Daily Times

In Pakistan, the crisis of lack of access to justice has worsened to a point where the justice system has failed to reach the doorsteps of people who live below the poverty line. A large section of the population is unable to access the formal legal system mainly for want of financial resources and a general lack of awareness of the law and legal rights. Although the State recognises the need and importance of legal aid to ensure access to justice for the needy, by incorporating provisions of legal assistance in some laws and rules, a lot more needs to be done.

In modern day Legal Aid means to extend legal assistance, free of cost to the poor and needy to those who do not have the resources to engage a lawyer to represent them in legal proceedings in a court or before any other tribunal.

Article 37(D) of Chapter 2, Principles of Policy of the Constitution of Pakistan requires the State to provide ‘inexpensive and expeditious justice’. Article 10(a) of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan 1973 guarantees the ‘Right to Fair Trial’ as a fundamental right. ‘Equality before the law’ is another fundamental right guaranteed by Article 25 of the Constitution. The three references from the Constitution of Pakistan establish that access to justice is the main component of the Constitution of Pakistan.

For writing this article I was reviewing a report titled Understanding the Informal Justice System: Opportunities and Possibilities for Legal Pluralism in Pakistan (2015), it was very shocking for me that 98.2 per cent of respondents in a survey opined that the poor and lower classes do not have access to justice in the formal justice system. In the same report it was mentioned that, 42.8 percent felt that women and 25.2 percent that landless peasants and agricultural labourer salso lack access. One of the reasons for limited access to the formal justice system, as perceived by half the respondents, is the high legal fee charged by lawyers.

Civil society organisations, which are working on the Access to Justice theme, have included this important component in their core objectives. Many civil society organisations are providing free of cost legal aid in their respective districts

Recently a concept has flourished all across Pakistan regarding Free Legal Aid services. Civil society organisations, which are working on the Access to Justice theme, have included this important component in their core objectives. Many civil society organisations are providing free of cost legal aid in their respective districts and helping the marginalised community to access their rights. These organisations believe that Free Legal Aid to the poor and helpless is necessary for the preservation of Rule of Law, which is necessary for the existence of an orderly society. Until and unless the poor are not legally assisted they will be denied equal opportunity to seek Justice. Therefore as a step towards making the legal services for the poor and the deprived, the Judiciary and State has too initiate serious actions for providing free Legal aid to the needy of late.

In this regard, Legal Rights Forum LRF is one of the leading organisations, which have established free legal aid centers at the district level to provide legal help to the people facing human rights cases. These centres are being established in Thatta, Malir, Karachi, Muzaffargarh and Lodhran districts while a Human Rights Complaint Cell is also established in Karachi where people would register their complaints. However, they have also launched a massive awareness campaign to make people aware of human rights, fundamental rights and how to get help in such cases. For the last few years, this organisation has provided legal assistance to almost 6000 citizens in different court cases and several referrals are made to relevant state institutions such as Police and Darul Aman.

On the other side, very few of us heard about district legal empowerment committees- DLECs. This committees main work is to provide free of cost legal help at the district level to needy ones (it includes poor, destitute, orphan, widow, indigent and deserving persons who are entitled to Zakat or one whose financial position and income resources are not sufficient to bear the expenses for engaging an Advocate to prosecute, defend and protect his legal rights in genuine litigation).To avail free legal aid, a litigant is required to make an application to the district committee and illustrate the need for free legal aid. But in practice, these committee’s are not functional and are not properly established. As a result, the existing legal aid structure in Pakistan lacks ownership.

Among other things, the rate of disbursement of legal aid under the DLECs is quite disappointing; 59pc of the funds in Punjab, 91pc in Sindh, 69pc in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and 95pc in Balochistan allocated to the respective DLECs between 2012 and 2016 unfortunately remained unspent. The question that comes to my mind is why does the available free legal aid go unused? I personally believe that lack of awareness about free legal aid forums and their procedures lead these mechanisms to be non-productive.

In Sindh, Ghulam Sughra is working extensively for providing free legal aid services to the rural women of interior Sindh. She believes that mostly the vulnerable and poor women and men are facing difficulties to reach the respective courts due to unavailability of funds and resources. They have no approach to advocates for getting their rights properly through the judicial system. She said through their organisation’s platform they have reached a large number of people through different methods. Importantly, they registered 480 cases and provided legal assistance to quite a large number of people through different courts.

I think it is important to appreciate these civil society organisations and such international organisations that are working on this important issue for providing Free Legal Aid. However, I want to request them to carry and push this initiative in the future as well. Regarding responsibilities of the State and Judiciary, I want to urge them that regularise and functionalise the mechanism of DLEC’s and have proper checks and balances so that the needy and marginalised communities can benefit from it.

The writer is a social and political activist based in Lahore. He has done his Maters and MPhil in Communication Studies. He can be reached at salmanali088@gmail.com, tweets at Salmani_salu

Published in Daily Times, October 29^th 2017.