Quality and Accessible Legal Aid

This project aims to increase equitable access to justice for Ukrainian citizens particularly individuals from marginalized groups. Ukraine’s poor and most vulnerable citizens are unable to protect their rights and interests through the courts – often challenged with prohibitively expensive legal costs and a lack of awareness as to the legal support available to them through the newly established free legal aid system. This project is providing Canadian technical assistance to support the implementation and sustainable operation of the legal aid system and to raise awareness among Ukrainian citizens as to their rights for legal aid support. Some activities include: (i) building the required human resource capacity within the broad stakeholder community to increase its ability to deliver and monitor quality legal aid services for citizens; (ii) establishing the required policies procedures and systems including an information management system supporting gender-disaggregated data collection and analysis to support the sustainable operation and monitoring of the legal aid system; and (iii) supporting targeted civil society organizations across Ukraine in developing outreach and communications activities to increase public awareness of legal aid services; and (iv) establishing a community engagement fund to provide grants or contributions to legal aid clinics and civil society organizations to address issues and barriers faced by vulnerable Ukrainian citizens especially women when using and accessing legal aid services.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: (i) increased effectiveness of legal aid service providers and managers to respond to citizens’ needs; and (ii) increased use of gender-sensitive legal aid services by women men and children from vulnerable groups.