Mission
From 2017 to 2021, a group of lawyers and paralegals, supported by the Open Society Foundation for Albania and the Swiss-funded project ‘LevizAlbania’, engaged themselves with the operational project “Legal Clinics”. The Legal Clinics were designed as an intervention that had two-fold priorities:
i) Developing the litigation capacity of the legal clinics
ii) Providing free legal aid to the most vulnerable and marginalized citizens and communities.
Throughout this period, the Legal Clinics followed 23 strategic/collective cases related to some of the most significant environmental issues, such as the case of landfills in Porto Romano, Durrës and Sheq, Fier; the Zall Gjocaj, Mat and Thirrë, Mirdita hydropower plants; the Verri Fier incinerator; the slaughterhouse in Laknas, Kamez; property rights for citizens in Guri i Kuq, Pogradec and Selita, Tirana; compensation of 190 employees for overtime work performed, etc. The Legal Clinics provided primary legal assistance to 4,123 citizens and secondary legal assistance to 153 citizens, and through the platform www.juristionline.al the lawyers responded to the needs and issues stemming from 3,400 requests filed by citizens.
JuristiOnline is the only e-government service to provide free legal aid with the cooperation of Ministry of Justice and the Directorate of Free Legal Aid as part of the E-Albania platform.
Through the provision of primary and secondary legal assistance and through the pursuit of strategic litigation issues, the Legal Clinic’s services have influenced not only on the support of citizens and communities for their problems, but also in advocating near institutions for similar practices to be followed in compliance with the applicable legal framework.
Our work in the field indicated that legal empowerment is largely misunderstood as legal aid and there are few examples in the civil society sector that fully represent the concept. We believe that investing in legal empowerment is not only a paradigm shift, but it requires meaningful adjustment of the methodology of work, organizational structure, procedures and type of interaction with communities.
The continuation of the mission launched four years ago by lawyers and paralegals transformed the need for continuity of this successful mechanism into the establishment of the “Centre for Legal Empowerment”.
In the core of our activities, we assume that if legal processes are shaped by the legal empowerment approach, which allows and sustains meaningful participation of communities or affected citizens in the process, the potential to influence the behavior of public institutions vis-à-vis vulnerable communities will be stronger while positive enduring change is more possible to happen.
CLE is a community based legal center by including and capacitating paralegals and lawyers in their core activities, delivering effective legal education activities at the community level, and sustaining community active participation in advocacy and legal processes, including strategic litigation cases.
CLE is focused on delivering primary and secondary free legal education and aid services, identifying, and pursuing cases affecting a large number of citizens and that may bring changes in strategic level and bring about change at the policy level that will guarantee the protection of social-economic rights.
CLE provide expertise in the following areas:
- Rights at workplace;
- Environmental protection;
- Data protection;
- Consumer protection;
- Health care rights;
- Anti-Corruption;
- Developing project proposals for funding initiatives;
- Developing trainings for students, lawyers, CSOs and public institutions.