Pro Bono-Walking the Walk: This stream shares the experiences and knowledge of those who work hands on with marginalized populations providing direct pro bono services. These pro bono champions share with us their first hand experiences so that we can learn, be inspired and walk with them on their journey and apply their lessons and experiences to other pro bono initiatives.
Drawing from experiences in different parts of the world, we will explore how lawyers can be involved in responding to the defining issue of our times – forced displacement of millions of asylum seekers and refugees – while also expanding their own world views, connecting with peers from around the globe, working alongside United Nations colleagues, meaningfully impacting individual lives, and creating lasting transformational change.
This session will focus on regional legal and other barriers faced by people with disabilities and ways that pro bono initiatives can help more modernize thought, legal norms, etc to provide A2J rights to these persons.
This session draws on a variety of regional and international experiences to highlight the multi-faceted ways that access to pro bono services can support enhanced individual and public health outcomes, particularly among vulnerable and marginalised populations including people who use drugs, persons with HIV/AIDS, prisoners, sex workers and migrant populations.
Increasing access to justice can directly impact the socio economic environment and during this session successful case studies of where access to justice helped to increase the socio economic environment for a community will be shared.
People who use drugs in Asia are at greater risk of deleterious interactions with police than non drug using community members and are consequently disproportionately overrepresented in the criminal justice system. This leads them to face the significant likelihood of spending periods of time in prison or compulsory detention. The majority of these people face only minor or misdemeanor charges associated with their drug use and in many cases would be released from the criminal justice system if they had access to legal representation.
This session will introduce participants to the wide range of legal needs that migrant persons have, across migration routes that span various home and host countries and ways pro bono can support these needs. Participants will have a chance to discuss what they know, learn about the latest issues in multiple jurisdictions, and consider next steps for either getting involved or advancing their own work in migration.
