Page 36 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021

The need for a clear legislative framework for the governance and operation of local advice offices is, as one respondent points out, ‘also about accountability to those that you serve, in particular the clients’ (Seehaam Samaai, key informant). It is anticipated that formal regulation will consolidate the impact and role of CAOs and community-based paralegals; enable access to justice; contribute to sustainability and growth of the sector; professionalise and formalise the sector; provide accountability mechanisms, both vertically and horizontally; develop systems and solutions for communal learning; and facilitate interaction with government and other stakeholders (FHR & DOJ, 2020:3). As CAOSA argues, ‘the premise of recognising and regulating advice offices and community-based paralegals is on the basis of the role that they play in enabling access to justice at a community-level’, and ‘the regulation in question should seek to establish appropriate qualification, practice and continuous development of these individuals’ (CAOSA, n.d.:2).25
Importantly, paralegals provide a ‘range of interventions that go beyond a narrow conception of legal advice’ (HSRC, 2014:29-30), and this is apparent in the scope of strategies they deploy to address GBV – as identified in this study. Any process of formalisation should give careful consideration to not unduly limiting the organic, flexible and hybrid practices of LDAs and their considerable contribution to rural development processes that are rights and justice-affirming.
Wendy Pekeur coordinator and Juanita Engelbrecht administrator and trainee paralegal of Ubuntu Rural Women and Youth Movement.
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“Finish this Elephant”: Rural Community Organisations’ Strategic Approaches to Addressing GBV
25. Regulation of the legal advice office sector is complex and includes consideration of, amongst others: role and scope; registration; governance structures; the right to represent; the legal services to be rendered; and funding models (FHR & DOJ, 2020).