Five KyivLEPP2020 paticipating teams had been developing projects intended to enhance access to justice in five countries of the world throughout the previous week. Last Friday, experts assessed feasibility of these ideas.
KyivLEPP is referred to Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program, the incubator of innovative ideas in access to justice in Ukraine and worldwide.
KyivLEPP 2020 has been implemented due to joint cooperation of colleagues from the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation , Coordination Centre for Legal Aid Provision , Legal Development Network, Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, legal club PRAVOKATOR.Kyiv and expert and financial support by The Human Rights and Justice program of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Advice of KyivLEPP experts
At the beginning of the Friday class, Director of the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation Mykola Sioma said that crash tests, first of all, give an excellent opportunity to fix mistakes. In his opening speech he gave some advice to the teams. According to Mr. Sioma, before implementing the projects you should, in the first place, discuss the same with interested parties. He further outlined the importance of applying modern technologies in the projects and gave the Foundation’s solution, the legal aid portal of ProstoPrav as an example.
“Not every Ukrainian addresses for legal aid because of confusion that legal services are highly expensive. We, therefore, created a platform where the layers can render free advice or negotiate their service rates with clients. ProstoPrav helps people realize whether their issues can be solved in legal way or how much would it cost”,
– Mykola Sioma explained.
Besides, the Foundation’s Head told about FLA mobile application that enables users to verify their right for free secondary legal aid, find out where and how it can be available and address for and get written advice from professional lawyers.
Paralegal mobile office
This year KyivLEPP involved two teams at a blow from the North Macedonia. One raised the issue of lack of legal aid in the communities located far away from big cities, in inaccessible areas. In order to ensure access to justice for the residents of distant communities the team from the Balkan Peninsula proposed to establish a mobile (movable) office involving para-lawyers, social security officers and psychologists that would visit such communities on a particular day.
The participants began discussing the proposed model for problem solving after the presentation. They outlined significance of involvement of local activists and representatives of authorities in such activities.
The invited KyivLEPP expert Martin Gramatikov (HiiL) advised to use modern technologies for implementation of the initiative and think over opportunities to ensure that such model is stable.
Network of specialized para-lawyers
The Kyrgyzstan team told that victims of family and gender-based violence in their country are afraid to take legal recourse, and lawyers in many cases are unable and sometimes unwilling to deal with victims of similar offences because those cannot afford their services. In total, only 10% of such cases are brought to trial. The team proposed to arrange a network of specialized para-lawyers to solve this issue. In their mind, local professionals from various regions will be selected to the network to enable their work directly in their locations. In order to ensure additional motivation for such professionals in the long-term free cooperation it is intended that their activities will be covered both in local and republic media.
Prohibition on blocking of social bank accounts
The second team from the North Macedonia told about the problem of indigent citizens, namely gipsy communities. For the unpaid bills (namely, for utilities), the executive service blocks social bank accounts through which citizens receive government welfare benefits. Thus, through such acts the situation occurs where people fall below the poverty line and without any resources for normal life. Therefore the team wants to run an advocatory campaign which would help solving this problem in systemic manner. Representative of the North Macedonian team Zoran Bikovski explains that there are provisions on prohibition of blocking social bank accounts but being not complied with, nor is currently a division between social and common bank accounts. Therefore, as a possible solution, the North Macedonian team also considers the separate social accounts or special banks for citizens with low incomes.
International communication platform for students, teachers, and customers of legal clinics
A joint team of Ukraine and Poland presented the project of an international communication platform (web-portal) for students, mentors, and customers of legal clinics in both countries. This platform will allow the Ukrainians living in Poland and the Polish living in Ukraine to get legal aid in taxation, family disputes, issues that may arise at crossing the state border, etc. On the other hand, this will allow students to share experiences, take practice under supervision by legal clinic mentors.
Electronic source for mediation
The team from Kenya has developed a web-platform for alternative dispute resolution via on-line. Its users are two disputing parties which could come to an agreement due to video conferences being mentored by experienced mediators. Now this resource is used by Kenyan business companies and government experts. The team think over how this portal can be spread to the public at large to be used by average citizens.
Dmytro Foremnyi (HiiL) advised to focus, first of all, on promotion of this portal among big business companies which usually enter into many diverse disputes with their partners and customers. Something similar, in his opinion, is made with the resource www.cryptonomica.net
Today, teams presented ultimate versions of their projects, and KyivLEPP 2020 organizers told how further work would be arranged to support the participants’ initiative.