LAB boss in Vienna to discuss access to Justice

The Executive Director of the Legal Aid Board, Ms. Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanciles left the shores of Sierra Leone on Sunday, May 21 for Vienna, Austria to attend a conference to examine challenges to measuring the Sustainable Development Goals (SGD) target 16.3 on access to justice at national and international level.

In particular, it will discuss what the current indicators say about access to justice in the various countries and the work of international organizations, government bodies and civil society on how to measure effectively access to justice and pretrial detention practices.

The meeting is a side event organized by the Open Society Justice Initiative and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Research and Justice Sections during the UNODC Crime Commission Session in Vienna, Austria. The side event is support by the Government of Sierra Leone and the Legal Aid Board of Sierra Leone.

Ms. Carlton-Hanciles will be one of four speakers at the side event. The others are Eduardo Queiroz, the Public Defender, Federal Public Defender Office of Brazil; Martin Schonteich, Senior Managing Legal Officer, Open Society Justice Initiative and Enrico Bisogno, Chief, Data Development and Dissemination Unit at UNODC.

She will talk on the implementation of the legal aid scheme in Sierra Leone underlining successes in expanding access to justice to communities through the recruitment and training of paralegals within the community, establishment of Community Advisory Bureaus and legal education through outreach to schools and Communities.  

Ms. Carlton-Hanciles will also say the Board has set itself the task of reducing the proportion of indigent persons including those on remand without legal aid to 20 percent by 2030. This will be achieved by opening more offices around the country, recruiting more lawyers, Mediators and Alternative Dispute Resolution Officers, Outreach Officers and Paralegals from the community and establishing Community Advisory Bureaus around the country.  

The Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative in Budapest, Mr. Zaza Namoradze had this to say regarding Ms. Carlton-Hanciles’ invitation to the side event: ‘Her knowledge and expertise on access to justice and wider pretrial justice issues in the context of Sierra Leone and wider Sustainable Development Goals agenda would greatly contribute to expert discussions.’

Prior to departing our shores, Ms. Carlton-Hanciles had spent the weekend in Koidu, Kono District for the launch of the Legal Aid Board on Saturday, May 20. She had offered no apologies when the Deputy Chairperson of the Council of Paramount Chiefs in the Kono District, Paramount Chief Tamba Emmanual Foyoh criticized the Board for defending sexual penetration cases.  ‘The State Counsel and Police are there to prosecute, we are there to defend the poor and vulnerable,’ she said. ‘Justice must be fair and equitable.’