WUNRN
BURKINA FASO - PRO BONO LEGAL AID
FOR WOMEN ACCUSED AS WITCHES
By Olesya Dmitracova | November 19, 2010
PARIS
(TrustLaw) - What links a British-based law firm to an initiative aimed at
protecting women in
The answer's global pro bono work.
Earlier this year, a charity caring for older people, HelpAge International,
asked Advocates for International Development (A4ID) to help with its work in,
among others,
Such beliefs are common in a country where surviving your husband or living to
an old age is often regarded with suspicion.
It is often the widows, or the older, poorer or disabled women and those
unprotected by male relatives who are most vulnerable to witchcraft
accusations. At best, they face banishment from their communities. At worst,
they may be tortured or even killed.
HelpAge has called for protection and redress to be provided for those accused
of sorcery in the West African country.
Against this backdrop, A4ID found three law firms which were tasked with
analysing legislation on witchcraft claims in 12 countries in the Pacific, Asia
and
For international pro bono to work well, lawyers must be prepared to grapple
with different languages, different customs and different legal cultures, the
conference heard.
Jean Berman, International Senior Lawyers Project (ISLP) Executive Director,
said a lot of the organisation’s volunteer lawyers had been
"On the one hand, the energy and the enthusiasm and the big-picture
strategic thinking an American litigator who’s done class actions in the U.S.
brings is very exciting and interesting but on the other hand, it may not work
at all in the culture they are in," she said.
"And it can be frustrating for the NGO and the lawyer to not really
understand each other on that level."
Despite these kinds of challenges, research shows there's quite an appetite for
free legal services.
A few years ago the Thomson Reuters Foundation polled 450 non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) about which free service they would like the Foundation to
offer. Three-quarters of them
picked legal services.
“This is the most unmet need of (the NGO) community,” said Monique Villa, chief
executive officer of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.