What is Avocats Sans Frontières’ Role?

Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) is an international non-governmental organization created in 1992 in Brussels (Belgium) and is mostly made up of lawyers, solicitors and magistrates.

The role of ASF is to contribute, completely independently, to the establishment of a just, equitable and united society, in which both the law and justice serve those who need them the most. 

ASF acts to promote and to protect civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the most vulnerable groups and/or individuals. ASF’s mission is based on a series of basic principels, objectives and intervention axes following the ASF’s Mandate for the period 2004-2008.

ASF in its context

As soon as ASF has the means to do so, it intervenes in countries where violations of human rights, bloody armed conflicts and political violence occur, contrary to the rule of the law. Justice in these countries is too often arbitrary and doesn’t represent a source of security, peace and development for the population. Disputes rarely find satisfying answers through a court hearing. These people are disillusioned, so they tend to rely on private justice, which, with no regard for the fundamental rights of the person, exerts the law as much as possible and contributes to the creation or to the continuation of a violent climate. 

The population’s needs in these countries are enormous. Their judiciary systems can’t, or won’t, respond to their needs effectively and with due respect for human rights. There are numerous reasons for this, including: 

• justice is inaccessible to groups and/or individuals who are in need of it the most, who don’t know their rights, nor how to assert them;
• the degree of independence of the judicial system is insufficient due to weaknesses at both the legislative and the procedural level;
• collaborators who work within the field of law (lawyers, judges, magistrates, etc.) are insufficiently trained and lack freedom when executing their functions;
• the judicial services lack resources etc.