Pursuing Justice
Strengthening Legal Aid and Detainees’ Rights
AdvocAid provides women and girls in contact with the law with access to justice and upholds their rights within the justice system. We provide legal representation and advice to women and girls in contact with the law through our network of lawyers and paralegals. Through police station monitoring and pushing for alternatives to incarceration, we aim for incarceration to be used as a measure of last resort.
AdvocAid’s access to justice and monitoring work will ensure that women’s rights within the justice system are upheld. We provide psycho-social support to women, girls and their children in detention. We work in partnership, with the police, correctional service and the Independent Police Complaints Board (IPCB), to ensure that international and regional standards are implemented.
Strengthening Legal Education and Empowerment
AdvocAid believes in putting the power of the law in people’s hands. Legal education has always been a key part of our work. Through our paralegals and social workers, we work with women and girls so they can better know, use and shape the laws that impact them to further greater justice for women. We explain laws and procedures to detained women, provide legal education in detention centres so women can better understand the system, work to empower sex workers and market women, and use creative communications and strategic litigation to support women to share their experiences to advocate for change.
Fostering Feminist Legal and Policy Reform
AdvocAid’s individual access to justice work contributes to creating a more gender-responsive justice system through ensuring the specific needs and rights of women and girls are represented, for example by raising gender-specific mitigating factors or ensuring bail conditions take into account a woman’s particular circumstances.
We create systemic change for women and girls, and look to create greater impact, not only in Sierra Leone but internationally through partnerships, such as our work with the Campaign to Decriminalise Petty Offences and our role in the global movement to end over incarceration of women.
