Page 113 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

Better recognition of the scale of the problem by the judiciary led to the establishment of direct representation by the Public Defender Office . Colombia has had a similar experience . In 2004, the country’s Office of the Attorney General created a unit for intrafamily violence (Centro de Atencion a Victimas de Violencia Intrafamiliar) known as CAVIF .
Other instances of government programs are more scattered and localized . For example, in Buenos Aires both the Public Defender Office and the Public Ombudsman Office often intervene in cases of mass evictions and those of poor people occupying private or state-owned land . Both agencies also seek to raise awareness of tenants’ rights .
If Latin American countries have generally given lower priority to providing access to justice for low income and indigent people, this is in some measure due to their recent history . Coming out of dictatorships and civil wars, the establishment of democracy and democratic institutions required changes in constitutions, and the judicial and the legal systems; the prosecution of human rights cases; and the dismantling of the remnants of authoritarianism .
What meaning we give to access to justice comes into play here . Is it primarily the provision of individual representation for the poor; or does it incorporate representation of NGOs, civil society organizations and individuals to advance the democratization of society, human rights and the reform of government institutions? In Latin America it has for the most part been the latter, done in large measure by legal NGOs .
All efforts to reform the legal systems in Latin America have been led from outside of the legal profession . The missing link in the reform effort and the key to addressing the access to justice needs broadly is the private bar and the bar associations .
Generally speaking, lawyers have a high degree of social standing in most Latin American countries, higher than that of most governments . Their engagement in legal reform and acceptance of their responsibility to promote access to justice could have a major impact on progress in these areas .
Pro bono was seen by those working on reform as a means to bring lawyers and bar associations into these efforts and to impress upon them their professional responsibility to improve the legal and judicial systems and expand access to justice .
In Peru, for example, lawyers are important social actors . Private lawyers there have used a special provision in the law to be special prosecutors, undertaking anti-corruption and public interest matters on behalf of NGOs . Given this background it was thought that pro bono could be promoted as a way to expand access to justice to incorporate the legal needs of the poor, but this did not prove to be the case .
Over the fifteen years that it has been developing in Latin America, pro bono has become linked with access to justice . Yet there is no clear idea either regionally or in individual countries as to how it should be integrated into existing legal aid, NGO, or law school clinical programs, and no clear commitment to addressing the legal needs of the poor and disadvantaged .
Pro bono has the potential to enable the private bar and bar associations to develop a sense of responsibility for expanding access to justice and establishing the relationships and entities needed to carry this out . The judiciary, the law schools and NGOs throughout the region have taken important steps, but the needs remain great and are not near to being met .
Alternative Models
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