Legal Empowerment and Pro Bono Synergy: Ensuring Community Consent for Land, Indigenous Peoples, and Environmental Rights Protection
15.30 – 17.30 | 22 September
The session aims to discuss how legal empowerment ensures participation and involvement of grassroots communities in the decision- making process in projects that have direct impact on their communities and rights (land rights, Indigenous people’s rights and environmental protection and conservation). Particularly, the discussion will focus on the various mechanisms, strategies and approaches used by CSOs and paralegals in Southeast Asia to ensure that the grassroots communities’ consent is part of any project development and implementation. The session will not only focus on seeking the Free Prior and Informed Consent from IP communities but will expand to discussing consent of communities in general. Breakout sessions will also be conducted to solicit recommendations and insights from the participants. This way, the participants will have an opportunity to learn not only from the presenters but also from their co-participants through the breakout sessions. Hosted by the Southeast Asia core-group members of the Legal Empowerment Network, the largest global community of grassroots justice defenders, with a global membership of more than 2,000 organizations and 9,000 individuals from over 160 countries.
Presenters: