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The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program from North Macedonia has completed its plan to create a mobile paralegal office. What will it be like and when it starts working? In North Macedonia, it is extremely difficult to provide legal assistance to residents of outlying villages (above all, we are talking about the municipalities of Prilep, Krivogaštani and Dolneni). In some cases, specialists have to travel hundreds of kilometers off-road several times a day. Telephone and online services existing in the country facilitate their work, however, all the issues are not solved, since a number of cases

The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program from Kyrgyzstan has completed its plan to create a network of paralegals for victims of gender-based violence. What is planned to be done for its implementation? According to the Ministry of the Interior of Kyrgyzstan, the number of domestic violence cases in the country is increasing every year. From 2012 to 2015, between 2,500 and 3,500 facts were registered. In 2016-2018, this index did not fall below 7000. And in 2020, it exceeded 9,000 cases. The real suffering of people hides behind all these figures. Imagine a man pushing a

The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program from North Macedonia has completed its plan of an advocacy campaign to counter the blocking of social accounts. In this country of the Balkan peninsula, unpaid fines, loans, debts on utility and other payments, can block a bank account. This situation often becomes a serious problem even for a person with a high salary, since many save money on the card, and for low-income citizens blocking their social accounts, in general, may lead to catastrophic consequences. “It happens that families who have been provided with social assistance and thus survived

The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program from Kenya has completed its plan of an intensive marketing company to draw public attention to the online dispute resolution platform from the Utatuzi Center. Not every Kenyan can afford legal proceedings, as well as the mediators services for faster dispute resolution. The level of legal education of everyone also does not allow to understand the procedures for solving legal problems, and therefore people do not want to waste time on this and are distrustful of the employees of the justice authorities and human rights organizations trying to facilitate this

The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program (KyivLEPP-2020) from Ukraine and Poland began to implement its plan to create a cross-border interactive IT platform for legal clinics. It is quite difficult to calculate the exact number of our migrant workers in Poland. According to the State Statistics Service, during 2015-2017, approximately 1.3 million people left our country, most of them to Poland, Russia and Italy. Many of them work illegally, as it is difficult for them to understand all the intricacies of employment abroad. And if a person gets injured in the workplace, such a person would

Kenyan people came up with this online event last year on a design thinking course of the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program to popularize their virtual platform for alternative dispute resolution. What useful technical solutions were presented during ADR Week and what did the School demonstrate directly? The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world that many current solutions to legal problems are in dire need of new technologies for efficient and uninterrupted operations. A number of such tools were demonstrated last week within Alternative Dispute Resolution Week (ADR Week) in Kenya. The main attention was paid to the alternative dispute

Thanks to an advocacy campaign that the Macedonians came up with while studying at the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program, from now on, bailiffs in North Macedonia check accounts before blocking them and store confiscated funds for 15 days. This was a real salvation for thousands of families living with social benefits. In North Macedonia, if a person has debts, for example, for utilities, he is blocked by a bank account. Moreover, bailiffs can also block the social account, where pensions are accrued, material assistance for people with disabilities and low-income citizens. This problem affects more than 10,000 families in

The Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine and the Polish Legal Clinics Foundation implemented a project to strengthen access to justice. The organizations have jointly developed an International Communication Platform for students, teachers and clients of legal clinics. The Project has been supported by the KyivLEPP — the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program, an incubator of innovative ideas in the field of access to justice in Ukraine and the world. Platform goals: Legal assistance to clients. Ukrainians living in Poland and Poles in Ukraine will be able to access legal aid regarding: tax disputes; family disputes; crossing border issues, etc.

The meeting of the Board of Founders of the School for the first time this year took place on February 18, and it was also joined by the heads of all programs. In the online format, colleagues shared the success of the previous year, as well as jointly made plans for the future. Community Advisors Program Iryna Ostrovska, program manager, spoke about the program’s success in the preparations and training of community advisers. For the eighth set of public advisers, the training program was adapted into an online format. This allowed, despite the restrictions associated with the epidemiological situation, to

The last training module in 2020 for the teams of the Human Rights Friendly Community Program consisted of 5 webinars, during which participants formed further action plans based on the results of the research. It should be reminded that the  Human Rights Friendly Community Program is designed to help to investigate legal problems and needs among community residents in order to develop and propose solutions that will solve identified problems. The Team of Berezanka (Mykolaiv oblast) chose the topic “Research of legal problems of socially vulnerable residents of the Berezanska UTC, which can be solved in pre-trial form by mediation”. The purpose of

Legal IT Hub Program of the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge is regularly exploring needs of legal aid providers in technological solutions (you can join the survey right now on the web-site of the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge). The survey outcomes showed that establishment of the electronic document management system have encountered some difficulties. To be specific, the issue was about filing documents and financial statements with electronic signatures on-line. Experts of the international auditing company KPMG in Ukraine* have developed and #pro_bono provided the materials on convenience of electronic record-keeping. The information from the article is available on

For many people access to justice and their legal needs is something abstract and confusing. Although these concepts have significant influence on human life, almost all fields of life, such as education, health care, employment, acquirement and disposal of property – all they in any respect are law-concerned. If an individual is not able to find a solution to a problem alone, then a demand for law occurs. Unsatisfied law demand indicates a limited or even lack of access to justice and may have significant effect both on an individual in particular and the entire society: health problems, lost job,