Justice for the poor
Thursday, 31 December 2009
WHAT the newly appointed Chief Justice observed in an interview with the media recently is full of significance. The Chief Justice appointee will have only a short stint in power. He would be eligible for retirement in due course soon after taking charge in February of the new year. But as he remarked, he would devote himself in this brief period to provide justice to the poor. Realistically, he may not accomplish much in this short time. However, one would like to hope that he would leave behind a mission objective to be carefully considered and zealously pursued by his successors.
The grave lapses in the country's legal system as related to delivery of justice to the poor came into sharp focus in a roundtable discussion sometime ago where it was noted that many people have been languishing in jail without trial for years. This was a stark admission of facts about how severely violated human rights can be in a setting like Bangladesh. Here the poor are specially and extremely vulnerable to violations of their basic rights due to their poverty and hence inability to access the judicial system.
It is very likely that these people are mainly from poor sections of society who are either not knowledgeable about their human rights or do not have the financial strength to appoint lawyers to move for their release or bail in the interim period until their cases come to the court. Ordinarily, the state should conduct judicial proceedings against them or even provid legal assistance to them free of charge to complete the cases against them, keeping in jail only those who would be legally convicted. The lack of adjudication could be for various reasons. But whatever the reasons, these unfortunate persons were being made to suffer internment and all the sufferings thereof, without a legal basis.
Bangladesh has about 45 per cent of its people with an existence below the poverty line or a little above it. The capacity of the poverty liners or their near equivalents to access the courts in the form of paying various court fees and the engaging of lawyers, is understandably limited or they simply do not have such capacity. This means that such a vast body of people are outside the ambit of legal services. A society with such a large number of people unable to use legal services adequately cannot be deemed as one sufficiently governed by law or getting the benefits of the rule of law.
Even in the developed countries, governments make sizeable allocations from the public purse for the poor and disadvantaged groups to access legal services free of cost. Bangladesh only has the rudiments of such officially provided legal aid. Some non-government organisations (NGOs) are providing such legal services in a scattered manner but their activities are too small compared to the need. Therefore, the establishment of rule of law in Bangladesh also requires making the legal system accessible to the maximum number in the population.
Clearly, it is imperative to allocate greater amounts from the national budget towards providing legal aid to the poor in a wider form to include a far greater number of beneficiaries than now. However, only increasing allocations to this end will not lead to attaining the desired goal if the administration of the legal aid system remains afflicted by corruption and inefficiency. Thus both allocation increases and scrupulous and effective administration of legal aid programmes need to be organised and targeted.
The grave lapses in the country's legal system as related to delivery of justice to the poor came into sharp focus in a roundtable discussion sometime ago where it was noted that many people have been languishing in jail without trial for years. This was a stark admission of facts about how severely violated human rights can be in a setting like Bangladesh. Here the poor are specially and extremely vulnerable to violations of their basic rights due to their poverty and hence inability to access the judicial system.
It is very likely that these people are mainly from poor sections of society who are either not knowledgeable about their human rights or do not have the financial strength to appoint lawyers to move for their release or bail in the interim period until their cases come to the court. Ordinarily, the state should conduct judicial proceedings against them or even provid legal assistance to them free of charge to complete the cases against them, keeping in jail only those who would be legally convicted. The lack of adjudication could be for various reasons. But whatever the reasons, these unfortunate persons were being made to suffer internment and all the sufferings thereof, without a legal basis.
Bangladesh has about 45 per cent of its people with an existence below the poverty line or a little above it. The capacity of the poverty liners or their near equivalents to access the courts in the form of paying various court fees and the engaging of lawyers, is understandably limited or they simply do not have such capacity. This means that such a vast body of people are outside the ambit of legal services. A society with such a large number of people unable to use legal services adequately cannot be deemed as one sufficiently governed by law or getting the benefits of the rule of law.
Even in the developed countries, governments make sizeable allocations from the public purse for the poor and disadvantaged groups to access legal services free of cost. Bangladesh only has the rudiments of such officially provided legal aid. Some non-government organisations (NGOs) are providing such legal services in a scattered manner but their activities are too small compared to the need. Therefore, the establishment of rule of law in Bangladesh also requires making the legal system accessible to the maximum number in the population.
Clearly, it is imperative to allocate greater amounts from the national budget towards providing legal aid to the poor in a wider form to include a far greater number of beneficiaries than now. However, only increasing allocations to this end will not lead to attaining the desired goal if the administration of the legal aid system remains afflicted by corruption and inefficiency. Thus both allocation increases and scrupulous and effective administration of legal aid programmes need to be organised and targeted.