The project entitled as “Ensuring Access to Justice for Women and Vulnerable Groups through Legal Awareness” was implemented by Rastriya Dalit Network (RDN) Nepal with the financial support of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/A2J. The project aimed at contributing for enabling environment for promoting inclusiveness and equitable access to Justice and human rights for women and vulnerable groups by creating massive awareness among the grass-root people on constitutional, legal and institutional provisions. The project was implemented for the period from 5 April, 2020 to 20 December, 2020 in close coordination with SAMABHESI Foundation (SF) targeting community People including Women, Dalits and other vulnerable/marginalized groups. The project was implemented at four districts (Bajhang, Dadeldhura, Baitadi and Kailali) of Sudurpaschim Province. The Constitution of Nepal has safeguarded various rights of women (Article 38), Dalits (Article 40) and other marginalized as well as vulnerable groups (Article 42) under the chapter of Fundamental Rights and Duties including right to equality, rights relating to justice, right against untouchability and discrimination, right to freedom to religion, right against exploitation, right to social security and right to constitutional remedies. However, these normative interventions are not adequately translated into implementation due to lack of commitment of duty bearers and lack of awareness among the women and vulnerable groups, particularly living in the province. For the effective implementation of these legislative provisions, it is very important that right holders are adequately informed and empowered, and it is very important to aware and sensitize duty bearers about the rights of vulnerable groups too. Against this backdrop, the proposed program aimed at increasing awareness of targeted groups about the normative frameworks and its implementation processes/mechanisms ahead.
Goal: Contributing for enabling environment for promoting inclusiveness and equitable access to Justice and human rights for women and vulnerable groups by creating massive awareness among the grass-root people on constitutional, legal and institutional provisions.
Objectives:
Objective-1: To enhance awareness among the women, dalit and other vulnerable groups of people in target areas for claiming their constitutional and legal rights and access to justice.
Objective-2: To strengthen knowledge of women, Dalit and vulnerable groups about existing normative framework including fundamental rights related laws, institutional mechanism/ Access to Justice mechanism and policy reform at local government to ensure equal and speedy access to justice.
Objective-3: To enhance the role and responsibility of judicial committee through empowering judicial committee's members and widening collaboration with CSOs, local mediation and other government agencies.
Outputs:
Key Activities:
Activity 1: Produce, print and dissemination of IEC material on constitutional, legal and institutional framework.
Activity 2: Dissemination of radio PSA to educate constitutional rights, legal and institutional mechanism of women and vulnerable groups.
Activity 3: Media Fellowship to write about new legal framework linking access to justice for women.
Activity 4: Door to Door Outreach at Household level to create awareness.
Activity 5: Municipality-level dialogues/interactions on constitutional rights and new legal framework at isolated/never reached settlements of targeted Rural Municipality of project districts.
Activity 6: District level conference focusing the rights of women, Dalits and vulnerable groups to all newly elected women including Dalit Ward Members and executive members on constitutional provisions, Muluki civil and criminal codes, caste-based discrimination and untouchability (offence and punishment) Act, local body operation act and another essential normative framework.
Activity 7: A District level Multi-stakeholder dialogue/panel discussion program for effective implementation of women, Dalit and vulnerable groups related constitutional and legal provisions and media dissemination in all four Districts.
Activity 8: FOUR district level interaction/orientation among the chair and members of judicial committees for exchanging experiences to increase its effectiveness in the future.
