Access to Justice in Colombia
A WHT Pro Bono Project by Laura Aristizábal
An infographic on barriers to accessing justice in Colombia developed by WHT Scholar, Laura Aristizabal (Colombia, MBA, Louis Dreyfus - Weidenfeld and Hoffmann)
In Colombia, more than 11000 lawyers graduate annually from the 137 programs in the Country that are recognized by the Ministry of Education. The rate of lawyers per one hundred thousand inhabitants is 438 in Colombia, whereas it is 72 in France and 23 in Japan. On the other hand, the population does not know its fundamental rights and the existing knowledge is not homogeneous among its different groups. From the general population, 65% expresses knowing their rights, but this decreases drastically as one reaches the population living in extreme poverty (28%). In spite of the initiatives developed in Colombia to empower people in matters of law, there is no continuity nor clear policy. In addition, it could be determined that, of the population in the middle of a conflict, most decide not to do anything and, from those who decide to do something (43%), only 10% come to the attention of the judges, which might be an indicator of access barriers.
Access to justice for poor people is not recognized by the population as a right but as a privilege and it is only guaranteed by the Public Ministry and by the Consultorios Jurídicos (mandatory social work for law students). This leads to the fact that citizens who most need a lawyer, leave their cases in hands of the most inexperienced people.
When I was studying law I decided, taking a first step towards theseidentified needs, to do legal consulting brigades for people with low income. Whileworking in field, this project enabled me to test and validate the hypothesis Ihad, that low-income populations are not aware of all their rights.
On these brigades, we went once every 3 months (more formallysince June 2015) with two other lawyers, to forgotten and underprivilegedneighborhoods and spent whole afternoons with members of the communities inorder to help solve their concerns.
As part of my Weidenfeld Hoffmann programme, I continued todevelop these legal brigades, where some cases that can be worked online weresent to me on a monthly basis. Since I started my MBA at Oxford, I havepersonally worked in 21 cases of a pool of more than 135 cases. Topics wentfrom family (32%), criminal (28%) and labor law (19%), to simpler requests suchas understanding how to process paperwork in public entities in Colombia (21%).
Approaches for addressing 'Access Barriers' in Colombia, by Laura Aristizabal
As a result, fromthese brigades, first as a group and then as an individual, and since June2015, we have helped 412 people than under regular conditions would have neverreached a lawyer to solve their inquiries or cases, while saving them more than30.000 USD in legal fees, employing more than 20 graduated lawyers for about 15dollars per inquiry. Today, we have 412 additional Colombians that understandtheir rights and are able to get access to justice through the help of a groupof young lawyers that are starting their careers as practitioners.
Working on thosecases from Oxford has been a rewarding experience where I has been able to alsohelp some of my users with personal budgeting and entrepreneurship online consultations(taking advantage of the skills I’ve acquired during my MBA).
Also, I’ve been able to mapthe system of access barriers to justice in Colombia (Infographic below) tounderstand better the environment I’m working on to think about viable solutionsto eliminate the barriers in the system and to build sustainable solutions inmy country.
