Attorney Mu Hongying gave up a successful private practice in 2002 to dedicate herself fully to helping those who need her most: the poor and rural residents of her county. One of the few brave lawyers pioneering a model indigent defense practice for indigent defense, Attorney Mu is undaunted by the challenge of reforming a criminal justice system that — despite having a solid legal framework on paper — in practice grants defendants few rights.

During one of the interactive sessions, Attorney Mu inspired the assembled training participants with her recent zealous defense of a 15 year old boy. Impoverished, the boy’s family was unable send him to school. To pass the time, the boy began aimlessly playing games at internet cafés. One day, the boy had no money to play and impulsively took a cell phone belonging to another teenager in the café. Subsequently, he was caught running out of the café and detained for many months until trial. During his entire incarceration, his parents never once visited him, leaving the boy feeling depressed and hopeless.

Deeply committed, Attorney Mu visited the boy at the detention center many times. Through this, she learned much about the boy’s life, including how remorseful he was for his conduct. Thereafter, Attorney Mu met with the boy’s parents and persuaded them to talk with their son and provide better support. Because of Attorney Mu’s efforts, the parents began visiting the boy. Ultima-tely, Attorney Mu convinced the court that a non-jail sentence was a just outcome, since the boy now had proper parental support. Attorney Mu’s perse-verance is a prime example of why zealous defense work is so critical. Without her help, the boy likely would have received a long jail sentence.

This September, I took a leave from my job as an assistant state public defender in the Office of the Minnesota State Public Defender to volunteer with IBJ in China. A juvenile defense lawyer with over 24 years practice experience in the US, I was particularly interested in assisting IBJ’s Juvenile Justice Project, a program that aims to improve the quality of indigent defense for children in criminal proceedings, while also promot-ing improved implementation of laws designed to protect the rights of accused juveniles. Through a partnership with the International Senior Lawyers Project (ISLP) in the United States, I learned about this exciting opportunity at IBJ. ISLP began as a small group of retired lawyers from private firms who wanted to find opportunities to use their legal skills as volunteers. The organization continues to grow and now has volunteers in various countries around the world. ISLP agreed to sponsor my trip and helped make the arrangements for me to live in Beijing and volunteer with IBJ over the next three months.

Over the past month, I have learned a great deal about the needs of China’s juvenile justice system. Although by law juveniles are entitled to legal aid, many go through the criminal process without ever seeing a lawyer. Those who do receive appointment of counsel frequently receive substandard legal representation. Often, defense lawyers are appointed to juvenile cases just a few days before trial, preventing them from visiting their clients, asserting their legal rights or presenting any meaningful defense at trial. As a result, the vast majority of juvenile suspects are detained for many months before trial; almost all are convicted and frequently receive jail sentences, even for petty crimes.

Many of the Chinese lawyers I have met are dedicated passionately to the reform of the juvenile justice system, yet lack the skills necessary to bring about meaningful change. I have learned of the need for China’s lawyers to gain practical trial skills and how great a need there is for the international community to help provide that training. China’s juvenile defenders are interested in working on skills such as how to interview juvenile clients, learning about adolescent development and achieving alternatives to incarceration for their juvenile clients. Over the next three months, I am working with IBJ and their Chinese partners to develop a comprehensive juvenile defense manual, a practical guide that will instruct lawyers on best practices for defending accused juveniles.

In the fall of 2007, a few of us were sitting around the conference table at the International Bridges to Justice, discussing IBJ’s programs in China, Cambodia and a nascent initiative in Burundi. IBJ Founder and CEO Karen Tse expressed her enthusiasm with the progress to date… but also an urgency to bring IBJ resources to criminal defenders worldwide. Scale, she said, was the key. “How can we connect and empower a global defender community? How can we set up global systems to systematically address defenders’ needs?”

In IBJ’s JusticeMakers Initiative, Karen might have found an answer.

In the four short months since the launch of www.justicemakers.net, IBJ has connected virtually with more than 2,500 unique web visitors from 125 countries worldwide. And while there is certainly a correlation between site visits and the places where IBJ has programs – we’ve had hundreds (!) of visits from places like Nigeria, Kenya and Pakistan – places where IBJ has yet to initiate activities. (This, in large part due to fantastic partners like Legal Rights Forum of Pakistan whose JusticeMakers poster is on the wall by my desk.)

But this initiative was about more than eyeballs on the internet. With eight $5,000 funding awards on the line, IBJ asked community members to propose concrete actions they could take to curb torture and legal abuse on a local level. After receiving 64 proposals from JusticeMakers in 28 countries, we have now identified 40 Finalists. Among them…

• A human rights curriculum distributed via DVD to local justice officials.
• The public exhibition of incidents of abuse to encourage pro-bono legal support.
• A text messaging service to aid women in the provision of counsel.

The ideas are creative, cost-effective and critical… and if we had the resources, we’d love to see all of these ideas come to fruition.

And while we don’t have the funds to finance all these projects, we do have a JusticeMakers community with an eagerness to engage and a deep understanding of criminal justice. Through JusticeMakers’ People’s Choice Awards, IBJ is empowering the community by making it collectively responsible for the financial fate of their projects. (According to James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of the Crowds, this diverse, global group of criminal justice stakeholders possesses the collective wisdom to determine project of the highest quality.) A final benefit of the People’s Choice Awards is that the applicants are now helping us grow the community at a rate of 60 new users per day – in an effort to get friends and colleagues to endorse their initiative.  (And thanks to partners like i-genius we’re reaching more and more social entrepreneurs people every day.)

So… a year after Karen challenged IBJ to broaden its reach, we’re now in direct contact with thousands of people worldwide. Twelve months after she prioritized defender engagement, these defenders are evaluating criminal justice innovations from around the world. And 52 weeks after she proposed expanding our impact, IBJ is set to seed eight concrete initiatives to curb torture and legal abuse on four continents.

What’s next? Let’s just say that Karen hasn’t stopped challenging the IBJ team. But based upon the commitment, creativity, and capability of my colleagues and the larger JusticeMakers community… the sky’s the limit.

The IBJ Fellow in Cambodia, Ouk Vandeth, recently conducted a training session for criminal defenders. The training was originally planned to accommodate for 15 participants. However, owing to an overwhelming amount of interest in the subject a total of 26 participants were allowed to attend.The subject of the training was the role of the investigating judge and the role of the defender during pre-trial detention. The materials presented focused on the procedures of pre-trial detention, the process for inquiry into the alleged crimes of the accused, the requirement to obtain an arrest warrant, the methods criminal defenders may adopt to request bail on the behalf of their clients and the rights of the accused to appeal the grounds of their detention when the crime they are accused of is not part of the law. All these issues were covered to provide the participants with an important understanding of how to better protect and represent their clients while awaiting trial.

The participants responded very enthusiastically to the training. All the participants found the training very helpful and recognised their need for such training to further carry out their duties. Many indicated at the end of the training that they we would to participate in further IBJ training session because they believed that there was still a lot they could learn about how to represent persons accused of crimes.

Ouk Vandeth has been an IBJ Fellow in Cambodia since 2006. He has many years experience working as a criminal defender in Cambodia and most recently served as the Director of Legal Aid Cambodia. Vandeth was a graduate of one of the earliest law classes in Cambodia aimed at legal defence. Prior to obtaining his law degree, Vandeth served as a police officer in Cambodia working closely with prosecutors and other department officials.

Just wanted to give a shout out to IBJ Summer 2008 Intern Bettina Roberts for being the poster girl for Duke Law’s Public Interest Program. Because of her unique experience - culminating in the training of 100+ Indian legal aid lawyers (photos) - Bettina was profiled by the Duke Law communications department.  An excerpt is below…

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Bettina Roberts ‘10
Roberts, a JD/LLM student, tells how her summer internship with the Geneva-based nonprofit International Bridges to Justice led her to India.

Bettina Roberts ’10 knew she’d be spending the summer working abroad in her pursuit of a JD/LLM in international and comparative law. But when she boarded a plane for Switzerland for a job with Geneva-based nonprofit International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), she had no idea how multinational her summer would be.

“I’d been to Geneva before and I speak French, so I knew I wanted to go to there,” she said. “I also knew I was interested in criminal law. Other than that, I didn’t really have any criteria. And when I went in to work on my first day, I had no idea what I’d be doing. I definitely didn’t expect to end up in India.”

She also didn’t expect to help plan a training seminar for more than 100 legal aid defense attorneys in India. The training is especially important there, Roberts said, because there is very little public funding for defense attorneys representing indigent defendants, and very few attorneys who focus only on legal aid work.

More…

One of the main challenges of the JusticeMakers competition was to find an innovative way to ameliorate some of the social justice problems that exist in one’s community. For Nepalese applicant Ram Kumar Bhandari, just making sure his primary application submitted was a major feat. Faced with an unexpected faulty internet connection, he drove 200 kilometers from Lamjung to Kathmandu to submit his application. That sense of determination needs a serious shout out on our blog! Ram Kumar Bhandari is from the western hills of Nepal whose father disappeared in 2001 during the decade-long conflict between Maoists and government security forces. His father’s whereabouts have been unknown ever since. Ram is committed to his community and is involved in local radio, promoting social volunteerism, and advocating for justice on the local level.

After graduating, Ram has been dedicating his time as a coordinator at the Committee for Social Justice (CSJ), an organization that works with families from Lamjung whose loved ones who have also gone missing during the conflict and have little means of obtaining information about them.

Ram’s proposal is an extension of his efforts with CSJ. He hopes to promote community awareness among stakeholders in the justice system — detainees, police force, local leaders, with trainings and awareness campaigns that address the lack of understanding for the justice system. You can read his proposal in detail here.

We recognize that some of the everyday challenges a JusticeMaker can face is just having access — to a computer, the telephone or even the post — something that is easy for many of us reading this (on the Internet) to take for granted. It’s a testament to Ram’s commitment to working for social change and demonstrates the tenacity required in spearheading a movement.

As we approach the term of the inaugural JusticeMakers Competition, I would like to reflect upon my experience with the JusticeMakers community members, the variety of challenges we both encountered and ways to streamline the competition process in the future.First of all, I would like to highlight how friendly, dedicated and passionate the hundreds of JusticeMakers I have been exchanging with virtually have been so far. The encouragement, support and energy we received from Vikram Srivastava and Rakesh Mathur from India, Tahir from LRF Pakistan, Olivier from Burundi, ASPDDH from Benin, Emmie Chanika from CILIC Malawi, Franck from DRC, Bandita from Nepal (see below right), Joseyav from DRC (see below left) among so many other generous individuals or organizations gave us the continuous strength to move forward in the face of a variety of challenges.

The feeling of being part of this global community of committed lawyers, NGO officers, judges, government officials and so many others from all over the world is thrilling. Thank you all.

From my point of view, one of the greatest promises of JusticeMakers lays properly in its capacity to gather committed, entrepreneurial and innovative human rights defenders and its ability to make them all feel like member of a global movement in favor of criminal justice in countries as different as Pakistan, Kenya and Brazil. To my mind, this feeling of belonging to a community that JusticeMakers has been able to spark off will further get transformed into an energy of action and innovation to concretely improve the lives of the thousands of accused persons whose dignity and rights are challenged on an everyday basis.

I have noticed that IBJ Founder and CEO Karen Tse always comes back from her trips with the strong conviction that criminal defense lawyers and other key actors of the criminal justice system lack confidence. They lack confidence in how much change they can bring in their criminal justice system. They feel extremely lonely in the face of this monumental mission - to eradicate torture and other cruel and inhumane treatments around the world. The Burundian and Indian trainees in particular told us how much it meant for them to be and feel part of a global community of defenders this summer. JusticeMakers is an answer to this search for the meaningfulness of collective belonging and action.

Of course, the challenges to build a functional and lively online community are numerous and require a lot of patience, energy and determination. One of the first barriers is purely technical: we acknowledge that the internet access is not available worldwide and that in some part of the worlds, it may be costly and/or irregular. However, technology now provides us with the unique opportunity to maintain a lively group dialogue. We should nonetheless think through a tangible strategy about how to reach some of the most remote part of the world where vulnerable people (often children and women) are the most likely to have their legal rights violated.

Maybe the JusticeMakers team could select one JusticeMakers Ambassador per country responsible for organizing JusticeMakers Roundtable Meetings/Parties (thank you Tupperware for this brilliant idea!) on a monthly-basis in remote villages of their country to keep their community members informed about what’s happening on JusticeMakers.net and then report back to the JusticeMakers community about their suggestions, comments and project ideas?

Maybe the JusticeMakers Team should create one or two “Most Active JusticeMakers Award” to urge the user to engage with other community members, whether on the forum or using the guestbook and to build a constructive and fruitful dialogue on contemporary criminal justice issues.

Maybe, and this is more ambitious, some funds should be secured and allocated on an annual basis to equip the most remote provinces of a country with computers and internet access for the relevant criminal justice system actors of these areas to be part of the online community?

These are just ideas and I would be happy if you, whether you are a JusticeMakers community member or a simple reader could provide me with your insights at: fanny@justicemakers.net

Thanks for keeping the promise of JusticeMakers alive.