5,000-dollar seed grants go to innovative projects committed to changing criminal justice systems in developing countries
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (November 20, 2008) – International Bridges to Justice awarded eight JusticeMakers Fellowships for 2008 today. Recipients were notified by phone that they will each receive $5,000 to implement a project to protect the rights of ordinary persons accused of a crime within their communities. The fellows of this seed fund include members from eight countries and three continents. The projects were selected for their innovation, relevance and potential to make important contributions to their country’s respective legal systems.
Here is a list of this year’s recipients:
- Rommel Alim Abitria (Philippines) is working to alleviate several problems found in city jails – slow trials, a lack of inmate programs, and prison congestion – by training inmates to become paralegals. Through training, they can then provide a valuable resource to new inmates lacking knowledge of the criminal justice system by pursuing cases of neglected inmates and acting as liaisons to the authorities.
- Ram Kumar Bhandari (Nepal) is strengthening the existing Nepalese justice system by researching and identifying the root causes of its most common problems: the community’s lack of understanding of the criminal justice system, the mistreatment of detainees, and a poorly functioning system of courts.
- Buhle Angelo Dube (Swaziland) is transferring cases that involve police brutality and corruption from the Swazi National Courts, which don’t allow admission of evidence or legal representation, to the Constitutional courts. He also aims to amend the Constitution of Swaziland to prohibit ordered canings as part of a sentence. He hopes to accomplish this by identifying cases of interest from the national courts, challenging the validity these cases on behalf of caned convicts, and working with the media to raise awareness of human rights violations by the police and balanced reporting without fear of retaliation from the government.
- Patrick Chukwudi Dunkwu (Nigeria) seeks to ensure early legal counsel for indigent criminal defendants by using mobile phones to link lawyers and paralegals with defendants who have been recently arrested or sentenced. This will prevent the suspect from being unnecessarily detained by the police, taken to court secretly, or taken to prison on remand custody by the court.
- Malik Tahir Iqbal (Pakistan) is addressing the plight of children suffering from physical, mental, and sexual abuse in prison primarily because of an unchecked legal system. He hopes to implement a system of collecting accurate data from these prisons so that they may effectively implement rehabilitation centers for juveniles and public awareness programs about the juvenile justice system.
- Christine John (Kenya) is working to reduce the average time a person spends in detention while awaiting trial in over-crowded Kenyan prisons. Providing legal education to prison populations of four prisons around Kisumu, Kenya will enable prisoners to represent themselves at mentions and bail hearings and to access support and referrals to pro bono lawyers.
- Franck Kamunga (Democratic Republic of Congo) is setting up a legal aid clinic to assist, monitor, and advocate for women’s rights in police stations in Kinshasa. Efforts will include a monthly journal publicizing cases of abuse and arbitrary detention to hold police accountable for their actions and a free text messaging service connecting pro bono lawyers with victims as soon as they are detained.
- Aziz Tuffi Saliba (Brazil) is educating the public on rule of law and individual rights in some of Brazil’s most challenging communities. He will create and distribute multimedia information on citizens’ rights to community leaders, defendants and police to strengthen the foundation of Brazil’s criminal justice system in low-income neighborhoods.
“IBJ constantly receives urgent requests for help from defenders around the world,” said IBJ Founder and CEO Karen Tse. “JusticeMakers is our attempt to take IBJ’s resources and know-how to a global scale, while empowering a select group of defenders to implement grassroots justice initiatives at a local level. The ingenuity, passion and diversity we saw among JusticeMakers applicants in year-one suggest the tremendous promise of a supported criminal defense community.”
The eight JusticeMakers Fellowships were chosen from a diverse pool of 40 finalists representing 22 countries. Project ideas tackled a range of existing problems in one’s legal system by seeking to alleviate these issues through a variety of innovative ideas – including a grassroots monitoring system of police abuse, seeking reparations for victims of abuse in detention centers and holding workshops to raise public awareness of individual rights. In the final selection process, fellowships were awarded to projects that exhibited the most relevancy, efficacy, practicability, and sustainability.
The first annual JusticeMakers competition started in June, when potential fellows submitted a proposal to implement a project in their local community that specifically addressed the needs in their criminal justice system. The preliminary application process required the applicant to outline a project proposal that was then critiqued by IBJ staff. A more detailed, secondary application was submitted in October and assessed by a jury of seven experienced individuals of the criminal justice community, which included attorneys, a judge and a professor. The eighth JusticeMakers Fellow, Patrick Dunkwu from Nigeria, was awarded by a “People’s Choice” rating, which was won by earning the highest average rating by JusticeMakers community members.
ABOUT INTERNATIONAL BRIDGES TO JUSTICE
IBJ ( https://www.ibj.org ) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2000 with a vision to end torture in the 21st century through the just implementation of criminal laws. IBJ’s experience has shown that the provision of legal counsel at the earliest stages of defense can reduce instances of torture. IBJ’s JusticeMakers program demonstrates the potential market principles have for the human rights sector – that a large number of small, entrepreneurial investments can spark creativity, innovation, and potentially be a mechanism for ending torture in the 21st century.
Press Contact:
International Bridges to Justice
Tim Scheu, Innovation Officer
tscheu@ibj.org
Phone: +41.22.731.2441
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