Taking law to the community

EMPOWERMENT through Law of the Common People (ELCOP) has organised the 15th session of Human Rights Summer School (HRSS) from 10-22 October, 2014 at PROSHIKA HRDC, koitta, Manikganj on 'Human Rights and Religion'. 48 law students of 12 universities from home and abroad attended this intensive, residential training workshop. HRSS is the brain child of Prof. Dr. Mizanur Rahman, honorable Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, who dreams to create a group of rebellious lawyers who will challenge the status quo and work together with the poor for ensuring equality, human dignity and social justice in the society. For that purpose, HRSS introduces unique clinical method of training which include community visit, presentation efficiency, brain storming, capacity building to work in a team effectively, lecture sessions conducted by the experts.

The community visits have been an integral part and one of the main highlights of the HRSS for last fourteen years. The objectives of community visits are to discover the legal grievances of the minorities, indigenous or other marginalised communities; to suggest specific measures whereby deprivations and grievances may, as far as practicable, be remedied by effecting reforms of the existing customary and legal framework of each of the communities; to suggest specific recommendation and action plan to the Government, NGOs as well as other policy makers to improve socio-economic condition of target communities and to create a group of potential motivators and community leaders.  

This is an intensive field research designed to know and examine various aspects of their community life; their lifestyle, culture, religion, custom, laws, traditional economy. The research reflects their legal as well as non-legal problems and with recommendations for their empowerment by highlighting the solution of their problems and by bringing them alongside the mainstream population.

In our country, the curriculum of mainstream law schools often lacks the vital component of legal education which is the “social purpose of legal rules”. The HRSS has been successful in many ways in incorporating this method of learning. Different aspects of legal rules such as its relevance to the common people, their attitudes towards these and the legal system, the various problems access to the legal system are some of the issues that can be investigated through community visits.

Community visits help law students to gain insight into different human rights issues particularly to differentiate between law in books and law in reality and inform the students about the social context of the legal rules beyond the classroom. Through interactions with the marginalised people, sharing their concerns and thoughts, understanding the pains and sufferings of those people during community visit; the participants get inspired and prepared to become the sentinels of human rights who will uphold the motto of the school 'Lawyering with the poor is lawyering for justice'.

The writer is Student of Law, University of Dhaka & Participant of 15th HRSS.