[hr-education] Pioneering African paralegal NGO receives World Bank grant

For Immediate Release 

Contact: Zaza Namoradze + 361 327 3109 (Budapest) 
Contact: David Berry + 1 212 548 0385 (New York) 

WORLD BANK AWARDS GRANT TO PIONEERING AFRICAN PARALEGAL NGO 

Timap for Justice Delivers Legal Aid to Rural Poor in Sierra Leone 

Freetown, Sierra Leone and Washington, DC, October 24, 2006--The
groundbreaking non-governmental organization Timap for Justice received a
three year, $879,000 grant today from the World Bank to provide justice
services in Sierra Leone, one of the world's poorest countries.

Timap for Justice, co-founded by the Open Society Justice Initiative and
the Sierra Leonean National Forum for Human Rights, is a pioneering
organization training and deploying paralegals in the country's rural
areas. In a nation with five million people and only 100 lawyers, the need
for their services is acute.

Timap's paralegals address justice problems that arise between people and
the authorities, such as corruption in government services, as well as
disputes between individuals, including instances of domestic violence and
failure to pay child support. The paralegals use mediation, advocacy and
community organizing to resolve such problems. Their efforts are
complicated by Sierra Leone's dualist legal structure, which features both
a formal legal system of courts and lawyers based on the English model,
and a customary system based on traditional approaches to justice. Timap's
paralegals apply their knowledge of formal law and their familiarity with
local customs to navigate between the two legal systems.

A new publication from the Justice Initiative, Between Law and Society:
Paralegals and the Provision of Primary Justice Services in Sierra Leone,
focuses on Timap, highlighting cases which include a man cheated by a
corrupt local chief and a woman accused of being a witch. The publication
is available at www.justiceinitiative.org.

The grant announced today comes from the Japan Social Development Fund,
operated by the World Bank, which supports innovative social programs that
help alleviate poverty. The grant will enable Timap to continue its work
for the next three years, and expand its geographical reach from five
chiefdoms to ten.

"This grant will make an enormous difference to Timap, and to the people
of Sierra Leone," said Vivek Maru, founding co-director of Timap for
Justice. "It will allow us extend our reach and solve more justice
problems in places where these services are desperately needed."




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