The ABA Rule of Law Initiative’s (ABA ROLI’s) Access to Justice and Human Rights programs span women’s rights, mining and transitional justice.
Increasing women’s access to justice
With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ABA ROLI is helping to build the capacity of Guinean women’s and human rights organizations to increase access to formal and informal justice mechanisms by employing a range of legal strategies—including legal aid clinics, community-based paralegal networks and strategic litigation—to protect and enforce women’s rights under Guinean law.
Protecting the rights of communities adversely impacted by industrial mining
While efforts have been made to increase transparency and good governance in Guinea’s extractive industries sector, industrial mining projects continue to impact the communities in which they are located. Following President Condé’s election, the Guinean government began the process of revising the country’s mining code and related secondary legislation. As part of this effort, ABA ROLI and the Guinean organization Le Centre du Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE or Center for International Commerce and Development) in 2012 assisted the government to draft legislation and policy documents that describe how the mining code’s provisions on environmental impact assessments, local development funds, and compensation and resettlement standards will be implemented in practice. With support from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, ABA ROLI worked with CECIDE to solicit public input into the proposed policies and provided direct technical assistance to relevant ministries charged with the drafting process.
Exploring participatory models of transitional justice
Additionally, ABA ROLI conducted a pilot project that considered how to use participatory research to involve communities in policymaking related to transitional justice. ABA ROLI, in partnership with Guinean human rights organization Les Mêmes Droits pour Tous (MDT or Equal Rights for All), supported a Guinean community’s efforts to examine how it can work with authorities to deal with the consequences of gross human rights violations. The pilot project was featured as a case study in a forthcoming ABA ROLI-authored USAID technical