on legal aid, who can provide it and the type of legal aid that can be covered nationally.

This week I was working with the financial legal advisor for the project on editing audit reports. He led me through some of the background of how this project was assembled. The Free Legal Aid Fund project started out by rallying the usual suspects: Bar Associations, NGOs and Municipalities. Each group was consulted separately and naturally had its concerns over other groups taking on their roles. The reality of the matter is that NGOs have very good networks for communication with certain vulnerable groups, municipalities exercise many administrative social service functions and lawyers are very good court representatives. The goal was to make all these groups understand that they do not stand in opposition, but rather they compliment one another’s work. Once some sort of agreement was reached, and approval was met, the project was off the ground and running. Small grants were awarded to various partners and mounds of data were collected from clients. Information campaigns raised awareness about the free services and clientele grew. This was the pilot project that UNDP members would utilize to reach conclusions and to present to the Working Group. Now we wait.