User:Pajohstudio/sandbox/The International Legal Foundation

The International Legal Foundation

Founded	2001
Founders	Natalie Rea
Focus	Human Rights, Rule of Law
Location	New York City, New York
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jennifer Smith, Executive Director
Website	http://www.theilf.org

The International Legal Foundation (ILF) is a New York-based nonprofit legal aid organization founded in 2001 by Natalie Rea, with offices in Afghanistan, Tunisia, the West Bank, Nepal, and Myanmar.

The organization's mission is two-fold: "to assist post-conflict and transitional countries to establish public defender systems that provide quality and effective criminal defense services to the poor" and to engage in international advocacy to make sure that governments provide the support necessary for such services.

History

The methodology and mission of the International Legal Aid Foundation evolved out of a previous organization, Legal Aid Rwanda. In 1996, Natalie Rea, then a criminal defense lawyer with the Criminal Appeals Bureau of The Legal Aid Society of New York, traveled to Rwanda to serve as an observer to the national genocide trials. While there, Rea was surprised to see that only a handful of defense lawyers were available to represent the more than 150,000 men and women, accused of genocide, held in detention. Upon her return to New York, Rea mobilized a small group of volunteer defense lawyers from the U.S. and Canada to provide the detainees with representation, obtained funding, and founded the nongovernmental organization Legal Aid Rwanda. In three months, Legal Aid Rwanda volunteer lawyers provided pretrial representation to approximately 500 detainees, most of whom had been incarcerated for almost four years and never met a lawyer. By the time the project ended in July 1998, Legal Aid Rwanda’s intervention had led to the release of 30 detainees for lack of evidence, at least one of whom was acquitted after trial.

While Legal Aid Rwanda was successful for a few, it did not convince a single detainee to accept the “plea-bargaining” provision that had been inserted in the law.  The plea bargaining had been included in the law by the international community in an effort to deal with the the volume of detainees related to the Rwandan genocide. It permitted sentences to be reduced for those who confessed their crimes and informed on their accomplices. While Legal Aid Rwanda’s lawyers explained the plea bargaining provisions to detainees, none accepted.

Jennifer Smith, Executive Director of the International Legal Foundation, speaks at the opening of the ILF’s office in Hebron in the West Bank.

The Legal Aid Foundation Founded

As Rea and her team quickly discovered, the plea-bargaining statute had been drafted without sufficient consideration of local conditions. Most detainees feared being ostracized from their communities if they admitted to such heinous offenses. Additionally, Rwanda’s legal system, a civil law system, does not require the government to disclose the charges against a defendant until a case is transferred to court for trial. At that point, the benefits of plea bargaining —judicial economy for the government and shorter sentences for the accused— no longer exist. Drawing upon her experience in Rwanda, Rea developed a key component of the International Legal Foundation’s core vision: laws must be drafted and implemented in ways that respect the historical, practical and cultural context of each country. With this lesson in mind, Rea and her colleagues decided to work with a legal community in exile. They would conduct trainings on recent legal developments in the world, with the idea that when this exile legal community returned, it would be in a position to write its own laws in accordance with up-to-date legal standards. In 1999, Rea chose to work with the Afghan legal community in exile in Peshawar, Pakistan. Seminars were conducted in 2000 and early 2001.

After 9/11, the Afghan community returned to Afghanistan and Rea offered to assist setting up their public defender system. Rea, with Afghan colleagues, completed the first survey of the customary laws of Afghanistan as part of the new methodology.

Current work

The ILF has developed a unique and effective approach for ensuring the delivery of high quality criminal defense services to the poor in post-conflict and transitional countries. Before establishing a public defender program, the ILF invests six to twelve months working with local lawyers in the courts to learn a country’s criminal laws and practices. Once the ILF has finished its assessment and confirmed that domestic laws will allow for lawyers to proactively defend the rights of their clients, ILF attorneys draft a detailed practice manual and set up a public defender office staffed with local lawyers. These local lawyers are then trained for several years—day-in and day-out—by an experienced team of international criminal defense lawyers, known as International Fellows. International Fellows volunteer for three- to six-month assignments in the ILF’s public defender offices mentoring the local lawyers, by providing legal and technical expertise in their daily representation of clients. International Fellows impart analytical skills and written and verbal advocacy skills, as well as the inspiration for local lawyers to transform their roles from that of passive participants to proactive advocates for the rights of their clients. This expert mentoring has led to major changes in the practice of legal defense in Afghanistan, Nepal, the West Bank, Tunisia, and early on in Myanmar. These changes include shifts in lawyers’ assumptions about their role in the criminal justice system, and the creation of a true culture of defense where none previously existed.

Group photo of members in the ILF Afghanistan office.

Afghanistan

Established in 2003, ILF-Afghanistan has provided representation for over 50,000 clients since its founding. ILF-Afghanistan currently serves 15 provinces and three specialty courts, and employs over 40 attorneys. In addition to offering direct client services, the ILF is building the Afghan Ministry of Justice’s capacity to effectively administer legal aid and engage civil society organizations in the provision of legal aid services. The ILF’s strategic litigation has challenged illegal and arbitrary detention, achieved a Supreme Court directive calling for an end to illegal virginity testing, and pressed for the end to the practice of imprisoning debtors.

Myanmar

ILF-Myanmar was established in October 2017. It currently has five offices: Yangon, Mandalay, Pathein, Sittwe (in Rakhine State), and Lashio, with 12 lawyers and 10 support staff. ILF-Myanmar took their first case to Myanmar’s Supreme Court in 2019.

Nepal

ILF-Nepal was established in 2008 as Nepal’s first independent public defender office. ILF-Nepal serves 8 provinces with 18 staff attorneys, and has served over 8,000 clients, more than 80% of whom belong to marginalized or at-risk groups. Shortly after opening the office, ILF-Nepal lawyers successfully argued in the Supreme Court that the 1992 Children’s Act had removed jurisdiction of quasi-judicial officers over juveniles accused of a crime. In 2010, ILF-Nepal won a groundbreaking ruling when the Supreme Court of Nepal recognized that the constitutional right to counsel is essential to the right to fair trial and begins at the time of arrest.

In August 2017, ILF-Nepal became an independent Nepali NGO, with the new name, Public Defender Society-Nepal (PDS-Nepal), providing criminal defense for the poor.

Tunisia

In June 2015, the ILF launched a new country program in Tunisia. ILF-Tunisia has one office in Tunis which employs three consultant-lawyers. It has represented clients in over 375 cases. ILF-Tunisia provides intensive mentoring to its staff and volunteer lawyers, which has led to breakthroughs such as a groundbreaking project which provides counsel to accused within hours of arrest, as well as some notably successful case outcomes which introduced novel arguments in the Tunisian courts.

West Bank

In September 2010 the ILF opened ILF-West Bank to provide cost-effective, quality defense services to poor persons accused of a crime in the Palestinian civilian court system. ILF-West Bank currently has 4 offices with 10 staff attorneys and has represented over 7500 clients, more than 45% of whom are juveniles. In its first year, ILF-West Bank lawyers successfully argued that children over 16 did not need the signature of their parents to receive free legal services. This made it possible for ILF-West Bank lawyers to seek the release on bail of its youngest clients.

International Advocacy

The ILF advocates for access to justice for all, focusing specifically on the right to quality defense. Grounded in their work defending poor and vulnerable populations, the ILF is dedicated to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 16 target 16.3 to “Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all.”

The ILF played a key role in drafting the United Nations Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems in 2012, the first international instrument on legal aid. They also contributed to “Early Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Processes: Handbook for Policymakers and Practitioners,” published by UNDP and UNODC. The ILF has called for the formulation of global standards for measuring quality legal aid and published “Measuring Justice” in 2016 on this topic.

The ILF co-hosts a biennial international criminal legal aid conference series, convening groups from around the world to discuss justice reform challenges and approaches. The conference met in South Africa (2014), Argentina (2016), and Georgia (2018). The location for 2020 is still to be determined.

Many of the ILF’s clients are women. Their advocacy for criminal legal aid intersects with efforts to end gender-based violence and advance social and economic justice.

External links

• The International Legal Foundation