Haiti

ILAC was first invited to Haiti in 2005 by the local UN administration MINUSTAH. Building local trust has taken time, but with the government under President René Préval, relations with the authorities have become very good and ILAC’s possibilities to deliver meaningful assistance have improved considerably.

The security situation in Haiti has recently seen some improvement. In an important development, MINUSTAH troops have taken control over Cité Soleil, the shanty-town near the airport in Port-au-Prince, which for many years was a lawless area with its criminality spilling over into other parts of the capital. In February 2008, ILAC, MINUSTAH and the US-based National Center for State Courts opened the first legal aid office in Cité Soleil. The office is run in cooperation with the local bar association.

The new legal aid office immediately attracted long lines of clients, eager to begin exercising their civil rights and formalizing family relations after years of total lawlessness.

The day before the inauguration of the office, members of the criminal gangs, which have been controlling the area, tried to burn down the office, but the attempt failed and a group of young men were arrested. With no other legal assistance available, the suspected arsonists turned to the office for legal representation.

In 2008, ILAC’s activities in Haiti primarily focused on establishing legal aid offices in the rural areas. At the end the year, there were ten such offices in operation around the country, each staffed by two licensed lawyers and ten recent law graduates or law students. These offices provide basic legal advice and assistance free of charge to a population, which until recently has largely lacked access to any kind of legal services. Today large numbers of people are able to formalize family relations, to register ownership of their land and to have the assistance of a lawyer in criminal cases.

The legal aid program today employs 120 individuals. The program is administered and coordinated by ILAC’s national office in the capital Port-au-Prince. MINUSTAH, plays an important role in the program by seconding the program coordinator and by providing much needed logistical services. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) also plays an important role by providing basic legal libraries to the local legal aid offices.

As an illustration of the success of this legal aid program, the government of Haiti has committed itself to a gradual take-over of the costs of the program, beginning with a 20% contribution in 2009, and then adding another 20 % each year, until the full funding will be born by the government.

Funding for the ILAC program in Haiti has until now been provided entirely by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). This funding will be phased out in 2009, and ILAC is presently negotiating with other potential donors about a take-over of the funding until the Haitian government will have assumed full responsibility.