DUSHANBE, July 6, Asia-Plus — Presentation of free legql aid center was held at the Civil Service Training Institue uner the Taji President in Dushnabe on July 5.
According to the Swiss Coopertaion Office in Dushnabe, the free legal aid component is one of the activities within the Access to Justice and Judicial Reform Project, which is supported by the Swiss Cooperation Office (SCO) in Tajikistan.
The project is assisting in developing a sustainable and effective model of free legal aid services provided to the vulnerable population in the country. For this purpose the project currently supports 4 NGOs namely Madadgor, League of Female Lawyers”, Human Rights Center” and INIS. These NGOs have several legal aid centers located in Dushanbe and Khujand cities as well as in Isfara and Vahdat districts.
Legal aid centers render a wide range of legal services to the vulnerable population. Each of the centers consists of several lawyers. They provide legal counseling in their offices and represent the clients in court. In addition to this, the lawyers practice group counseling and contribute to raising awareness of the population on legal issues, especially in the rural areas. In order to develop the professional and technical capacities of the legal aid providers, the Access to Justice and Judicial Reform Project purchased and adopted a system of case registration, which allows to monitor various legal cases and at the same time to analyze statistical data and information about the nature of the legal problems faced by the people.
This system has been introduced together with the new “Directory of NGOs and International Organizations working in legal sphere” to different stakeholders at the presentation held in the Civil Servants Retraining Institute on July 4, 2007. The Directory was elaborated, too, with the support of the Access to Justice and Judicial Reform Project and would be placed in the Internet and updated on a regular basis.
During the presentation the project informed about the current stage of its implementation, introduced partners working in the sphere of legal aid and demonstrated the capacities of the case recording system. The necessity of cooperation amongst the NGOs working in the legal sphere was also a subject for discussion.
