Monitoring and Protecting the Legal Rights of Women and Girls and Improving their Access to Justice.
PREFACE
Paralegals have proved to be a valuable support for women’s access to justice and provide not only an important source of information and awareness on processes for relief, but also empower communities and enhance their self-sufficiency.
In its long experience in providing legal and social support to women in distress, Dastak has observed the efficacy of paralegal workers in ensuring women and girls have access to response services and service providers have outreach at community level. Such a support to facilitate access to state mechanisms and to other services related to GBV is an essential element of any implementation plan in the context of Pakistan’s social and legal realities. The shelter for women managed by Dastak has trained and used paralegals to provide services to affected women for quasi-legal and non-legal interventions and for accompaniment to forums, including court appearances.
Dastak aims to create community linkages through a paralegal program and for direct community involvement through awareness raising activities with community participation. Changing the external environment and transforming social attitudes, cultural practices, and religious mindsets becomes essential for ending prejudice and discrimination within the community.
This training manual has been developed to train and equip paralegals to be able to provide community level services, information and legal first aid to women and girls in distress using an approach rooted on human rights and dignity and aimed to facilitate access to avenues of justice and relief.
