AFGHANISTAN: Efforts to improve access to justice in rural areas

KABUL, 15 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - A new multi-million dollar project will promote public access to justice in rural areas of Afghanistan. According to officials at the Italian Embassy in the capital, Kabul, the initiative is to promote access to justice in selected districts of the country in the framework of human rights protection. The project aims to benefit from the traditional and communal justice systems that currently operate in remote areas of the post-conflict country.

"The project will strengthen civil society and prepare the people to understand what they are entitled to and what they can request," Ambassador Jolanda Brunetti, the government of Italy's special coordinator for the Justice Programme, told IRIN after the project was launched in Kabul. Italy is the lead nation in the programme.

"We are trying to harmonise the activities of the courts of elders that already exist in the countryside and districts, with the formal justice system," she added.

With low literacy rates and after decades of war, there is little or no legal awareness in rural areas. At the same time, the crumbling Afghan judicial system is too poor to reach people.

According to Brunetti, 80 percent of justice in Afghanistan is administered informally. "If the Justice Programme in Afghanistan were only to focus on developing the formal justice sector, we would be marginalised in our efforts and our achievements."

The 6 million euro project will run for 30 months in up to 60 districts of Afghanistan. It is funded by the European Commission (EC), with a 5 million euro contribution from Rome.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will implement the project, in close partnership with Afghan judicial institutions, to deliver awareness programmes and extend infrastructure development to more remote areas.

"The public awareness campaign will increase the judicial literacy of the population and inform them of what their expectations should be from justice," Karen Jorgensen, UNDP Country Director, told IRIN.

The EC/UNDP project addresses community needs by creating both the institutional capacity to deliver justice services, as well as the community capacity to seek and demand justice services, she explained.

The awareness programme includes an education component that targets families, women and children in communities where informal justice has traditionally been administered, she added.

Samander Ali, a resident of the northern Baghlan province, told IRIN that people lacked even basic legal awareness in remote districts. Ali pointed to a government decree in 2002 which banned taxation of farmers by local commanders, but the practice still continued. "People think it is the right of a commander to tax them a tenth of their harvest every year," he noted.

Ali, a civil servant, added that the absence of police, judges or public institutions meant that the law rested with traditional tribal councils which were unelected, uninformed and very conservative in outlook.

Legal experts in Kabul say there is a great need to strengthen the district and provincial legal services before any legal public awareness campaigns.

"How can we ensure access to a justice system that does not exist or is very poor?" Abdul Kabir Ranjbar, a professor of law and head of the Lawyers' Union of Afghanistan, asked IRIN. "Even in Kabul the legal system is terribly poor and people do not have access to justice," he added.

Meanwhile, officials at the Ministry of Justice say that, due to severe technical and financial problems, legal services in the country do not operate very well.

"For example, no provincial or district prosecution office has any means of transport, communications or equipment, or up-to-date training," Abdul Halim Samadi, deputy attorney-general, told IRIN.

Despite these challenges, aid bodies at the Afghan Justice Programme believe that with the new initiative they will be able to develop structures and capacities to deliver justice where it is needed - at the level of the individual citizen.

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