General

Cameroon boasts a huge variety of flora and fauna, spread over about 20 million hectares of tropical rainforest. About four million people live in and around these forests, including a large percentage of indigenous people such as the Baka and Bagyeli. The forest is part of the second largest rainforest in the world, through which the great Congo River flows. It plays a key role in combating dangerous climate change. But the forests in Cameroon are under severe threat. Investments in logging, industrial agriculture and mining are increasing as well as deforestation. By 2020, Cameroon lost 100,000one hundred thousand hectares of rainforest. Land rights of indigenous and local communities are not formally recognized. Land grabbing and other human rights violations by large corporations in the timber or agriculture sectors are commonplace. Forest activists who stand up for these rights are subject to intimidation, threats or violence.

Objectives

Over the past five years we have put a halt to new plantations and logging permits. For example, the Ebo forest was protected from logging, saving 130 hectares of rainforest. In the coming years, Cameroon’s GLA program aims to increase and strengthen the influence and rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. We advocate for a methodology to represent them in corporate and political processes that deal with land and natural resources. The base is proper monitoring by local forest-, and human rights activists to document violations. On top of this, we will continue to campaign nationally and internationally for greater recognition and protection for indigenous and local people, and engage in resistance or use grievance procedures for redress in cases of (human) rights violations and deforestation.

General

Via de ondersteuning van GLTN wil NL bijdragen aan ontwikkeling en toepassing van relevante instrumenten en technieken die knelpunte n aanpakken die goede land governance in OSlanden in de weg staan.

Objectives

Primary Objective of the training: Empowering the Community paralegals to enable them to access justice by refresher paralegal training and ToT on fundamental human rights, paralegalism, conducting client interviews, labour law, land law, ADR, Refugee law, Criminal law, legal representation and the judicial procedures Activities implemented 1. Kamkunji justice Centre refresher training 2. Korogocho CJC refresher training 3. Kibra CJC refresher training 4. Vihiga CJC refresher training and Launching of new justice Centre 5. Manyani prison paralegal training and Launching of new justice Centre 6. Monthly support for CJCs and PJCs 7. Radio talk shows in Kisumu, Vihiga and Kitui 8. Legal aid clinics in Kitui and Kisumu 9. Kisii Paralegal training and TOT and Launch of the new Justice Centre 10. Naivasha Prison Paralegal training and Launch of the new Justice Centre 11. Nakuru Community paralegal training and launch of the new Justice Centre 12. Radio talk show in Nakuru, Taita Taveta and Mombasa 13. Taita Taveta paralegal training and Launch of Community Justice centre Issues arising from the trainings: 1. Need for production of paralegal badges for all justice centres, not only the newly launched justice centres as originally stipulated in the budget. Paralegals have expressed they are experiencing slight challenges when dealing with law enforcement agencies due to the lack of formal identification. Providing them with badges will break down these barriers, allowing them to continue to assist their community members. 2. Throughout the trainings, KITUO staff have noted that the common issues communities face mainly revolve around Land Law and Succession Matters, Family Law and Sexual and Gender Based Violence Cases. 3. Kisii C.J.C appealed to KITUO to consider including sign language training in the refresher trainings to allow paralegals to assist Persons with Disabilities in their quest for justice. 4. There is need to reprint and disseminate the Land Law Act document seeing as Land Law is a primary issue in the communities. 5. Participants also requested to be sent for samples of Affidavits, Claim forms and Response forms to their Justice Centres. These forms will act as points of references to the community paralegals. 6. Participants also requested for more frequent engagement between KITUO officers and paralegals to ensure training objective and outcomes are met post-training. 7. During all the trainings, we conducted sensitisation of the BBI process and Constitution Amendment Bill discussions. These discussions mainly centred on looking at their repercussions with regards to access to justice and constitutionalism. The paralegals noted that the discussions on basic principle doctrine and the Rule of Law were new concepts raised by the court. They were also keen to note that the Constitutional Amendment Bill required public participation and democracy and needed to be initiated by the public. 2. Progress on M-Haki and plans for M-Haki Implemented Activities 1. M-Haki enhancement training for Volunteer Advocates, Paralegals and Kituo staff in Mombasa with the aim of increasing the capacity of users of the M-Haki platform. 2. Facebook Boosting of M-Haki advert. The main objective of the activity was to reach a wider audience and increase engagement on the M-Haki platform. During this reporting period the M-Haki boosted ad reported high engagement progressively from February to May. In March, the ad had an engagement of 3632, with a post reaction of 1774. More men (68.8%) interacted with our ad as opposed to women (31.2%). Rift valley region recorded high number of people interacting with M-Haki ad followed by Costal region. Due to the wide reach of the Facebook Ad, this resulted in an increase in number of cases reported on the M-Haki platform hence, achieving the intended objective. In the period 1st January, 2021 to 30th June 2021; the M-Haki platform received 1,156 matters from groups and persons of both genders through the primary data source-SMS. Challenges faced and recommendations 1. Integrating M-Haki with Facebook. When clients send their legal questions and issues through the Kituo Facebook page, they are advised to channel these said questions to the M-Haki number. Majority of clients are unhappy with this redirection and feel their legal questions should be answered through the same platform. • Recommendation: Integration of Kituo Facebook account with M-Haki. This will ensure questions asked on Facebook will be automatically synched to M-Haki platform where they will be answered and automatically reflect on massagers, comments section or Instagram. This will ensure quality answers by the advocates at KITUO. 2. 2. M-Haki Enhancements. During the course of our interactions with the stakeholders and Kituo advocates certain issues have been raised regarding M-Haki. As at now all the Kituo advocates and Vas are supper admins. This means they all have the rights to perform all the functions in the platform including deleting data and manipulating the system. This puts the system at risk. To protect the system, the team resolved to give advocates and VAs limited access. 3. Matters arising from implementation 1. Need to update Justice Centre equipment. CJC and PJC equipment’s are broken down, all centres need new equipment and internet. 2. Need to slightly increase M-Haki Budget. From the VA and KITUO staff training, a few recommendations were made and this was later discussed in a meeting with USHAIDI team. The USHAIDI team advised that the M-Haki deployment is still in an outdated version. Majority of the recommended improvements such as automatic colour change; different admin rights; confidentiality issues; integration of Facebook; Twitter and M-Haki portal would only be available in the upgraded version 5. Version 5 enhances security for both users and KITUO staff, comes with a greater bandwidth, and allows for the recommendations brought forth and more. 3. Advocacy on the proposed amendments on the requirements of certification of paralegals in the Legal Aid Act. 4. Need to implement out of town Legal Aid Clinics for 1 week as opposed to one day. 5. Kitale training for prison justice centre was not included in our 6 month budget. As a new centre, there is need for it to be conducted in the first quarter. 6. Need to include production of paralegal badges as a budget line for all Justice Centres and not only, new justice centres. As of now, the only Paralegals who receive badges are those from the new Justice centre. However upon implementing, it has been noted that there is a need to give all Justice Centres, both new and old, paralegal badges. This is captured in the budget realignment 7. Surge in hotel conference packages. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in hotel conference packages. It has therefore, become a challenge to find conference packages with the set pre-pandemic budget. The budget may need to be reviewed to accommodate these unforeseen changes. 8. Enhancing capacity of paralegals. From observation during the training, paralegals need to be trained on Security, the mediation process and basic psychosocial support.