Poverty: a new front in the war

Launched on 18 June 2015 at the Law Society (of England & Wales), Oxfam Lawyers Against Poverty is a collective of individuals from the legal community which identifies key legal projects that will make a difference to the poorest and most vulnerable people. These individuals then pool their combined skills and funding to give people greater knowledge of their rights and provide access to justice to help them break free from poverty.

Recently I was part of a delegation of lawyers from Oxfam Lawyers Against Poverty who visited Tajikistan to work with the Oxfam team based in the capital, Dushanbe, on issues such as legal education and women’s rights. This is an account of our visit and Lawyers Against Poverty’s current projects in the country.

Assistance to the Tajik Government

Our delegation met with several Tajik politicians in Dushanbe, including Rustam Shohmurod, of the Ministry of Justice, and Mirzoev Hursandmurod, senior adviser of the President Apparatus on Legal Issues. We discussed issues in Tajikistan such as women’s rights and education, and the importance of equality between men and women. These are issues already on the Government’s agenda, with it having recently passed a law on the prevention of domestic violence.

We raised with the ministers Oxfam’s capability of organising assistance for the Government in its international negotiations. Ahead of large international summits, developed nations have teams of lawyers at their disposal in order to protect the interests of their country. However, states such as Tajikistan do not always have access to such specialist legal advice. Oxfam Lawyers Against Poverty is able to mobilise lawyers specialised in the relevant legal area to help governments in their international discussions, such as at current climate change summits.

Legal education issues

Another primary issue for Oxfam is that literacy rates are dropping in rural communities, and greater effort is needed to support the country’s legal profession, including through education. Our delegation therefore met with the deans of the law faculties of the Tajik National University, Mahmadyusuf Imomov, and the Russian-Tajik Slavonic University, Nosirov Khurshed-Talibovich, to discuss legal education in the country.

In Tajik law faculties, around 30% of the students are women. In order to standardise the national level, the country recently introduced national exams for entry into legal studies. However, the fact that the exams are in Russian is an obstacle for women because at the moment the quality of Russian language studies is reducing. Therefore, it is very difficult for women, particularly those coming from rural communities, to access universities. To combat this problem, the Government recently created a programme to encourage women to pursue their university studies, by providing bursaries to allow access to several universities in Dushanbe; however, more progress can still be made.

Lawyers Against Poverty will therefore continue working with Tajik universities to further improve access to legal education and legal resources, particularly for women from rural communities. The possibility of regular exchange programmes between students and professors of Tajik and international institutions is currently being explored, as well as a review of the legal resources that could be provided for use in Tajik law faculties.

Poverty and access to justice

Lawyers Against Poverty also visited Zanjira Avliyoeva, who runs a free mobile legal advice clinic in the southern region of Vaksh, supported by Oxfam. During her visits to the villagers of Vaksh, Zanjira advises around three or four clients a day, the majority of whom are women. Sometimes, she even gives advice while the women work in the fields. Most of the cases in the legal clinic concern land or family disputes. Access to legal aid is limited; however, Zanjira represents her clients for free on these issues before the Tajik courts as well as during mediation proceedings. With the support of Oxfam, Zanjira also organises workshops on matrimonial rights and access to justice in order to educate women in these communities on their rights.

Lawyers Against Poverty aims to put in place a twinning project (starting off in Tajikistan and then expanding to other countries) that aims to link female Tajik lawyers like Zanjira with lawyers in Europe in order to exchange ideas and find solutions together. By building bridges with Tajikistan’s legal associations and lawyers, as well as its law faculties, Lawyers Against Poverty hopes to improve the quality of access to justice, and strengthen the skillset of Tajik lawyers by sharing best practices and supporting legal education development. This twinning project between lawyers around the globe would be the first of its kind.

Finally, we met with Najbiddinova Bibiniso, a recent client of Zanjira, whose husband, a migrant worker (like an eighth of Tajikistan’s population), was killed seven years ago in Russia. As their marriage was never registered, Najbiddinova does not have the right to access important documents such as his death certificate. As a result, she was caught up in a legal battle with her brother-in-law regarding the inheritance of her husband’s property. Now, she and her children risk finding themselves homeless. Unregistered marriages are common in Tajikistan, and after a divorce or the death of a husband women often have no official legal status, leaving them without property rights, alimony and even custody of their children.

Heavily reliant on remittances, much of Tajikistan’s male population regularly migrate to Russia for work, leaving women behind to manage and provide for the households. Lawyers Against Poverty is therefore also focusing on the economic and legal empowerment of rural women in Tajikistan like Najbiddinova, because these communities are some of the poorest and most disenfranchised in the region.

By joining Lawyers Against Poverty, members have the opportunity to vote for legal projects, help steer the strategic direction of Lawyers Against Poverty, volunteer with us, join a working group on specific legal areas (such as legal education and women’s rights), carry out research and attend events.

As a member of the legal community (whether in academia, private practice, in-house, at the bar, in court, a law student, retired, secretary, journalist, administrator or paralegal), you can join Lawyers Against Poverty, contribute to projects such as these around the world and support Oxfam’s work ensuring access to justice and putting an end to poverty.