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Abstract This paper presents the results of a scoping review that examines the extent to which legal empowerment has been used as a strategy in efforts to improve access to quality health services in low- and middle-income countries. The review identifies lessons learned regarding legal empowerment program strategy, as well as impact on health empowerment and health outcomes, research gaps, areas of consensus and tension in the field. The review included three main sources of data: 1) peer-reviewed literature, 2) grey literature, and 3) interviews with key legal empowerment stakeholders. Peer-reviewed and grey literature were identified via keyword searches, and interviewees were identified by searching an organizational database and snowball sampling. The key findings were: first, there is very limited documentation on the use of legal empowerment strategies for improving health services. Second, the legal empowerment approach tends to be focussed on issues that communities themselves prioritize, often narrowly defined local challenges. However, legal empowerment as a strategy that pursues collective and individual remedies has the potential to contribute to structural change. Third, for this potential to be realised, legal empowerment entails building capacity of service providers and other duty bearers on health and related rights. Finally, the review also highlights the importance of trust—trust in state institutions, trust in the paralegals who support the process and trust in the channels of engagement with public authorities for grievance redress. Several gaps also became evident through the review, including lack of work on private health providers, lack of discussion of the ‘empowerment’ effects of legal empowerment programs, and limited exploration of risk and sustainability. The paper concludes with a caution that practitioners need to start with the health challenges they are trying to address, and then assess whether legal empowerment is an appropriate approach, rather than seeing it as a silver bullet.

This paper presents the results of a scoping review that examines the extent to which legal empowerment has been used as a strategy in efforts to improve access to quality health services in low- and middle-income countries. The review identifies lessons learned regarding legal empowerment program strategy, as well as impact on health empowerment and health outcomes, research gaps, areas of consensus and tension in the field. The review included three main sources of data: 1) peer-reviewed literature, 2) grey literature, and 3) interviews with key legal empowerment stakeholders. Peer-reviewed and grey literature were identified via keyword searches, and interviewees were identified by searching an organizational database and snowball sampling. The key findings were: first, there is very limited documentation on the use of legal empowerment strategies for improving health services. Second, the legal empowerment approach tends to be focussed on issues that communities themselves prioritize, often narrowly defined local challenges. However, legal empowerment as a strategy that pursues collective and individual remedies has the potential to contribute to structural change. Third, for this potential to be realised, legal empowerment entails building capacity of service providers and other duty bearers on health and related rights. Finally, the review also highlights the importance of trust—trust in state institutions, trust in the paralegals who support the process and trust in the channels of engagement with public authorities for grievance redress. Several gaps also became evident through the review, including lack of work on private health providers, lack of discussion of the 'empowerment' effects of legal empowerment programs, and limited exploration of risk and sustainability. The paper concludes with a caution that practitioners need to start with the health challenges they are trying to address, and then assess whether legal empowerment is an appropriate approach, rather than seeing it as a silver bullet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancestral groups of the Colombia, historically have experienced and resisted activities of resource extractivism, today suffer a more sophisticated level of this long and uninterrupted process: cultural extractivism. The research results that are visible in this reflection article address a global characterization with local impact of the trend called biopiracy. For this reason, it is intended to analyze with the methodologies of legal hermeneutics, the category of bioprospecting of unconventional knowledge of ancestral groups; the global panorama and the new socio-legal realities that this mega trend is provoking are also pointed out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Legal empowerment and social accountability are two strategies that are increasingly used to address gaps in healthcare in low- and middle-income countries, including failure to provide services that should be available and poor clinical and interpersonal quality of care. This paper is an explanatory case study of a legal empowerment effort that employs community paralegals and trains Village Health Committees (VHCs) in Mozambique. The research objective was to explore how community paralegals solved cases, the impact paralegals had on health services, and how their work affected the relationship between the community and the health sector at the local level. Methods The case study had two components: (1) a retrospective review of 24 cases of patient/community grievances about the health system, and (2) qualitative investigation of the program and program context. The case reviews were accomplished by conducting structured in-depth interviews (IDIs) with those directly involved in the case. The qualitative investigation entailed semi-structured Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with district, provincial, and national health managers and Namati staff. In addition, focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with Health Advocates and VHC members. Results Case resolution conferred a sense of empowerment to clients, brought immediate, concrete improvements in health service quality at the health facilities concerned, and seemingly instigated a virtuous circle of rights-claiming. The program also engendered incipient improvements in relations between clients and the health system. We identified three key mechanisms underlying case resolution, including: bolstered administrative capacity within the health sector, reduced transaction and political costs for health providers, and provider fear of administrative sanction. Conclusions This study contributes to the limited literature regarding the mechanisms of legal empowerment case resolution in health systems and the impact of hybrid legal empowerment and social accountability approaches. Future research might assess the sustainability of case resolution; how governance at central, provincial, and district level is affected by similar programs; and to what extent the mix of different cases addressed by legal empowerment influences the success of the program.

Abstract Background All around the world, the paralegal program prepares members of marginalized communities to face the legal system. Having a common background with their clients and being capable of conducting flexible work, paralegals’ role moves beyond enlarging the beneficiaries of legal aid to addressing intersectional issues around health-related rights. This study assesses the health and other impacts of paralegals recruited by Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Masyarakat (LBHM), a human rights organization which provides legal assistance and operates in Jakarta, Indonesia. The positive results these paralegals can bring in the specific context can contribute to the development of community-based paralegals elsewhere. Methods This mixed methods research was carried out in 2016–2018. In 2016, a quantitative survey was administered to LBHM-trained paralegals and a sub-set of paralegals who completed the survey were then also interviewed. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS, and, for the qualitative data, thematic analysis was conducted. Results The paralegals make important contributions to health-related rights in four distinct ways. Firstly, most of the paralegals checked their clients’ health in all stages of detention, especially regarding their drug dependency status and checking for signs of torture. Secondly, paralegals help clients to be more aware of their health-related rights, especially regarding their rights to obtain health services inside detention. Thirdly, paralegals can ensure that their clients obtain health services by taking medicines directly to the clients or encouraging the law enforcement agencies to refer the clients to health services. Lastly, in drug cases, paralegals help their clients to obtain alternative sentences besides imprisonment. Conclusions These four contributions verify the positive impacts paralegals, recruited from marginalized communities, can deliver for community members facing criminal justice processes. The shifting role of paralegals from merely an intermediary between clients and lawyers to champions of the health-related rights of their clients can happen as a result of adequate training, support, and networks with other agents in criminal justice system.

This study offers a contribution to the literature on access to justice and legal empowerment. It presents findings from qualitative empirical legal research and explores how obtaining access to justice contributes to conflict resolution. Fifty-four in-depth interviews were conducted with victims of domestic violence who had obtained access to the Public Prosecutor's Office of the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina) with a domestic violence complaint. The study found that these victims benefitted from obtaining access to justice even when this did not directly achieve resolution of their conflict. The benefits were related to the actions taken by legal organisations contributing to their own perceptions of being agents capable of making decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Muslim converts in Malaysia are not well-informed of their rights and the legal implications of conversion to Islam. Implementing legal pluralism, particularly the different sets of personal laws that apply to Muslims and non-Muslims, sends the converts, their non-Muslim families, and the religious authorities into bitter legal battles whenever an individual converts to Islam. Furthermore, as religious institutions currently offer no legal literacy program, some Muslim converts are unclear regarding the course of action they should take whenever legal issues are involved, especially from the aspects of identity change; civil marriage dissolution; matrimonial properties distribution; child custody and guardianship; determination of child's and the deceased's religion; and inheritance and derivative pension distribution. Therefore, this research explores Muslim converts' perspectives on the need for and development of legal literacy regarding rights and legal implications of conversion to Islam. This study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews with 9 participants who were all Muslim converts. Each interview was transcribed verbatim, and the data were analysed with NVIVO software based on a thematic approach. The research found that all participants unanimously agreed to empower Muslim converts with legal literacy, considering many are not well-informed of the legal implications of conversion to Islam, despite it directly affecting their personal lives, family dynamic, and the multicultural society in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to contribute to the current academic and policy debate on the values of determining whether a particular human rights violation was caused by a corrupt behavior; and to defend a human rights-based approach to corruption, based on its added socio-legal values. With this purpose, it analyzes and compares the legal reasoning and socio-legal dynamics of three human rights court cases involving and not involving corruption. By applying a directed content analysis combined with a socio-legal interpretative technique, the study explores and compares the rationality and the values addressed in both corrupt and non-corrupt cases. The results reveal that there are interconnected and mutually reinforcing socio-legal values in applying a human rights lens to combating corruption: (i) it is an improvement towards the justiciability of economic and social rights; (ii) it is a change of paradigm from the insufficient criminal approach to a focus on the social harm; and (iii) it is a more satisfactory approach to the overlapping harmful effects of corruption and inequality. The combination of these values can be used as a legal empowerment strategy, with a particular social accountability dimension, in order to strengthen the disadvantaged, and fight the encroachment caused by corruption on the enjoyment of human rights, especially economic and social rights.

Sri Lanka's long civil war (1983–2009) resulted in large-scale personal, physical and social trauma and a high number of deaths. Furthermore, many people became disabled due to the war. Disabled people in Sri Lanka have often been marginalized and excluded from the public sphere. Whilst there are initiatives to support disabled people from both the State and Non-Governmental Organisations, support often adopts a charity-based approach which has been criticised for contributing to marginalisation and the dependency of disabled people on others. Performing Empowerment (2016–18) was a research project that responded to this context by seeking to examine whether combining dance workshops with human rights education might lead to greater legal empowerment for disabled people in Sri Lanka. In this paper, I reflect on the experiences of five Tamil women who took part in the project, outlining how they gained confidence and rights awareness which enabled them to self-advocate and make changes to their everyday lives, demonstrating increased legal empowerment. I argue that this change arose in part through different forms of performance that they experienced within the workshops, which enabled a series of transportations from their daily lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Legal empowerment and social accountability are two strategies that are increasingly used to address gaps in healthcare in low- and middle-income countries, including failure to provide services that should be available and poor clinical and interpersonal quality of care. This paper is an explanatory case study of a legal empowerment effort that employs community paralegals and trains Village Health Committees (VHCs) in Mozambique. The research objective was to explore how community paralegals solved cases, the impact paralegals had on health services, and how their work affected the relationship between the community and the health sector at the local level.Methods: The case study had two components: (1) a retrospective review of 24 cases of patient/community grievances about the health system, and (2) qualitative investigation of the program and program context. The case reviews were accomplished by conducting structured in-depth interviews (IDIs) with those directly involved in the case. The qualitative investigation entailed semi-structured Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with district, provincial, and national health managers and Namati staff. In addition, focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with Health Advocates and VHC members.Results: Case resolution conferred a sense of empowerment to clients, brought immediate, concrete improvements in health service quality at the health facilities concerned, and seemingly instigated a virtuous circle of rights-claiming. The program also engendered incipient improvements in relations between clients and the health system. We identified three key mechanisms underlying case resolution, including: bolstered administrative capacity within the health sector, reduced transaction and political costs for health providers, and provider fear of administrative sanction.Conclusions: This study contributes to the limited literature regarding the mechanisms of legal empowerment case resolution in health systems and the impact of hybrid legal empowerment and social accountability approaches. Future research might assess the sustainability of case resolution; how governance at central, provincial, and district level is affected by similar programs; and to what extent the mix of different cases addressed by legal empowerment influences the success of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: All around the world, the paralegal program prepares members of marginalized communities to face the legal system. Having a common background with their clients and being capable of conducting flexible work, paralegals' role moves beyond enlarging the beneficiaries of legal aid to addressing intersectional issues around health-related rights. This study assesses the health and other impacts of paralegals recruited by Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Masyarakat (LBHM), a human rights organization which provides legal assistance and operates in Jakarta, Indonesia. The positive results these paralegals can bring in the specific context can contribute to the development of community-based paralegals elsewhere. Methods: This mixed methods research was carried out in 2016–2018. In 2016, a quantitative survey was administered to LBHM-trained paralegals and a sub-set of paralegals who completed the survey were then also interviewed. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS, and, for the qualitative data, thematic analysis was conducted. Results: The paralegals make important contributions to health-related rights in four distinct ways. Firstly, most of the paralegals checked their clients' health in all stages of detention, especially regarding their drug dependency status and checking for signs of torture. Secondly, paralegals help clients to be more aware of their health-related rights, especially regarding their rights to obtain health services inside detention. Thirdly, paralegals can ensure that their clients obtain health services by taking medicines directly to the clients or encouraging the law enforcement agencies to refer the clients to health services. Lastly, in drug cases, paralegals help their clients to obtain alternative sentences besides imprisonment. Conclusions: These four contributions verify the positive impacts paralegals, recruited from marginalized communities, can deliver for community members facing criminal justice processes. The shifting role of paralegals from merely an intermediary between clients and lawyers to champions of the health-related rights of their clients can happen as a result of adequate training, support, and networks with other agents in criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the settings for forming a delimitation of competence between Russian Federation and its regions in the field of social security. The Author makes a conclusion about the historical preconditions of the conception of legal regulation in the sphere of social security.

Although the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises procedural rights of the child in addition to substantive rights, it is rather silent on the fundamental right to an effective remedy. The concept of access to justice for children has nevertheless emerged in the past decades and manifested itself firmly in the international human rights and sustainable development agendas. Access to justice is grounded in the right of the child to seek remedies in case of (alleged) rights violations. It implies legal empowerment of children and access to justice mechanisms and remedies that are child-sensitive. So far, access to justice, with a specific focus on children, lacks careful consideration, conceptualisation and contextualisation in academic research and writing. This contribution explores the meaning of access to justice for children, as a right and procedural concept, and paves the way for the development of a more specific research and implementation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to contribute to the current academic and policy debate on the values of determining whether a particular human rights violation was caused by a corrupt behavior; and to defend a human rights-based approach to corruption, based on its added socio-legal values. With this purpose, it analyzes and compares the legal reasoning and socio-legal dynamics of three human rights court cases involving and not involving corruption. By applying a directed content analysis combined with a socio-legal interpretative technique, the study explores and compares the rationality and the values addressed in both corrupt and non-corrupt cases. The results reveal that there are interconnected and mutually reinforcing socio-legal values in applying a human rights lens to combating corruption: (i) it is an improvement towards the justiciability of economic and social rights; (ii) it is a change of paradigm from the insufficient criminal approach to a focus on the social harm; and (iii) it is a more satisfactory approach to the overlapping harmful effects of corruption and inequality. The combination of these values can be used as a legal empowerment strategy, with a particular social accountability dimension, in order to strengthen the disadvantaged, and fight the encroachment caused by corruption on the enjoyment of human rights, especially economic and social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Citizen-based accountability strategies to improve the lives of the poor and marginalized groups are increasingly being used in efforts to improve basic public services. The latest thinking suggests that broader, multi-pronged, multi-level, strategic approaches that may overcome the limitations of narrow, localized successes, hold more promise. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities, in theory and practice, posed by the integration of two such citizen-based accountability strategies—social accountability and legal empowerment. It traces the foundations of each of these approaches to highlight the potential benefits of integration. Consequently it examines whether these benefits have been realized in practice, by drawing upon five cases of organizations pursuing integration of social accountability and legal empowerment for health accountability in Macedonia, Guatemala, Uganda, and India. The cases highlight that while integration offers some promise in advancing the cause of social change, it also poses challenges for organizations in terms of strategies they pursue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World governments have embraced 'legal empowerment' as an end in itself and as an essential element in the fight against poverty. Civil society groups work to advance legal empowerment around the globe but, to date, there is not a comprehensive understanding of the impact of those efforts. This article offers the first review and mapping of existing evidence on legal empowerment. We identified and analyzed 199 studies in total. These studies span every major continent and address a wide range of legal empowerment interventions, such as legal literacy, community-based paralegals, and use of right to information laws. The breadth and richness of this body of work suggest we should revisit previous perceptions that there is little evidence on what legal empowerment can achieve. Stronger agency-both people's willingness to act and actual action-as well as increased legal knowledge are the most common positive impacts reported in this collection of evidence. The evidence also suggests legal empowerment programs can lead to acquisition of legal remedies, effective conflict resolution, and even improvements in health and education outcomes. Nearly ninety studies find positive impacts of legal empowerment programs on institutions-changes in law, policy or practice at various levels of administration. After exploring distributions and trends in the evidence, the article concludes by identifying gaps and questions for further inquiry to guide future research and, ultimately, promote stronger, more evidence-based practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Legal empowerment of the poor is highly relevant to public health as it aims to relieve income poverty, a main determinant of health. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) has proposed legal empowerment measures in the following four domains: access to justice and the rule of law, property, labor, and business rights. Despite being overrepresented among the poor, CLEP has not explicitly considered the situation of people with disabilities. Objectives: To examine the empirical evidence for the relevance of the CLEP legal empowerment measures to people with disabilities in low- and lower middle-income countries, and to evaluate the extent to which the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) addresses those measures. Methods: Critical literature review of empirical studies and a checklist assessment of the CRPD. Results: Fourteen included articles confirm that people with disabilities experience problems in the domains of access to justice and the rule of law, labor rights, and business rights. No texts on property rights were found. Evidence for the effectiveness of the proposed measures is insufficient. Overall, the CRPD fully or partially supports two-thirds of the proposed measures (seven out of nine measures for access to justice and the rule of law, none of the five measures for property rights, all seven measures for labor rights, and six out of nine measures for business rights). Conclusions: Although most of the domains of the CLEP legal empowerment measures are relevant to people with disabilities from both empirical and normative perspectives, it is uncertain whether the devised measures are of immediate relevance to them. Further research is warranted in this regard.