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A just society requires a just education system. However, the right to education is not guaranteed in practice. As Vivek Maru, Founder and CEO of Namati, explained, “Legal empowerment—the cycle of knowing, using, and shaping the law—can improve educational environments and access for marginalized communities. Severe injustices keep learners out of school, but community paralegals can help learners know and use the law to demand fulfillment of their rights to education.”

Abigail Moy, Director of the Grassroots Justice Network, coauthored Education and Justice: Learning to Build Just Societies. Download the report, explore the webpage, or watch the global launch webinar below to learn more about the report’s methodology and findings.

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Listen on YouTube below or on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or Spotify.

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Namati Sierra Leone, a legal advocacy group counseling all involved communities, said the agreement between the communities in the chiefdom of Sittia in Bonthe district and the Africa Conservation Initiative (ACI) is based on “carbon justice principles” aimed at making carbon projects fairer for communities.

The agreement targets the protection of roughly 79,000 hectares (about 195,213 acres) of mangroves in the Sherbro River Estuary, which hosts roughly half of the country’s mangrove forests. The estuary’s mangroves are threatened by growing demand for wood for cooking, smoking fish, farming and construction, according to James Harding, Sierra Leone director of West Africa Blue, ACI’s parent company.

The benefit-sharing agreement to protect these mangrove forests has been designed with reference to six carbon justice principles, said Daniel Sesay from Namati Sierra Leone. These principles were established by a global network of grassroots organizations based on their experience with past carbon projects.

The principles include “Fair participation,” where communities lead the stewardship of the natural resource; “No pay to pollute,” preventing polluters failing to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions from buying carbon credits; and “Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC)” of the communities — where “informed” also means disclosing all financial information throughout the project’s life cycle.

To reduce dependency on mangrove wood, ACI’s carbon project is offering communities alternatives, including efficient cookstoves and fish-smoking ovens, planting timber woodlots, and access to capital, Harding told Mongabay by email.

Independent audits will determine how much greenhouse gas reductions occur from these efforts and from mangrove restoration, after which ACI will be issued carbon credits that organizations can buy to offset their emissions, Harding added.

ACI has “agreed to follow specific criteria in selecting buyers,” which include not selling to buyers who don’t do enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Sesay said.

Transparency and accountability provisions in the agreement also “oblige the proponent to disclose sales and other related information,” he added.

Isa Mulder from Belgium-based think tank Carbon Market Watch, who wasn’t involved in the agreement, told Mongabay that the lack of price transparency is a huge barrier to communities being able to judge if they’re getting a fair share. Financial transparency, if it’s implemented, would be a “breakthrough,” she said.

“Fair compensation” is also a key climate justice principle, and Bonthe communities are set to receive 40-50% of gross revenue from the sale of carbon credits.

Some other carbon projects have a profit-sharing model, but these can get complicated, Sesay said. Developers might reinvest and expand a project over many years, making it unclear when profits actually begin, and communities typically lack access to the developer’s financial records to be able to determine actual profits.

“We have [had] some bad experience with profit share,” Sesay said. “We had to push away from profit share and stick to revenue share.”

ACI will retain between 42.5 and 52.5% of the gross revenue, while the government of Sierra Leone will receive 7.5-15.5%, Harding said.

“[The agreement] is a step in the right direction for the voluntary carbon market to address the many deep-rooted issues of fairness and even human rights violations,” Mulder said.

“These carbon justice principles were established by a diverse group of grassroots justice organisations and in my view, they embody what’s at the core of fair carbon markets,” she added.

“With Namati’s guidance, our communities gained confidence in partnering with ACI, ensuring youth participation,” Sandy Rogers, a youth leader in Sittia Chiefdom, said in a statement. “We anticipate employment and development for our communities.”

Sesay said it remains to be seen how the agreement is actually implemented. “We have to see how communities themselves will actually distribute their revenue; this a huge amount of money and the committees are not used to this amount of money,” he said.

“We also have to see how the proponents themselves play out the transparency and accountability, disclosing of buyers, and how communities will change their approach in using the mangroves to a more sustainable one.”

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– Vivek Maru, CEO, Namati

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A Case Study: The Village of Ngovokpahun

Namati’s Eastern Region office received a formal request for assistance from a small village called Ngovokpahun. The community reported that an Italian agricultural company, to which they had leased a significant portion of their land, had defaulted on its payments and become unreachable. According to the villagers, the company had failed to pay rent for more than two years.

Namati took up the case and successfully located the company’s president, Dr. Roberto Mariani. After clarifying the management difficulties that had affected the business, Dr. Mariani ordered a temporary suspension of operations so he could personally resolve the outstanding issues — both administrative and community-related. However, the Ebola epidemic, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, caused further delays.

Upon his return to Sierra Leone, and after a series of meetings with the community and Namati representatives, the discussion took on a new, more collaborative tone.

The Broader Context: A Needed Reform

For decades, land investments in Sierra Leone have been plagued by non transparent agreements, often concluded between investment companies and chiefdom councils without the effective participation of the landowning families. Excluded from the decision-making process, these families were routinely denied their right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and ended up with unfavorable lease terms. They received inadequate and inconsistent compensation while suffering the environmental consequences of corporate operations — polluted water, degraded soil, and unfulfilled promises.

Commitments made by companies to build local infrastructure — roads, schools, health facilities — often went unkept.

The Turning Point in Ngovokpahun

In Ngovokpahun, landowners complained not only about inadequate payments but also suspected that Italian Agriculture had failed to measure the leased area correctly.

“We decided to push for a renegotiation of the agreement,” recalls Baindu Koroma, a Namati program officer.

The process began with a participatory land mapping exercise involving Namati, the company, the landowning families, and officials from the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Country Planning. Once consensus was reached on the total acreage involved, negotiations resumed with renewed energy.

The COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted progress, but two years later, talks resumed in a new legal environment — one defined by the recent enactment of the Customary Land Rights Act (CLRA) and the National Land Commission Act.

A New Partnership

Following a formal termination of the contract between the landowners and Italian Agriculture, Dr. Mariani proposed a more transparent and compliant solution. All subsequent negotiations were transferred to One More Seed Ltd., a company duly registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and operating in full compliance with national laws.

The new lease agreement was negotiated in accordance with the Customary Land Rights Act, designed to eliminate discrimination under customary law and ensure equitable terms for communities.

“Under the new provisions, landowners are now entitled to receive 90% of the lease payments — up from just 50% previously,” explains Baindu. “The law also requires that landowning families negotiate directly with investors, rather than through chiefdom councils.”

With these protections in place, Ngovokpahun’s landowners successfully increased their annual lease rate from US$5 to US$15 per acre — a significant step toward economic justice and community empowerment.

A Model for the Future

The signing of the new lease agreement between One More Seed Ltd. and the landowning families of Ngovokpahun stands as a landmark achievement — tangible proof that Sierra Leone’s new land laws can deliver on their promise of fairness and transparency.

It also demonstrates that responsible investors exist — companies willing to believe in the country’s future while upholding community rights and respecting the law.

A hopeful future — one that, as on that historic day, still echoes in the rhythm of drums and the dance of celebration.

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On March 22, 2023, community-based paralegals and representatives from civil society and development organizations gathered at the University of Nairobi Faculty of Law to hear directly from community paralegals, His Excellency the Canadian High Commissioner Mr. Christopher Thornley, the Honorable Chief Justice of Kenya Martha Koome (through a representative), the UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers Prof. Margaret Sattherthwaite, Namati, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre about the importance of strengthening grassroots justice in Kenya and abroad.

Kituo cha Sheria and the Paralegal Society of Kenya (PSK) played a key role in putting on the event. PSK National Coordinator Mary Airo opened by urging development partners to continue funding paralegals, emphasizing the transformative impact of their work on society: “It is when paralegals engage local state institutions in concrete ways that justice is made accessible.” Elssy Saina, Chairperson of PSK and Executive Director of the International Commission of Jurists-Kenya then shared research showing that there are social, political, and economic benefits for Kenya of implementing and financing a robust legal aid regime that centers community-based approaches.

The Honorable Chief Justice of Kenya, Martha Koome, in remarks delivered by Principal Magistrate Moses Wanjala, emphasized the Court’s commitment to people-centered justice, noting that “Paralegals can help ensure that the justice system is not only accessible, but also responsive to the needs and realities of the people it is intended to serve.” The Chief Justice announced two exciting initiatives to support collaboration between the Kenyan Judiciary and community paralegals. First, the Judiciary plans to provide training and capacity building through the National Steering Committee on Alternative Justice Systems to ensure community paralegals are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to provide effective legal services. And second, the Judiciary will help facilitate the involvement of community paralegals in the Small Claims Court to represent litigants.

The Canadian government is similarly prioritizing grassroots justice as a way to close the access to justice gap, by providing funding and programmatic support to community-level justice efforts around the world. In the words of Christopher Thornley, the High Commissioner of Canada to Kenya: “Prioritizing support for justice at the community level has been shown to be more effective in empowering women and marginalized groups of persons to know and claim their rights – which in turns offers potential for activating fundamental rights in our societies and building a deeper and richer conception of citizenship and democracy.”

Professor Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, pledged to use her UN mandate to shine a light on the essential work of grassroots advocates. She shared poignant reflections from her work with survivors of military abuses in Haiti, emphasizing that it is community justice advocates who have taught her the most about discrimination and injustice. She urged the audience to listen to and learn from communities, who best understand the problems they are facing and the solutions they need. Professor Satterthwaite put forth her vision for an expanded legal ecosystem in which paralegals and lawyers work together as allies and partners to dismantle systems of exclusion and close the global access to justice gap.

Two powerful panels gave life to the importance of this vision and to the crucial work being done by grassroots advocates in Kenya and around the world. In the first, Kenyan community paralegals Anthony Njenga (Kibera Community Justice Centre), Juliet Kisilu (Eastleigh Community Justice Centre), and community organizer David Mwangi (Akiba Mashinani Trust) shared their success stories and challenges from supporting single mothers to formalize their shops and earn a living, providing legal aid to individuals at Nairobi City Court, and organizing the Mukuru community to advocate for access to basic services. The three were in agreement that community justice workers must be formally recognized, resourced, and included in decision-making!

A second panel showcased the learning agenda for legal empowerment, a collective learning effort in which 11 projects across 16 countries are using participatory action research to identify what works to uphold human rights in the face of structural inequality and exclusion and rapidly eroding public accountability. Representatives from three of the projects were highlighted in the conversation: Sheila Formento from Alternative Law Groups in the Philippines, Jane Weru from Kenya’s Akiba Mashinani Trust, and Antonia Berríos & Macarena Martinic from Chile’s Fiscalía del Medio Ambiente. They shared how they are using systematic research and learning to build community power, increase the participation of women and marginalized groups in decision-making, and advance changes to laws and institutions.

In Kenya and around the globe, the transformative potential of community-level justice work is clear. Recognizing and funding the work of grassroots justice defenders is crucial to ensure that marginalized communities know their rights and can navigate the path to justice.

Watch the event here:

SPEAKERS

Presented in partnership with:

The post Strengthening the Global Movement for Grassroots Justice: A Public Event appeared first on Namati.

On March 22, community-based paralegals and representatives from civil society and development organizations are gathering at the University of Nairobi School of Law to hear directly from community paralegals, His Excellency the Canadian High Commissioner, the UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Namati, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre about the importance of strengthening grassroots justice in Kenya and abroad.

The event covers:

• The role of community paralegals in closing the global access to justice gap and meeting the targets for peaceful, just, and inclusive societies under the Sustainable Development Goals.
• An engaged conversation with community paralegals about the frontiers and challenges for legal empowerment.
• An evidence-based case for greater financial investments in legal empowerment approaches.
• The learning agenda for legal empowerment, convened by Namati and the Legal Empowerment Network, is a collective effort to identify what works to uphold human rights in the face of structural inequality and exclusion and rapidly eroding public accountability. Participants from the learning agenda will show how they are using systematic research and learning to build community power, increase the participation of women and marginalized groups in decision-making, and advance changes to laws and institutions. The evidence and learning they are generating is helping to deepen democratic and inclusive governance across a range of political contexts, addressing root causes of inequality and exclusion, and promoting vibrant civic spaces.

Watch the event Live on March 22 at 4 – 6:30pm EAT at www.facebook.com/KituoSheria/live_videos

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Across the world, justice defenders are facing common challenges such as structural inequality and exclusion, shrinking civic spaces, and rapidly eroding public accountability. The learning agenda for legal empowerment, convened by Namati and the Legal Empowerment Network, and supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, is a collective effort to identify what approaches work to uphold human rights in the face of these challenges, and to grow the global movement for justice. Eleven action research projects across 16 countries are undertaking projects on a variety of issue areas, from refugee rights to police abuse, urban poverty, land rights, and more. These projects will test new approaches and generate powerful insights on how legal empowerment strategies can build community power, increase participation of marginalized groups in decision-making, and generate systemic change.

From March 20 to 24, 2023 learning agenda participants from across the world will be gathering in Nairobi. Over five days, the group will share insights about the different strategies that they are using to build community power and drive systems change. They will share the practical strategies that they are using, workshop live challenges and identify common themes for collective reflection and exchange. They will explore various themes that cut across the different issue areas and contexts they work in. For example, the ways in which they engage the State, the strategies they use to increase participation of marginalized groups in decision-making, and how they combine law and organizing to build community power. To ground these discussions in a practical way, participants will visit the work of local legal empowerment organizations in Kenya. Most importantly, this in-person time will help create closer relationships among participants and will generate solidarity and excitement to power their ongoing work together!

The shared foundations we lay at the global convening will guide deeper reflection and exchange on common themes for the rest of the year and beyond. We look forward to sharing the emerging insights that emerge from this collective learning effort.

Stay tuned for reflections and photos from the global convening!

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