During an event on access to justice and international development on April 25, ASF highlighted the need to integrate impact indicators and empirical findings into access to justice programmes and go beyond the Sustainable Development Goals framework. This convening was organised jointly with the American University Washington College of Law Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law. It brought together key academic, policy and operational actors, who offered their insights on this critical issue.

In DR Congo, defending the rights of victims of injustice and exercising fundamental rights remains a challenge. Faced with an often failing legal system and, at times, intimidation, men and women are pursuing an ideal: to live in a fairer world. Last of three encounters: lawyer Hervé Mafwila, on illegal detention.

New Government Should Quickly Establish Special Court – 21 Central African and international human rights organizations issued a statement today calling on the new president of the Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, to make justice for grave international crimes a top priority for his government. President Touadéra was sworn in on March 30, 2016, and his new government took office on April 11.

Northern Uganda is currently the scene of two significant ongoing trials: Thomas Kwoyelo and Dominic Ongwen are both facing Justice for the international crimes they allegedly committed as ex-Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commanders. In this context, Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) and the Foundation for Justice and Development Initiatives (FJDI) are providing assistance to victims to promote their participation. The activities confirmed that affected communities wish to follow and be informed about the course of both trials.

Without a birth certificate, you can be deprived of a large number of rights. How can you access health care without an identity document? How can you go to school? How can you vote? Most Central Africans, particularly young people, do not exist in the eyes of the State. In response to this problem, Avocats Sans Frontières is organising mobile judicial hearings: members of the court, the public prosecutor’s office and the court registry travel to villages to hand down supplementary rulings on birth certificates.

For the last two years, ASF has been working actively with the Bar Associations of the west of the DR Congo in order to combat the abusive and sometimes even illegal use of preventive detention. In the coming weeks, ASF will come back to three key aspects of this project: the development of the capacity of individuals held in detention to understand and to take action, the legal representation of detainees by specifically trained lawyers and the highlighting of the catastrophic conditions of detention, and the causes underlying the very widespread use of preventive detention.