Abstract
Recently, the rise of bottom-up approaches has become significant in realising social justice for vulnerable sections of society. One such attempt is the provision of charge-free legal aid services in many poor countries, including Ethiopia. This article aims to reveal the relevance of micro-justice as an effective remedy for poor people. The data generated from primary sources were analysed in line with rights-based and capability approaches. The findings of this study attested that such bottom-up approaches in access to justice, did not only help the beneficiaries in exercising their rights but also empowered them to lead their lives and determine their destiny.
Introduction
Over the last three decades, the subject matter of justice has become a fundamental issue for discussion in the agenda of development among academicians, policymakers and development practitioners. In an attempt to reveal the centrality of justice phenomenon in socio-economic development, scholars contend that access to justice has the potential to realise the promise of the rule of law for nearly four billion poor and vulnerable people of the world who are leading their lives without recourse for the injustices which they face daily (Rooij, 2007;OSJI, 2013). Though historical evidences that provide causal relations between access to justice and poverty reduction are seldom, empirical sources reveal that there is positive correlation between the two. As Stephen Golub (2003) argues, access to justice is favourably linked to the conventional indicators of development such as income and literacy. This has been confirmed by recent studies, which claim that the enforcement and enjoyment of human rights, including access to courts and resources, helps the empowerment of the poor and marginalised communities (Balogun, 2020).
Indeed, access to justice matters in poverty reduction, because being poor and marginalised means being deprived of choices, opportunities, access to basic resources and lacking a voice in decision-making affecting their lives (UNDP, 2004). Cognizant of this fact, judicial reforms, mostly bottom-up in terms of approach, have been undertaken in many developing countries with the support of donor agencies, laying the foundation for the rise of a variety of bottom-up interventions captured by concepts such as ‘legal aid’, ‘legal empowerment’ and ‘micro-justice’ (Rooij, 2007). These recent bottom-up legal interventions not only proved the presence of an alternative way to the hitherto dominant legal development paradigm to realise access to justice that benefits the poor. Countries such as Bangladesh, Ecuador, South Africa and many others are reported to have benefited from such poverty reduction schemes by compelling the state to provide poor and marginalised people with access to housing, water, health and social services (Rooij, 2007;McQuoid-Mason, 2013). A comparative study between Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia has revealed that access to justice can be enhanced by engaging civil societies in the provision of paralegal services to the poor (Bowd, 2009).
In Ethiopia, too, many experts have indicated that non-discriminatory access to justice is an essential pillar for development and combating poverty (JLSRI, 2013), in one of the poorest countries in the world (World Bank, 2022). However, lack of justice continues to be a fundamental problem in the country because the lack of infrastructure creates situations in which local justice is still inaccessible for Ethiopia’s largely rural society, in physical terms, as well as economic terms, even though courts have been established throughout the country at all tiers of administration (MoCB, 2005). This is especially true for vulnerable members of the society, such as children, women, people living with HIV/AIDS and persons with disabilities who face formidable challenges to ‘seek remedies for the infringement of their rights owing to lack of money, ignorance of the law and lack of awareness of litigation procedures’ (Abate et al, 2017: 2).
To this effect, a comprehensive justice sector reform has been initiated and undertaken following the recognition of the significant role of legal actors in pursuit of economic growth and poverty alleviation in the country (MoCB, 2005;JLSRI, 2013). The reform has provided, inter alia, the basis for the revision of former systems of legal aid in such a way that legal clinics at all faculties could be strengthened and/or established to sustain provision of legal aid services throughout the country (JLSRI, 2013). It is against this background that legal aid service centres mushroomed in higher education institutions with the mission of providing charge-free legal services to those in their vicinities who were indigent, women or otherwise from a vulnerable group. This article, thus, attempts to analyse the relevance of micro level interventions in the realisation of social justice as a basis for poverty alleviation by assessing the engagements of Jimma University Legal Aid Center over the last decade. To this end, it is organised in such a way to have six sections. The next section, problem statement, provides the scientific gap in the literature that justified the necessity for this study in the Ethiopian context. A brief review of theoretical literature then follows, to offer the theoretical lens towards the nexus between access to justice and poverty reduction. The fourth section provides the method and material used in this study. The fifth section presents a thorough discussion of the results, while the last section summarises the major points of concern and highlights implications for future researches on the subject matter.
Problem statement
It seems that in order to fully ascertain the data presented, more study, by true independent scholars, is necessary. In such study other methodological issues should also be addressed, such as finding ways to measure the impact of the bottom-up approach without measuring the impact of large donors such as the World Bank or UNDP on local and national circumstances.
Building on this argument, this study was triggered by hitherto rare empirical investigation based on micro data due to the conventional focus on the use and analyses of macro data. The Ethiopian case, compared to other African countries, also offers a unique scenario because of the absence of civil society organisations that are engaged in advocacy or other empowerment projects as a matter of rule of the political game. In many African countries, the civic organisations such as NGOs and professional associations are committed to alleviating barriers facing poor people to access justice, often state-funded, as is the case in South Africa (Balogun, 2020); whereas, over the last decade in Ethiopia, they are systematically banned by law charities and societies where involvement in any form of advocacy is considered as political agitation that could challenge the status quo of the power relations. Therefore, instead, it is the higher education institutions, that have been predominantly working towards access to justice at the micro level, that contributes significantly to poverty alleviation by enhancing empowerment of the target population.
Nonetheless, studies that explicitly address injustice and poverty in this uniquely evolving Ethiopian context, are rare. Two studies on the legal aid clinics in Ethiopia are, however, worth mentioning here despite their substantial emphasis on the legal dimension. Abate et al (2017) assessed the status, operation and effectiveness of Ethiopian legal clinics, but essentially focused on the major impediments that legal clinics face in advancing their potential contribution in realising the constitutionally guaranteed right of access to justice. Gurmessa (2018) had, likewise, studied the role of the legal aid centres of Ethiopian universities from a legal viewpoint and regarded them as alternative mechanisms of access to justice for the great bulk of the population, which is still outside the formal legal system. However, research that explicitly focuses on the nexus between these grassroot mechanisms for access to justice, particularly legal aid, and poverty alleviation in Ethiopia are, generally, lacking. It is, thus, against this rationale that this article aims to explore the contribution of micro level legal aid services in alleviating abject poverty in Ethiopia through empirical investigation by taking Jimma University Legal Aid Center (JULAC) as a case study.
Theoretical framework: ‘justice’–‘poverty reduction’ nexus revisited
The notion of ‘justice’ has always occupied a central place in the whole range of moral, legal and political discourses for several centuries. Consequently, attempts to precisely define the concept have posed an inexplicable problem to scholars of various subjects due to its multidimensional nature that makes it a dynamic subject. However, the fundamental element in the concept of justice is ‘fairness’ (Tungodden, 1996;Rawls, 1999). Rawls believed that the notion of ‘fairness’ dwells on two basic principles of distribution. The first principle involves the claim to basic equal liberties which distributes primary goods (those basic means that every rational person is presumed to have in order to promote their own ends). The second principle has two components: (i) the equal opportunity for welfare, and (ii) the ‘difference principle’ which stipulates that any deviation from equality should be diverted to the benefit of the least advantaged (Rawls, 1999).
Yet, for the purpose of this research, it is pertinent to highlight the two notions of justice, that is, the ‘legal’ and ‘social’ notions of justice. The ‘legal justice’ implies the punishment of wrongdoing and compensation of injury through the creation and enforcement of public law. The ‘social justice’, on the other hand, is a state of affairs, actual or ideal, in which benefits and burdens in a society are dispersed in accordance with some allocation principles (Jost and Kay, 2010;Taherzadeh, 2012). It also refers to a condition whereby certain procedures, norms and rules govern political and other forms of decision-making to preserve the basic rights, liberties and entitlements of individuals and groups with dignity. Scholars agree that social justice has three components: distributive, procedural and interactional matters that shape what pattern should be used to determine who gets what (Jost and Kay, 2010). In this study, the concept of ‘justice’ is used essentially to refer to ‘social justice’. Social justice, as opposed to legal justice, implies state of affairs, actual or ideal, in which benefits and burdens in a society are dispersed in accordance with some allocation principles. According to Igwe (2021: 188), while premises where justice is delivered, availability of human and material resources are essentially relevant elements of access to justice, the latter ‘means more than the opportunity to access court’ as it includes ‘career opportunity, political, educational and economic enhancement’. Hence, ‘access to justice’, here, is used to refer to the ‘ability of people to seek and obtain a remedy through formal or informal institutions of justice, and in conformity with human rights standards’ (UNDP, 2005: 5). ‘Vulnerable groups’ refer to the ‘group of people consisting of the poor, women, minorities, and other groups suffering from abuse, discrimination, persecution, or repression’ (Golub, 2013: 5). And, ‘poverty reduction’ is meant here to refer to such deliberate actions as income and physical asset transfers and provision of education, employment and other opportunities that are aimed at reducing the depth of poverty that individuals and households experience (McCaston and Rewald, 2005).
A glance at the literature of legal and development sciences concerning the relationship between ‘access to justice’ and ‘poverty reduction’ reveals three theoretical approaches which are worth mentioning. These are: the orthodox (rule of law) approach, rights-based approach and the capability approach.
The rule of law approach
The rule of law or orthodox approach is the dominant paradigm which is characterised by a ‘top-down’, state-centred approach through which development agency personnel design and implement law-oriented projects in cooperation with government officials (Golub, 2003: 5). As Chapman and Payne (2013: 17) explicitly put it: ‘promoting the rule of law has conventionally been upheld as a cure for a host of development problems, from societal fragility to poverty’. It rests on the assumption that economic development depends on the rule of law, and the belief that state building and consolidation depend on it (Chapman and Payne, 2013). This approach has essentially been supported by multilateral development banks that aim at building investment-friendly legal systems that presumably help spur economic growth and poverty alleviation (Golub, 2003;Chapman and Payne, 2013). Yet, the orthodox approach has been criticised for regarding the legal mechanics as magic bullet solutions for poverty and underdevelopment (Golub, 2003;Rooij, 2007).
The rights-based approach
A rights-based approach, also known as the normative framework, focuses instead on people achieving the minimum conditions for living with dignity. The normative framework, guided by international human rights principles, defines access to justice in view of the ‘rules of the game’ via limiting power of the organs of the state vis-à-vis the rights and duties of citizens (UNDP, 2004). The enactment of statutes protecting judicial independence and establishment of judicial oversight bodies are additional tools provided by the law to ensure proper application of the law and professionalism within the judiciary and other informal systems of justice (UNDP, 2005). A rights-based approach recognises poor, displaced and war-affected people as having inherent rights essential to livelihood security – rights that are validated by international law (McCaston and Rewald, 2005). The UNDP, being the foremost proponent of this approach, has used it as a ‘lens’ to promote several programmes that are meant to realise more responsive and effective in realizing justice for all, especially the poor and marginalised (UNDP, 2004). In this regard, UNDP points out that ‘availability’, ‘affordability’ and ‘adequacy’ are the three major challenges faced by vulnerable groups and, hence, the contribution of legal aid services is immense as costs associated with legal services tend to discourage people from seeking remedies where violations of rights of these groups happen (UNDP, 2004: 12).
The capability approach
Freedom to choose gives us the opportunity to decide what we should do, but with that opportunity comes the responsibility for what we do – to the extent that they are chosen actions. Since a capability is the power to do something, the accountability that emanates from that ability – that power – is a part of the capability perspective, and this can make room for demands of duty. […] The actual capabilities that people can have, takes us, inescapably, to a large variety of further issues that turn out to be quite central to the analysis of justice in the world. (Sen, 2009: 19)
From this viewpoint, any justice system that seeks to secure necessary capabilities for targeted segments of a society should be based on the analyses of power relations in that society and the manner in which those relations shape choices, opportunities and wellbeing by tackling disempowerment that disadvantages the poor which affects their control over their own lives (Luttrell and Quiroz, 2009;JLSRI, 2013).
Categories of power relations in society
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Categories of power relations in society
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Categories of power relations in society
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Today, a consensus prevails as to how empowerment, by having access to justice, could help the disadvantaged and excluded social groups to define and exert control over their lives which they could not do otherwise (Luttrell and Quiroz, 2009;Golub, 2013). The general agreement upholds that access to justice, to be meaningful, has to go beyond focusing on access of lawyers and courts to potential claimants, and extend to the efficacy of informal and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms (UNGA, 2009). Any development policy that aims to alleviate poverty has its own definition and the way one defines poverty affects how programmes are targeted and ultimately who benefits. Nevertheless, it is argued that poverty reduction at national and international levels is increasingly understood as involving complex interactions among a wide range of legal, political, social and economic events. Thus, access to justice requires that ‘laws and remedies must be just, equitable, and sensitive to the needs of the poor and marginalized’ (Balogun, 2020: 241).
This point inevitably leads us to a careful analysis of the situation in Africa whereby the economy enjoys consistent growth, while many countries still exhibit high levels of inequality and the majority of their population continue to suffer from poverty, which is often exacerbated by inaccessible justice systems (Coninck et al, 2013). Consequently, the demand for justice and for the just allocation of resources, rights and opportunities remains pervasive. In this regard, it could be argued, in the Ethiopian case as well, that although legal aid centres are primarily concerned with working towards access to justice and the rule of law in its purely legal sense, it is evident that the impact of their intervention on the life of many poor people, by way of providing them with new powers to utilise legal and administrative remedies in realising their constitutional rights, goes far beyond making the law work for everyone. The micro interventions that range from technical legal counselling and representation to the involvement in paralegal activities, have enabled many poor and vulnerable people to initiate and pursue justice. These engagements typically represent the so-called ‘developmental legal aid’. It is within this framework that this article attempts to reveal the relevance of legal aid services in poverty alleviation in Ethiopia by assessing the engagements of Jimma University Legal Aid Center as a case study. Figure 2 depicts the conceptual framework of the study.
Conceptual framework of the study
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Conceptual framework of the study
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Conceptual framework of the study
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Study methodology
This research is designed to be a qualitative case study. It is an inductive research relying on detailed micro-data to analyse and draw the cumulative impact of legal aid services in improving the livelihood of poor and vulnerable sections of the society. Both primary and secondary sources have been used to maintain logical consistency by employing qualitative techniques of data analysis and interpretation.
The primary data was collected through interviews with eight informants who had been involved in leading and directing the JULAC; through focus group discussions (FGDs) comprising six lawyers who were working in selected branch offices, seven interns, and twelve beneficiaries were conducted in three separate sessions. The secondary data, on the other hand, was obtained by reviewing the official documents of the centres (such as performance reports) and related literature pertinent to both legal and development intervention. Once the accuracy of data was assured, it was analysed to determine the contribution of micro level interventions (independent variable), access to justice and the resultant empowerment as dependent variables (see Figure 2 above). The results of data were interpreted using a combination of rights and capability approach to substantiate the qualitative analyses of the subject.
Results and discussions
Establishment of Jimma University Legal Aid Centre
The legal aid service began in Jimma Zone in 2008, when Jimma University Legal Aid Center (JULAC) was established by the School of Law in line with the philosophy of Jimma University, the national pioneer for its innovative community oriented education (JULAC, 2012a). The centre was primarily formed with the mission of providing free legal services to indigent people and vulnerable groups to enhance access to justice in and around Jimma city. Initially, service delivery was started by opening two centres at Jimma Zone High Court and Jimma Woreda Court, both in Jimma city. However, the number of centres increased to six in the year 2011/2 by opening new centres in Jimma Zone prison and the towns of Agaro, Dedo and Serbo (JULAC, 2012b). Consecutively, four more branch offices were established in Gera, Limu, Omo Nada and Shabe, JULAC has not only made 11 (see Figure 3) branch offices but also elevated the outreach and quality of the Centre’s legal services by increasing the number of beneficiaries extensively (Alemu, 2016;Kabie, 2016).
JULAC service coverage in Jimma Zone
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
JULAC service coverage in Jimma Zone
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
JULAC service coverage in Jimma Zone
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Currently, JULAC is providing its services in all branches by employing lawyers and interns of the law school in order to give them a practical experience of the legal profession. Administratively, JULAC is organised in such a way that it has a central managing director who is assisted by two vice directors. The vice director for service provision and quality control is responsible for taking care of the operation of all branch offices in different woredas as well as for recruiting and coordinating volunteers. The other assistant, that is, the vice-director for research and capacity building, is the one who manages research and advertisement activities of the centre.
Provision of legal services and achievements
Although the nature of cases differs, the priority legal service is counselling. When cases demand more legal services than counselling, then JULAC facilitates the ADR mechanism before resorting to court litigation because ADR is argued to be a cost-effective and speedy way of resolving disputes.
JULAC procedure of legal aid service provision
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
JULAC procedure of legal aid service provision
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
JULAC procedure of legal aid service provision
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Accordingly, the centre has settled family disputes, maintained a smooth relationship among relatives, and secured severance payment and employment retention for low paid jobs in cases of unlawful dismissal after settlement of disputes over succession only by the facilitation of arbitration, negotiation, mediation and conciliation without going to court (Shagerdi, 2015;Alemu, 2016;Kabie, 2016). JULAC has targeted the most vulnerable to be eligible for free legal aid services from the centre (JULAC, 2012a). These include women, children, people with disability, veterans, prison inmates and those who are HIV/AIDS positive. Conditional eligibility also applies in some case to ‘paupers’, who cannot afford to pay for legal services and could not get legal assistance otherwise (JULAC, 2012b). Table 1 is detailed presentation of legal aid services provided by JULAC in 11 centres between 2011/2 and 2015/6.
JULAC services rendered across centres (2011/2–2015/6)
| Service rendered | Main office | High Court | Zone prison | Jimma woreda | Agaro | Serbo | Dedo | Gera | Limu | Nada | Shebe | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ADR | 62 | 30 | 2 | 28 | 25 | 38 | 42 | 8 | 2 | 9 | 10 | 256 |
| Counselling | 364 | 1008 | 1622 | 2153 | 543 | 621 | 618 | 26 | 21 | 38 | 31 | 7045 |
| Document | 235 | 674 | 1,910 | 1,371 | 431 | 451 | 416 | 65 | 10 | 65 | 89 | 5717 |
| Representation | 82 | 113 | 114 | 127 | 82 | 121 | 98 | 5 | 2 | 12 | 8 | 764 |
| Sum | 743 | 1825 | 3648 | 3679 | 1081 | 1231 | 1174 | 104 | 35 | 124 | 138 | 13782 |
From Table 1, it can be inferred that JULAC has provided the highest record of services at Jimma Woreda Court, which together with Zone Prison centre shared more than half; while the branches at Limu, Gera, Nada and Shebe exhibited least frequency of services. It is also observable that legal counselling is the dominant mode of service provision as it shared 51% of the total services. This bears out the strategy of JULAC which favours the use of counselling as a priority legal aid. The second most frequent service of JULAC is document preparation, which includes writing of pleadings, memoranda, application for execution of court decisions and so on. The fact that most of beneficiaries are illiterate has made the legal service in this regard voluminous.
Mr Tesfaye was a young daily worker, had a four-year-old boy and unemployed wife. One day, he went to the local clinic for a simple stomach-ache. A medication was ordered by the physician on duty. Then, the nurse on duty unfortunately missed the right place and injected Tesfaye right on his nerves while trying to inoculate the medicine ordered by the doctor. The result of the medical treatment error was, however, that Tesfaye eventually lost control over all his right-side nerves thereby no longer capable to conduct his wage-based daily work. The bread-winner of the family was caught in the inability to earn a living and support his family that was already suffering from poverty. The victim who was seeking for remedies through the regular channels found all available schemes not only complex and time-consuming but also unaffordable. (Interview with Alemu, 12 June 2015)
Hence, Tesfaye visited the legal aid centre that brought a civil action against the clinic by covering all the necessary legal fees and representing him in the court. As per the Ethiopian law, civil matters that cover a wide range of disputes that are social and economic in nature, as opposed to criminal matters, can be resolved through agreement by parties to dispute. Following this legal basis, the clinic offered to negotiate with the victim who was represented by JULAC. Finally, the negotiation, in which the legal aid centre participated representing the beneficiary, brought justice to Mr Tesfaye who received 20,000 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) in cash at the time of signature, secured a monthly payment of 1,000 ETB for the next 27 years and free medical service for him and his child.
Hence, the centre has been effective in reducing the lengthy process of litigation and in maintaining a smooth relationship among disputants. It has to be mentioned here that JULAC has 100 percent record of winning cases that it represented in courtrooms ever since its establishment, which shows the preeminence of the claimants’ just cause of entitlement, despite lacking the capacity and avenue to seek remedy (Kabie, 2016). An analysis of the trend of legal aid intervention (see Figure 5) also indicates JULAC’s representation of beneficiaries in courtrooms has shown a substantial increase.
Legal aid services provided by all branches of JULAC (2011/2–2015/6)
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Legal aid services provided by all branches of JULAC (2011/2–2015/6)
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
Legal aid services provided by all branches of JULAC (2011/2–2015/6)
Citation: Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 31, 2; 10.1332/175982721X16632370829128
In addition to the upsurge in JULAC outreach, the performance of the centre is a meaningful reason to attract many women, elderly people and others to seek its services. The difference in the number of beneficiaries of services between the formative years and of 2015/6 can be seen in Figure 5. According to the official reports and interview, the overwhelming majority of the beneficiaries were women. In the year 2015/6, of the total 8,485 beneficiaries, 81.3% were female (JULAC, 2016).
It is equally important here to look at the type of cases that JULAC has been handling. The data of distribution of the annual JULAC services by the type of cases in 2015/6 is shown in Table 2.
Distribution of legal aid services of JULAC by the type of cases
| Type of case | Main office | High Court | Zone prison | Jimma woreda | Agaro | Dedo | Gera | Limu | Nada | Serbo | Shebe | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contractual | 10 | 24 | 0 | 124 | 13 | 39 | 8 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 7 | 233 |
| Criminal | 2 | 8 | 1646 | 16 | 21 | 14 | 12 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1728 |
| Employment | 3 | 19 | 0 | 133 | 22 | 54 | 15 | 0 | 4 | 20 | 6 | 276 |
| Family | 288 | 1040 | 0 | 2020 | 212 | 248 | 46 | 25 | 67 | 459 | 76 | 4481 |
| Land | 4 | 21 | 12 | 218 | 82 | 42 | 35 | 5 | 16 | 42 | 18 | 495 |
| Property | 47 | 121 | 0 | 431 | 98 | 168 | 23 | 4 | 23 | 42 | 23 | 980 |
| Tort | 30 | 19 | 10 | 118 | 36 | 31 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 32 | 5 | 292 |
| Sum | 384 | 1252 | 1668 | 3060 | 484 | 596 | 144 | 35 | 124 | 600 | 138 | 8485 |
Source: Computed from JULAC Report, 2016.
From Table 2, it can be seen that criminal matters treated by JULAC is numerically significant as it shares nearly one-fifth of the total services provided in all branch centres in 2015/6. It has to be noted, however, that more than 95% of the criminal cases were handled at Jimma Zone Prison Administration and most of the services rendered are document preparation for sentenced prisoners.
The point of interest in this research is, however, that family issues are the most frequent cases sharing half of the total, constituting three-fourth of total cases received by JULAC if combined with land, employment and property related matters. These cases practically matter for vulnerable groups as they directly affect the latter by determining the making and sustenance of their livelihood.
As far as the family matters are concerned, marriage/divorce and paternity issues are the most common types of cases in which JULAC has been involved. Given the nature of the power relations in the society itself, it is known that the vast majority of Ethiopian women face a brutal form of gender inequality that has psychological, social and economic consequences for the women involved but also for the families under concern. Cognizant of this reality, the legal aid centre has been engaged in resolving family issues through consultation and ADR as well as by representing the victims in the courtroom when matters are more serious. In situations where the marriage is unlikely to endure, the centre helped procure legal and proper dissolution for women who have been suffering sustained domestic violence at their home due to patriarchal values. As in the case with Merry Pippion, aged 35, a mother of two, who endured physical violence and psychological pressure by her husband. She was finally represented by JULAC in her divorce proceedings that were settled in her favour. Not only did this end the abuse she had been experiencing but she also got compensation for herself and custody of the children (JULAC, 2015a).
The case of Betahanya Sevanssa, a six-month-old baby, is also worth mentioning here. The baby was born to parents in an irregular relationship between a poor woman and a university lecturer who shared the same residence compound in Jimma city. As the father denied the paternity, the mother, with the help of others, brought matter to JULAC, which then took the case to court. The court, after hearing the witnesses, ordered a DNA test to be undertaken. The DNA test, that required 2400 ETB (in 2016), was unaffordable for the mother, but funded by JULAC through donations, finally revealed that the alleged father was indeed the biological father of the baby. The decision of the court conclusively proved the paternity of the alleged father and ordered the man to pay the maintenance allowance of 1000 ETB to the mother until the baby girl reached the age of 18 years (Alemu, 2016).
From the FGD with beneficiaries, it was found out that, due to the patrimonial nature of the society, family matters ranging from improper settlement of divorce to disowning a child, has made life feel hopeless for many women by trapping them in poverty. The discussants also reiterated that it is not beyond comprehension to grasp what it means for a poor woman, leading a destitute life, to win a deserved regular maintenance allowance to raise her child in cases of post-divorce denial of paternity and in some cases because of irregular unions. It has to be mentioned here that in the year 2014/5 alone, JULAC has covered 24,000 ETB for DNA testing that has resulted in 20 paternity acceptances by the alleged fathers (JULAC, 2015b).
Similarly, employment related matters served by JULAC should be seen through the same lens. A job is the most important means of livelihood that determines the survival of many poor people. In fact, economic hardships have created a new group of individuals that face harsher economic circumstances which have reinforced the vulnerability of many people living in poverty today (Balogun, 2020: 242). From the FGDs, it is revealed that, in instances where the women are family heads, employment related problems emanating from unlawful dismissal from a job often results in far more complicated problems of livelihood as all members of the family bear the consequences. In order to bring such matters to justice, JULAC devised a mechanism whereby labour cases could be addressed primarily through negotiation based on the partnership made with Jimma Zone Labor and Social Affairs Office, and only when such mechanisms fail, would labour cases be taken to formal courts (JULAC, 2015a).
It is also apparent in Table 2 that the total share of legal services by JULAC pertaining to the issue of land is nearly 6 percent in the reported year (2015/6). However, JULAC’s intervention in land related matters should not be overlooked simply because of the fact that it is statistically miniscule. Land is not merely an economic resource of a substantial value, for it is neither produced nor reproducible, providing a means of livelihood, but it is something that determines the very personhood and the future of an individual. According to an interview, on 19 July 2017, with Muhammed Kabie, JULAC Director from 2015/16 to 2017/18, the intervention by the legal aid centre has, for instance, resolved sensitive and complex land induced disputes among neighbours involving persons with disabilities. A resident of Seto-Semero kebele of Jimma city, Nurderin Raya, male, aged 32, who has a hearing disability but shoulders the full burden of protecting his parents with no sustainable income, managed to get back his land claimed by neighbours through alternative dispute resolution negotiated by JULAC (Kabie, July 2017). While there are many of such cases as that of Nuredin, JULAC’s engagement has also served small enterprises. A case in point here is the Hidase micro-enterprise, formed by poor street boys and girls, which secured land claimed by others, thus enabling them to realising their self-employment opportunities by starting a car-washing business in 2015.
In the FGD with the beneficiaries, as well, the discussants characterised ‘land’ as a defining feature of the deeper self-identity and belongingness. For instance, one of the beneficiaries in the FGD who had been assisted by the JULAC service and managed to secure his land has obtained a benefit that far exceeds three times the estimated monetary value of the benefits of all discussants combined (see Table 3). Another anonymous beneficiary, aged 36, shared her experience whereby she was unlawfully dismissed from her job, where she worked as a coffee bar attendant for about a decade. Following the dismissal, she requested her employer to write her work experience besides claiming 300 ETB. It was the disappointment resulting from the employer’s refusal that forced her to go to the social security office of Jimma City which brought the matter to JULAC for justice. Finally, JULAC succeeded in winning the case representing her before the court of law that passed an order to the employer to pay her 9451 ETB. The same service would have cost this beneficiary about 950 ETB, which she could not have afforded. It is thus the free legal service that earned her the deserved 10,401 ETB, far beyond the beneficiary’s expectation of 300 ETB, accompanied by a letter of work experience. This case, of course, confirms what other studies have already documented that economic instability and financial crises destabilise citizens’ security generally with many requiring adequate financial resources to pay for legal representation and civil court costs (Balogun, 2020: 242). It can, thus, be considered as one instance of how free legal aid can contribute, through access to justice and resultant empowerment, to the enhancement of the rights of poor women.
Monetary value of benefits of services for discussants
| FGD members* | Sex | Cases served | Benefit of judgment (in ETB) | Cost of legal fees (in ETB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AM | F | Labour | 76,480 | 8,000 |
| TAG | M | Labour | 22,024 | 3,000 |
| AG | F | Labour | 28,470 | 4,000 |
| AD | F | Labour | 17,460 | 4,000 |
| HJ | M | Land | 1.8 mill | 200,000 |
| AS | M | Labour | 24,000 | 2,400 |
| MAR | F | Succession | 49,000 | 4,900 |
| GM | F | Succession | 300,000 | 30,000 |
| BA | M | Tort | 76,500 | 8,000 |
| SH | F | Maintenance | 1,500 | 500 |
| WA | F | Family and property | 80,000 | 8,000 |
| AA | F | Property | 27,000 | 2,700 |
| Total | 2,502,434 | 275,500 | ||
Source: FGD and key informants interviews.
* The list of the focus group discussants is presented in an abbreviated form taking the initial letters of their own and father’s name, as put in the second column of Table 3, for the purpose of confidentiality.
Another beneficiary, who was forced to become a homeless daily wage labourer, has brought his case to JULAC after years passed following the dispossession of his residence house in the centre of Jimma City. The house was claimed due to locational value of the land by the neighbour, who was formerly appointed as a ‘guardian’ of the beneficiary before the death of the latter’s parents. The guardian, who realised that the boy is illiterate and incapable of resorting to any legal means, provided fake tenure that supposedly entitles him to the land, valued 1.8 million ETB. This case could have demanded 200,000 ETB for a professional legal service to be resolved that the young labourer, with his daily wage of 30 ETB, could not meet under any circumstance. Hence, it is not that difficult to comprehend what it means for a lonely wage labourer who lost both parents to get back the inherited plot of land, half of which was claimed by a former neighbour, who took the advantage of his appointment as a guardian to prepare false title deeds, while the rest has been transferred to someone else by way of sale. Similarly, it means a lot for a 70-years-old man to secure the land he lost due to the unjust claim by neighbours who took advantage of the absence of anybody to argue for him.
She [his wife] submitted the letter of support from the kebele [the lowest administrative tier] officials that proved her being single while I was in prison. I realized the problem only later, when she found the loan unbearable. As she defaulted in making repayment, the micro-finance started measures in order to foreclose the property. (Interview with Asheneke, 23 August 2016)
Finally, it was the JULAC intervention that sought for alternative resolution without going to the court by contacting Eshet Micro-Finance that agreed to use personal property of the wife in order to settle the claim instead of selling the house. In so doing, the centre not only served justice but also saved the old man from being homeless and consequent deprivations.
From the FGD of beneficiaries, it has been found that the results of such judgments as presented in Table 3 meant a lot for their livelihood as most of them could not have afforded to pay even a small amount of money for legal services. By doing so, micro level interventions by legal aid workers have affected the judgments that secured beneficiaries, in the year 2015/6 alone, an estimated monetary value of more than 4.2 million ETB, and saved them from incurring a total cost of 375,500 ETB (JULAC, 2016) in legal fees. An attempt is made, in Table 3 to present the monetary value of JULAC services obtained from the key informants and beneficiaries that participated in the FGD.
In the beginning of 2015/6 budget year, JULAC has set standards for all of its services as part of an endeavour taking its contribution a step further. Accordingly, the centre has been making use of standard formats and documentation for each service to ensure that standards are met or not (Alemu, 2016;Kabie, 2016).
In sum, central to the analysis presented earlier is the point that the legal aid interventions in issues that involve social and economic rights, are so meaningful, and so is their impact on the life of poor people, women, children and those who are elderly. Particularly, the family issues, land and property related cases handled by JULAC are essential as they resemble what is known to the literature as a ‘developmental legal aid’ that puts emphasis on the three livelihood-oriented pillars: (i) property rights mainly involving land, (ii) labour rights and (iii) mainly micro and small business rights besides an enabling framework for access to justice (IDLO, 2010).
Paralegal engagements
Paralegal interventions include awareness-raising activities and advocacy campaigns on critical legal matters as well as the provision of various social assistances. It is known that awareness of rights depends on public information campaigns, and, hence, legal literacy and awareness programmes augment legal aid in a vital way. In this regard, JULAC has been involved, since 2013/4, in awareness raising by using the FM 102.0 community radio, which is broadcast for two hours every week both in Afan Oromo and Amharic languages. While the subject matter of human rights dominates the radio programme, sharing 12 hours of the total 104 air time broadcasted in both languages per year, other topics concerning women and children’s rights and law of family, of land, property and succession, of employment and labour and so on, are also covered (JULAC, 2016). JULAC believes that 450,000 persons in different woredas of Jimma Zone have benefited from this campaign (Kabie, 2016). The awareness raising campaign has also been done by producing and distributing pamphlets on various legal matters that the centre believes to have benefited 17,000 citizens (Alemu, 2016).
As of 2015, the JULAC has identified lack of proper understanding of the basic laws of the country even among officials of local government units, that is, woreda and kebele, of Jimma Zone. In order to alleviate this problem, the centre has designed a series of legal education campaigns in six woredas on three main topics, that is, women, children, and people with disability to provide basic legal education training (JULAC, 2015b).
Paralegal engagements of JULAC have also been helping people to assert their rights inside and outside the legal environment. To this end, legal aid servants have been providing extra-legal services, combined with legal services, in most of the branch offices particularly at the Prison Center. In 2011/2, for instance, the Center was able to secure the release of more than 50 prisoners, after collecting evidence of the period of detention in different police stations before a verdict of guilt is passed by courts as it would be counted in the sentence (JULAC, 2012a). While this was regarded as a considerable success within a brief time, the Center has also been providing social services such as helping prisoners connect to their families (JULAC, 2012b;JULAC, 2015b).
Challenges
The last decade of free legal aid service, however, was not unproblematic. Finance is one of the underpinning factors constituting a significant challenge as informed by one of the key informants. In the year 2014/5, lack of finance has forced the Center to withdraw its services in Agaro, Dedo and Serbo branch offices (JULAC, 2015a). Although Jimma University, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, and the Supreme Court of Oromia are working with the legal aid centre as funding partners, finance continues to be a severe problem as there are requests for establishment of more branch offices especially in areas where domestic violence is widespread. Besides, some of the services which are becoming significantly necessary, for instance, client’s representation in the courtroom by its very nature requires a regular follow up and strong financial commitment. Needless to add, this financial constraint has also undermined the supervision and monitoring activities in different branches of distant sites.
As Knights (2013) clearly indicated, in several African countries, one should not undermine the lack of political and administrative will as the ‘courts would no longer have the monopoly of the decision-making’ in adjudications over property rights. In Ethiopia, too, overlapping jurisdiction shared by multiple authorities, at different tiers of administration, often complicates the process of serving justice particularly in relation to land, as JULAC itself has been facing since its inception. Though JULAC has already established partnerships with the Labor and Social Affairs Office and Justice Bureau Jimma Zone, Courts and Human Rights Commission (Jimma Branch Office), the challenges will continue as any empowerment effort tends to threaten work relationships with local elites by disrupting the established locus of power that they hold over marginalised populations (Shagerdi, 2015;Alemu, 2016).
Due to its performance, there is a growing publicity of JULAC services, which has eventually brought aid to many of those suffering from denial of justice due to lack of access. Yet an eventual rise of the number of people demanding its service demands an increase in the number professionals, which, in turn, has resource implications. It is also worth mentioning that there is a wrong perception about the free legal aid service itself (Kabie, 2016). While JULAC is providing a professional legal service for free, many clients often seek further financial support from the centre.
Until recently, JULAC significantly relied on voluntary professionals. It has been experiencing a significant turnover as volunteers often move on for better salaries and work conditions. FGD with the interns vindicated that even though the centre has been recruiting professional lawyers in some branch offices, JULAC continues to suffer from frequent departures of staff. Using graduating law interns also constituted a substantial portion of the challenges in JULAC legal aid services. Graduating class students, undertaking clinical course activities, often face schedule overlap to provide the demanded service and attending classes.
Conclusion
A wide array of literature portrays that a cohesive law-development field, or for the purpose of this research, the utilisation of legal aid programmes in poverty reduction schemes is still at its nascent stage. The earliest approach in this field, the orthodox perspective, however, has been criticised for regarding the mechanics of law as a magic bullet solution for poverty and underdevelopment. It is this reaction to limitations of this dominant approach that generated alternative approaches, which tend to be based on rights-oriented strategies. More recently, the reconceptualisation of poverty in terms of the deprivation of capabilities and opportunities has contributed to the rise of bottom–up approaches, micro-justice through legal aid services, to help the disadvantaged people to overcome barriers of access to justice such as costs and bureaucratic impediments. Several empirical studies have proved that legal aid services have yielded vital outcomes, for instance, as the case in South Africa where it is even impossible to think of many people’s lives today without considering the impact of legal aid.
It is within this framework that an attempt is made, in this study, to reveal the relevance of legal aid services in poverty alleviation at micro levels by assessing the engagements of JULAC since the time of its establishment. Although JULAC is primarily concerned with working towards access to justice and the rule of law, in its purely legal sense, the impact of its intervention on the life of many poor people, by way of providing them with new power to utilise legal and administrative remedies in realising their constitutional rights, it is by far beyond making the law work for everyone. It has empowered many poor citizens to protect their land; to free the innocent from jail; to provide shelter for many; to realise practical rights to properties; to improve the life of many children with proof of paternity; and to secure vital severance payment or pensions for the disabled, orphaned or elderly all of which could assist in sustaining livelihood.
In doing so, the legal aid services of JULAC have significant impact on poverty alleviation by enhancing the so-called ‘human agency’, which involves the creation and development of capacity as well as conditions for wielding power over their lives for target populations. Hence, legal aid services of JULAC that range from technical, legal counselling and representation to the involvement in paralegal activities, which have enabled many poor and vulnerable people to initiate and pursue justice, typically represent the so-called ‘developmental legal aid’.
In the final analysis, it could, thus, be argued in view of a capability approach, that JULAC efforts, far beyond realising equality before the law and respect of constitutionally guaranteed human rights, have resulted in the creation and expansion of the capabilities for women, poor people and other vulnerable populations. This will have enabled them to lead the kind of life they value by enhancing their freedoms which they have reason to value that are both crucial in themselves and important in enhancing their opportunity to have valuable outcomes.
To sum it up, while this study is not meant to extrapolate these findings to other contexts, it is a genuine testimony as to how access to justice is meaningfully affecting the tens of thousands of poor and vulnerable segments in Jimma city and its surrounding districts of Jimma Zone of southwest Ethiopia by contributing to their livelihoods. Yet, with the growing number of universities in Ethiopia and increasing engagement of law schools, currently 52, in free legal aid services in their vicinities, it is beyond doubt that the nationwide cumulative impact is significant for millions of Ethiopians who are trapped in the vicious circle of lack of justice that reinforces – and is reinforced – by poverty and illiteracy. The significance of further scholarly researches on this topic becomes pervasive not only in enriching this insight but also in scaling it up by designing participatory demand-driven legal aid services and integration of such schemes into governance programmes to strengthen the very concept of justice to those who do not have any access to the means of survival.
Note
The name of the clinic is not mentioned due to the confidentiality agreement clause inserted in their contract.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to Professor Minhaj Alam and Mr Idris Yeba (both from Department of Governance and Development Studies of Jimma University), Diana van Bogaert (Director, Legal English Training Unit, American University in Cairo) and Hassan M. Muse for their invaluable comments. I am also grateful to Mr Mohammed Kabie, Mr Yoseph Alemu, Mr Manaye Abera Shagrdi, Mr Sintayehu Demeke and Mr Kibrom Mekonnen for their encouragement and cooperation in providing me with the official reports during the data collection and in sharing their insights. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude also goes to Professor Andrew Ryder for the comments on the manuscript, but also for suggesting the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice for publication.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
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