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Namati Skoll Awardee Profile Namati Skoll Awardee Profile Organization Overview Key Info Social Entrepreneur Vivek Maru Year Awarded 2016 Issue Area Addressed Environmental Sustainability, Health, Peace and Human Rights Sub Issue Area Addressed Arresting Deforestation, Health Delivery, Human Rights, International Justice, Livelihoods, Living Conditions, Smallholder Productivity Countries Served USA, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Sierra Leone Website http://namati.org/ Twitter handle globalnamati Facebook http://facebook.com/globalnamati Youtube http://youtube.com/globalnamati About the Organization Nearly every nation in the world has declared its commitment to the basic human rights of its citizens. In reality, governments rarely deliver on that promise. Billions of people live in impoverished communities, outside the protection of the law. They can be driven from their land, extorted by officials, denied essential services, and intimidated by violence. Governments, rather than upholding and executing the law, often are stymied by inefficiency, chronic underfunding, and insufficient data. Namati places the power of the law in the hands of the people. Namati trains and deploys grassroots legal advocates who work with communities to advance fundamental rights such as citizenship recognition, land tenure, and access to quality health care. Drawing on data from thousands of cases, Namati advocates for improvements to policies and systems that affect millions of people. Namati convenes the Global Legal Empowerment Network, more than 2,100 groups from 150 countries learning from one another and working together to transform the relationship between people and law. Impact In 2017, 195 Namati-supported community paralegals initiated almost 6,000 new cases and served more than 13,000 clients across six countries. In Kenya and Bangladesh, a team of paralegals supported individuals from historically-excluded communities to secure more than 3,000 legal identity documents, thereby enabling them to seek formal employment and government services. Building on the successes of local paralegals, Namati helped Mozamibque draft its first- ever strategy for addressing bribery in health facilities. Approved in 2017, the policy was the first of its kind in the country.”¯Namati continues to monitor implementation of the policy, supporting and empowering communities and health committees to conduct bi- annual health facility assessments across the country. In 2017, a team of 17 paralegals supported affected communities in India to secure enforcement against 32 violations of environmental law that were harming the health and livelihoods of over 20,000 people. In 2018, following Namati’s and its partners’ advocacy, Liberia’s government adopted their recommendations for stronger community land rights protections when passing the National Land Rights Act. Path to Scale Organizational Growth and Partnerships Growth allows broader deployment of paralegals; partnerships enable local NGOs to field teams of paralegals beyond what Namati supports directly. Social Entrepreneur In 2003 Vivek Maru co-founded Timap for Justice in Sierra Leone, where he had moved as a recent Yale Law School graduate. The nation was just emerging from a decade-long civil war that grew from poor governance and misadministration. But expertise to enact and administer better laws and policies was sorely lacking. At that point, there were just 100 lawyers in all of Sierra Leone. Timap for Justice, which Vivek led until 2007, trained a frontline of paralegals in mediation, advocacy, education, and organizing. Vivek left for a four-year stint at the World Bank, and then founded Namati with seed funding from the Open Society Foundations and assistance from British and Australian aid agencies, to continue to build the movement for legal empowerment. Equilibrium Overview Current Equilibrium In the current equilibrium, an estimated 5 billion people worldwide lack basic access to justice. Without the protection of the law, these people face threats to their livelihood, their safety, and their dignity. Despite global consensus codified in the Sustainable Development Goals that the rule of law is fundamental to a promote peace and inclusive societies, global decision makers have largely failed to recognize its importance in ending extreme poverty. When citizens know their rights and can access justice, there is less discrimination and fewer human rights abuses. Conversely, gaps in access to justice due to opaque, unaccountable governance can lead to exclusion, suffering and poverty for many people. In these circumstances, citizens may be unfairly driven from their land, denied essential services, extorted by officials, excluded from society and intimidated by violence. Governments tasked with upholding and executing the law are impeded by inefficiencies and outright failures within their legal and administrative systems, often made worse by lack of funding and insufficient data. New Equilibrium In the new equilibrium, citizens have access to the independent legal support needed to prevent and secure remedies to pervasive justice problems. Legal advocates strengthen nations by enabling citizens to bridge the gap between their legal rights and their lived experience. When citizens know, use, and shape the law - a process known as legal empowerment - they can access justice. With the law on their side, people are able to thrive, seek peaceful solutions, protect the lands and resources they depend on, and hold their governments to account. With increased, evidence-based insight into where policies and processes fail to achieve justice, governments improve upon the substance and the administration of their laws. Accountability is strengthened, reinforcing citizen trust in governance institutions and empowering citizens with improved safety and livelihoods. Innovation Namati works with community-based paralegals to bring the law within reach of citizens around the world. Namati’s paralegals support individuals in their communities to solve problems together and, through that process, help individuals to understand, use, and shape the law. Namati’s work involves two pillars: (1) Though its country programs, Namati empowers paralegals help communities know and use the law effectively. Building on their case work, Namati advocates for government reform of the policies and practices. This Legal Empowerment Cycle continuously increases both access to and the effectiveness of law to protect and empower underserved communities. (2) Through its global network, Namati helps build capacity in other legal empowerment organizations and advocate for access to justice among international policy makers. Innovation within Namati’s country programs (Pillar I): 1. Paralegals work with communities to solve problems on the frontline. Across Namati’s portfolio, community paralegals work within communities to remedy injustices. Paralegals deployed by Namati and their partners have established methods for achieving justice in challenging environments across four issue areas: land justice, environmental justice, right to health, and right to citizenship. Namati paralegals are trained to both solve problems and teach citizens to exercise their legal rights more effectively. When community members work closely with paralegals in the pursuit of legal remedies, they go through a process of legal empowerment themselves. Working with a paralegal helps citizens learn their rights (know law) and exercises their rights (use law). Empowered citizens go on to support others in their communities with what they have learned - which expands access to justice through a ripple effect. 2. Case data makes the system better for everyone. Paralegals collect data on every case they handle. In the aggregate, this data illustrates how laws and government services are implemented on the ground and highlights inefficiencies in the legal system. Using this analysis, paralegals, community members, Namati, and their partners advocate for changes to the system, improving the law for everyone (shape law). Once reforms are adopted, paralegals begin the cycle again by helping communities to know and use the new laws or policies. This cycle is critical to reworking the legal system -- it allows impact scale such that every individual facing a particular problem doesn’t need ongoing legal support. Innovation within the global network convened by Namati (Pillar II): 3. Shared learning strengthens the legal empowerment community and field. Continuous learning is essential to building this community and field. Namati uses learning from thousands of cases to generate cutting-edge methodological insights. They publish what they learn across several mediums: from peer-reviewed articles about impact evidence to in-depth manuals for practitioners and short videos and illustrated guides for use by communities. This learning orientation ensures that organizations and practitioners get better at their work and have greater impact over time. 4. Namati’s Legal Empowerment Network transforms the policy environment for legal empowerment. Together with network members, Namati strives to transform the policy environment for legal empowerment. This community mobilized to ensure access to justice was captured in the Sustainable Development Goals as Goal 16. They have now launched a campaign to reduce the global injustice epidemic by increasing financing and protection for justice defenders, including community paralegals Ambition for Change Supported by a global movement of community paralegals, people are empowered to know, use, and shape the laws that affect their lives: citizens understand legal rights and how to challenge abuses. Governments improve laws and their administration, more effectively meeting their obligations to citizens. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org).
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