Ethnic people should know about free legal aid: Speakers
BSS
RAJSHAHI: Speakers at an orientation in Rajshahi yesterday said there should be adequate measures of making the ethnic minority people aware about the existing cost-free legal aid services so that they could derive total benefits of the services. They mentioned that besides the government level National Legal Aid services, various development organisations are implementing need-based projects in order to provide legal aid services to the poor and distressed litigants including the ethnic minorities free of cost, reports BSS.
Light House Consortium and Improved Justice and Legal Aid Services (IJLAS) Project jointly organised the orientation titled Strengthening the existing Adibashi Mediation System held at Caritas regional office in the city. More than 30 ethnic minorities people both male and females attended the orientation.
Community Legal Services supported the programme with financial support from UKaid.
The speakers said concerted management of common resources can contribute significantly in uplifting the livelihood of extreme poor people including ethnic minorities in the region including the Barind Tract.
They identified major causes of conflict over using common resources and suggested best practices for conflict management. They also came out with number of recommendations that may be helpful to establish a congenial management system for use of common resources.
They acknowledged the contribution of ethnic communities in our liberation war and suggested that the state has its own duty to ensure land rights of the ethnic communities arguing for legal awareness and more legal aid provisions into the development agenda.
During the group discussion, it came to light that ethnic women were now well aware and vocal about human rights violation and legal services but their understanding of the issue are not better than their male counterparts in the Barind Tract.
The meeting was told that the IJLAS project is now working in two aspects preventive measure and remedial measure. Under preventive measures, mainly legal advice and legal awareness is being provided and under remedial measure, mainly case referral and mediation at office level are being implemented.
Main thrust of the project is to improve access to justice and existing legal service procedure for un-served population like adibashi concentrated areas in Rajshahi.
Senior Assistant Judge Nuruzzaman Sarker, Light House Executive Director Harun-or-Rashid, Team Leader of IJLAS Project Nicolus Biswash, Project Officers Siddiqul Islam and Rashida Khatun conducted different sessions of the orientation.
