Legal Aid Caravans
In partnership with ABA ROLI, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) and its National Center for Legal Aid (NCLA) completed a total of 22 Legal Aid Caravans (LACs) from November 2022 to February 2023 throughout the country, marking a total of 458 lawyers offering pro bono legal services to approximately 3,616 underserved individuals, with the majority representing Indigenous peoples and Persons Deprived of Liberty. This contributed to the ACCESS program supporting 6,901 legal issues/cases through various methods, including LACs and online legal aid clinics, tracking of Persons Deprived of Liberty cases by CSOs, assistance to victims and their families affected by the war on drugs, representation of human rights defenders, aid to recipients of agricultural reform, resettlement programs, and pursuit of administrative solutions.
Launch of the Pro Bono Portal
In partnership with the IBP, ABA ROLI, and Justice Connect of Australia, the ACCESS project developed a Pro Bono Portal (PBP) managed by the IBP. The PBP is a dedicated online platform that enables free legal aid assistance and services to reach underserved communities who lack means to retain a lawyer or legal services. The PBP is the first online legal service platform of the IBP that offers a cost-efficient, reliable, and secure medium for both pro bono legal aid lawyers and Filipinos qualified to receive free legal assistance. ABA ROLI and its partners launched the IBP Pro Bono Portal in July 2023 at the IBP NCLA Summit. At the Summit both Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo and IBP National President, Attorney Estrada spoke to the importance having a service the enhances the connection that Filipinos have to the justice system.
Training Curriculums
In its final year, the ACCESS project supported the Supreme Court (SC) of the Philippines through cooperation with the Philippines Judicial Academy (PHILJA) by leading a review of curriculum on Judicial Dispute Resolution (JDR) and Basic Mediation Course (BMC). It also supported an update to the Training of Trainers (ToT) JDR refresher course.
On March 13-14, 2023, ABA ROLI in partnership with the SC of the Philippines through the PHILJA hosted a final curriculum review and ToT for the Refresher Course Curriculum on JDR via Zoom. Aimed at helping ensure judges learn the JDR skills required for successful mediation and dispute resolution, as well as recognizing the systematic power imbalances between different types of parties, ABA ROLI supported a pilot training course for JDR Judges following the finalization of the Refresher Course Curriculum in April 2023. The course revitalized the philosophy behind JDR; increased understanding of current rules and guidelines concerning the practice and actual insights of JDR; and enhanced participants’ skills in effectively managing difficult case-to-case basis disputes among the parties, including power imbalances. The course concluded in raising the JDR Performance Bar through emphasizing the importance of the Opening Statement and Negotiation Procedure in discovering information and surfacing the Interests of the interest parties, as well as establishing strategies and tools necessary during an impasse situation.
Between March 22-23, 2023, ABA ROLI in partnership with the SC through PHILJA, completed the Online BMC Curriculum Review via Zoom. The BMC Curriculum Review was joined by a pool of mediation practitioners and trainers from PHILJA Alternative Dispute Department, the Philippine Mediation Center and the Court Management Office in the Office of the Court Administrator in the Philippines (OCA-CMO). The revision of the course curriculum for the online BMC program aims to standardize the content and module materials that may be handled by members of the BMC training team.
The ACCESS program also worked with the Office of the Court Administrator Case Management Office and the Philippines Mediation Center Office to produce two animated videos focused on alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Throughout the ACCESS program, ABA ROLI has worked to strengthen ADR techniques by increasing mediators’ capability to provide mediation both inside and outside the court. Through the pre- and post-tests given throughout ACCESS training, it was observed that the mediator participants had heightened their comprehension of mediation.
Beyond JDR and BMC course development, this year, ABA ROLI held a Plea-Bargaining training event to instruct participants about its application, relevant laws, and the legal consequences and experiences of those involved in drug-related cases. People attended the session consisted of Public Attorney’s Office and IBP attorneys, Regional Trial Court judges, representatives from the Prosecutors League of the Philippines, law professors, attorneys from private law firms, legal officers from the local government unit, Commission for Human Rights, Commission on Audit, personnel from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Supreme Court and Court of Tax Appeal personnel, Sandiganbayan, members of the House of Representatives, Civil Society groups, and other private law professionals. The Plea-Bargaining Training has been an advantageous experience for lawyers, giving them a worthwhile knowledge of the plea-bargaining process in drug cases. This facilitates the decrease of the backlog of cases in the courts and the relieving overpopulation in prisons, which not only benefits defendants, but also the courts.
Final ACCESS Closeout Event
On September 15, 2023, ABA ROLI hosted its closeout event, which welcomed over 100 civil society representatives from the subgrantees of ACCESS, and representatives from the Philippines government. The event was headlined by Scott Carlson, Associate Executive Director of the Center for Global Programs, who delivered opening remarks and expressed gratitude to all ACCESS partners, including nineteen subgrantee CSOs, the Supreme Court of the Philippines, Integrated Bar of the Philippines, Philippine Judicial Academy, Department of Justice, Legal Education Board, Public Attorney’s Office, Commission on Human Rights, Philippine Commission on Women, and National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.
Remarks were also delivered by Mohamad Dansoko, the USAID Democracy and Governance Team Lead, who spoke about the goals and impact of the ACCESS program. He thanked ABA ROLI for its outstanding implementation and explicitly stated that ACCESS “could not have been entrusted to a better organization.”
The Keynote Remarks were delivered by Senior Associate Justice and Acting Chief Justice, Honorable Marvic Mario Victor F. Leonen, who emphasized that “access to justice, therefore, means not only explaining or translating the law for our people but constantly revisiting its interpretation, so it becomes more responsive to their needs and more relevant to our present contexts.”
