1. Structure and Management

2. History

3. Mandate

4. Vision and Objectives

5. Key focus program areas

6. Membership

7. Financing

8. Projects

9. Achievements

10. References

The Legal Aid Service Providers Network (LASPNET) is a Ugandan membership non-governmental organization whose mission is to provide a platform for effective networking and collaboration to enhance legal aid service delivery and access to justice for the most vulnerable and marginalized people in Uganda through strengthening the capacity of member organizations.

Structure and Management

LASPNET is governed by three organs namely: The General Assembly, the Board of Directors, and the Secretariat. The board of directors reports annually to member organizations at the General Assembly. The secretariat is the implementing arm of the organization. Working closely with the board of directors, the executive director manages the day-to-day operations of the organization.

History

LASPNET was conceived in early 2001 as a loose coalition to steer involvement of the private sector players in addressing challenges experienced by poor, vulnerable and marginalized population in accessing justice. In April 2004, the Network was formally registered as a company limited by guarantee to promote access to justice in close working relationship with the Justice, Law and Order Sector (JLOS) and through support from the Legal Aid Basket Fund (LABF).

At inception, the network was composed of a few legal aid service providers who included the Law Development Centre Legal Aid Clinic (LAC), Public Defender Association of Uganda (PDAU), the Uganda Gender Resource Center (UGRC), Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), the Legal Aid Project of the Uganda Law Society (LAP), and the Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA). Today, the membership has grown to over 53 member organizations across 70 districts in Uganda.

LASPNET is clustered into six thematic areas which engage members in programme activities. Each member is attached to a different cluster although they may take part in other activities of a different cluster. The clusters include; Criminal Justice cluster, Child Justice Cluster, Social Justice Cluster, Traditional cluster, Land Justice Cluster and Gender Cluster.

LASPNET is also composed of three working groups – technical/access to justice concerns, institutional development matters, and crosscutting issues. These groups are comprised of centers of excellence. Every working group has a representative from each thematic cluster. The working groups assess the recommendations of the thematic clusters to inform priority actions. The decisions taken at these meetings are subject to approval by the Board of Directors.

Mandate

LASPNET’s mandate is to strengthen coordination and networking of Legal Aid Service Providers (LASPs), harmonize and standardize legal aid services provision by the different service providers, lobbying and advocacy for facilitating a favorable legal and policy environment.

Vision and Objectives

LASPNET’s vision is: A free and just society

LASPNET’s mission is: To provide a platform for effective networking and collaboration to enhance legal aid service delivery.

LASPNET’s strategic objectives: As stipulated in the organization’s Five Year Strategic Plan (July 2015 – June 2020), the following are the objectives:

• Strengthen advocacy for supportive enacting and implementation of legal aid harmonized legal and policy framework.
• Promote research and knowledge management to support evidence-based programming and advocacy for legal aid and access to justice.
• Enhance networking and coordination of LASPs through promoting professional standards, collective voice and advancing the legal aid and access to justice agendas.
• Strengthen the institutional development of LASPNET through effective and efficient functional organizational systems that provide sustainability.

Key focus program areas

LASPNET has four key program areas which fall under the following categories:

1. Advocacy: LASPNET facilitates collective advocacy through analyzing government policies relating to legal aid and access to justice to ensure the indigent and marginalized are protected at all decision making levels as well as demonstrate linkages and importance of legal aid to the broader development agenda.^&91;1&93;
2. Networking and Coordination: LASPNET strengthens linkages with both State and non-state actors in Uganda that are well grounded in the norms and best practices in legal aid and promote rule of law and access to justice.^&91;2&93;
3. Research and Knowledge Management: LASPNET conducts research and publishes case studies to inform policy and influence policy and decision makers.^&91;3&93;
4. Strengthening Institutional Capacity Development: This involves: skills and programmes based trainings on a quarterly basis in order to further enhance their human resource in providing quality, professional, timely legal aid services and ultimately complementing government in enhancing access to justice for all through the provision of legal aid services.

Membership

LASPNET has a diverse membership of 53 NGOs and CBOs.

Membership is drawn from organizations that are committed to a wide range of human rights issues, rule of law and access to justice which are complementary in terms of areas of focus including: civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; children’s rights; gender and women’s issues; peace building and conflict resolution; prisoners’ rights; refugee rights, land rights and labour rights. These include organizations like Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) , Legal Aid Project of Uganda Law Society , Association of Uganda Women Lawyers , and many others as seen in the directory.

There are three different categories of members that is, ordinary membership granted to any organization that meets the membership criteria, Associate membership is granted to any organization that is interested in promotion of the objectives of the network and honorary membership is granted to individuals, networks that are identified with or contribute or render distinguished services to promote the objectives of the network with the approval of the general assembly. Membership fees are paid once and subscription fees are paid annually.

Financing

LASPNET’s financing is mainly by development partners who currently include the Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) ^[4] which has funded LASPNET since its inception, and Action Aid Uganda. Other sources of funding include members’ contributions, donations from well-wishers and strategic partners such as Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS). Other partners who have provided financial support in the past include; Save the Children, and Plan International.

Projects

• LASPNET supported by the Democratic Governance Facility is implementing the “Strengthening the capacity and advocacy for standardization of Legal Aid Services in Uganda” project that ends in December 2017. The project aims at enhancing access to justice and rule of law in Uganda under the following objectives:
  1. To Promote Professional Standards, Collective Voice and advance the Legal Aid Agenda
  2. To Strengthen the Coordination and Synergy among LASPs
  3. To Promote Research and Advocacy for a Harmonised Legal and Policy Framework
  4. To Strengthen Institutional Development of LASPNET
  5. LASPNET with support from Action Aid Uganda is implementing the Fair, Green and Global II Project. The project aims at addressing governance gaps in corporate conduct, trade and investment and financial systems in order to realize a socially just, inclusive and environmentally sustainable society.

Achievements

Since its inception, LASPNET has achieved some milestones in ensuring that the poor, vulnerable and marginalized access justice and legal aid support.^[5] Some of them include;

• Created a formidable lobbying and advocacy platform through analyzing government policies related to legal aid and access to justice to ensure that the indigent are protected, for example, LASPNET in partnership with JLOS and other key stakeholders contributed to the process of the development of the National Legal Aid Policy. As a way of scaling up advocacy towards the policy, the Network conducted a research on Access to Justice for the Poor, Marginalized and Vulnerable people in Uganda and also conducted a Cost Benefit Analysis of the policy implementation.^[6]
• LASPNET has provided a voice to its members on issues that affect their work and sustainability. For instance, it played an active role in advocacy activities organized by DENIVA in protest against the provisions of the Public Order Management Bill (POMB) which sought to curtail personal liberty and freedom of assembly and expression.
• The Network’s advocacy has also been delivered through coalitions and partnership. For instance, we supported the CSO fraternity under the leadership of the Platform for Labour Action to advocate for a minimum wage for workers in Uganda. As part of the advocacy activities, LASPNET actively participated in the development of a CSOs’ agenda geared towards amplifying the debate on the minimum wage and rallying the public voice through social media and other platforms. LASPNET was also part of the Civil Society Coalition that filed an Amicus curie in the Presidential Petition No.1 of 2016 in the Supreme Court of Uganda.^[7]
• LASPNET is represented on various committees such as; the JLOS working groups, Access to Justice Working Group of Ministry of Lands, Paralegal Advisory Services, Law Development Center, all forums used to channel issues for improvement of practice of legal aid and access to justice for the benefit of the poor and vulnerable.
• In strengthening the capacity of its members, LASPNET has conducted skills and programmes based trainings on a quarterly basis in order to further enhance their human resource in providing quality, professional, timely legal aid services and ultimately complementing government in enhancing access to justice for all through the provision of legal aid services. Some of the trainings conducted are; Trial Advocacy, Monitoring and Evaluation, Board Governance, Financial Management, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Labour Dispute Resolution.
• LASPNET through conducting Peer Learning and Networking visits to its members has addressed the lack of accurate information in legal aid service provision by geographical distribution as well as various legal aid practices and standards. LASPs now have online access to Ugandan laws to be used for reference.
• The Network also developed an Integrated Information Management System (IIMS) to improve the capacity of legal aid service providers in monitoring their services by effectively capturing, storing, and utilizing information, which would ultimately increase reliability of collected information and subsequently guide decision making.
• LASPNET was part of the Legal Response Team^[8] that was constituted to provide legal representation and counsel to members of the Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU) during the industrial action through which they were advocating for better remuneration for teachers in Uganda. Other members of the Legal Response Team were FIDA-U, HURINET and the Legal Brains Trust.
• LASPNET partnered with FIDA Uganda, Public Interest Law Clinic of Makerere University and the Lwengo District Local Government with support from the Democratic Governance Facility to extend legal aid services to the people of Lwengo. This pilot project is aimed at establishing a holistic, effective and sustainable legal aid delivery model to strengthen access to justice. Key activities include; setting up a legal aid clinic, organizing mobile court sessions, providing legal aid information through use of “virtual lawyers”, initiating crowd funding for legal aid services, establishing a virtual lawyer mechanism to support select schools and police stations as well as economic empowerment through skilling and empowering clients through entrepreneurship initiatives to generate livelihood support.^[9]
• LASPNET was awarded and recognized for its contribution to the sector under the “Partnership and Networking category”, by the Justice, Law and Order Sector during their annual sector performance review held at the Speke Resort in Munyonyo on 27th October 2016.^[10]

References

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• Sacre-Cour, Paris
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