The Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), a news agency focusing on humanitarian stories, has published a piece on the Community Justice Advisor (CJA) program. The article highlights the work of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission and The Carter Center in this area. It also quotes CJAs Jesco Davis and Eleane Keamue, as well as senior legal associate Lemuel Reeves.
Check it out by clicking here.
Great news, JPC and the Carter Center, under a MOU with the Ministry of Justice, will be expanding the Community Legal Advisor (CLA) Program to Montserrado County. This means that Monrovia and the surrounding areas will receive the free community-based legal services. Read about it here:
The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission (JPC) is expanding its Community Legal Advisor (CLA) program to provide legal support services in nine rural Liberian counties. With support from USAID and Humanity United, the services will be continued and expanded for the next two years. The program gives rural Liberians access to free community-based legal services and knowledge of their rights. Since 2007, more than 3,000 cases have been opened by community legal advisors.
Click below to read the rest of the article:
President Carter had a recent article published in the Harvard International Review on rule of law in Liberia “As the Ministry of Justice’s civic education has expanded, however, Liberians have begun to seek out civic educators to help resolve their individual problems. In the southeast, where this work was initially focused, the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission (JPC) responded to the volume of requests by developing its own community legal advisors who now offer advice, referrals, advocacy, and mediation services upon request, while encouraging victims to report all serious cases, such as rape, to the police. As these community legal advisors are becoming better known, the number of cases they handle is steadily increasing. The project’s impact will be carefully evaluated over time…”
Click below to read the rest of the article:
A recent Christian Science Monitor article mentioned the role of the JPC in resolving land disputes
Elaine Kamue is one of the JPC’s Community Legal Advisors
“ACROSS AFRICA, INDIVIDUALS LIKE JABATEH, and even entire communities, are brokering their own solutions to land conflict. Sometimes those solutions require people like Elaine Kamue. A short woman with a soft voice and a blunt way of speaking, Mrs. Kamue travels from village to village in rural Liberia, educating women about the country’s new land laws – and intervening to help put the laws into practice.
Without Kamue, 55-year-old Yar Gegh would be homeless and starving. For years after her brothers had left sleepy Zuluyee, a roadside market town a few hours from Liberia’s border with Guinea, Ms. Gegh remained to farm the family plot and care for her dying mother. She had, she says, little choice: “Only a woman can mind her mother…”
Click below to read the rest of the article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2010/0130/Africa-s-continental-divide-land-disputes
JPC Liberia 