Rule of Law: Legal Aid for Marginalized Groups

This project aims to improve access to legal aid services for marginalized groups in China including ethnic minorities. The project provides technical assistance to improve legal aid services in the provinces of Yunnan Jilin and Liaoning all of which have significant ethnic minority populations. The project works primarily with their Provincial Legal Aid Centres (PLACs) and emphasizes improvements to legal aid for remote areas in these provinces. Pilot models are implemented for improving public legal education training for legal aid workers and better management of the provincial legal aid system. In turn these pilots can be used as models for dissemination to other provinces with less-developed legal aid systems.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: (i) increased availability of legal services for children and youth (girls and boys); (ii) increased awareness and demand for legal services by children youth (girls and boys) and their families; and (iii) improved quality of legal services provided to children and youth (girls and boys).