National Endowment for Democracy beginning August 1 seeks applications for 2012-2013 Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program from candidates from all over the world.
The Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program is an international exchange program that offers practitioners, scholars, and journalists from around the world the opportunity to spend five months at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in Washington DC, in order to undertake independent research on democracy in a particular country or region. While in residence, fellows reflect on their experiences; conduct research and writing; consider best practices and lessons learned; and develop professional relationships within a global network of democracy advocates.
Support
Located within NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, the program provides a rich intellectual setting for educational exchange and professional development. The Forum also publishes the Journal of Democracy, holds conferences, and provides access to NED’s Democracy Resource Center and Library. The program offers research support and facilitates fellows’ outreach to Washington’s advocacy, media, academic, and policy communities. All fellowships include a monthly payment, health insurance, and roundtrip travel reimbursement. The program does not provide financial assistance for accompanying family or other dependents.
Participation
The program runs two five-month fellowship sessions per year, during which fellows are expected to work full time on their projects. Practitioners focus on strategies and best practices for strengthening democracy in their country of interest; scholars conduct original research for publication. Projects may address the economic, political, social, legal, or cultural aspects of democratic development and include a range of methodologies and approaches. The program hosts an active calendar of events, including an introduction to NED and its partner institutions, seminars, roundtables, and other activities. Fellows are expected to present their work and prepare a written product during their stay.
Eligibility
While the program is intended primarily for individuals from developing and aspiring democracies, distinguished scholars from the United States and other established democracies are eligible to apply. Practitioners and journalists are expected to have substantial work experience in their fields, while scholars are expected to have a Ph.D., or academic equivalent, at the time of application. The program does not support professional training, fieldwork, or students working toward a degree, nor does it provide funding to implement projects in the field. A working knowledge of English is required.
Deadline for submitting the application is November 1, 2011
For further information and details, please visit the link.
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yes, its very nice; and i think this helps to ensure justice and democratic practices within formal & informal sectors that govern state and society. I also like to loin this program from Bangladesh. Meanwhile, in my country, human right is severely violated by ruling party, even opposition also violated the rules of law, masses are suffering….thinking this program helps me to introduce the shared idea/knowledge to work at field level.
thanks the authority to introduce the program
CIPA is human rights non-governmental organisation that is devoted to the promotion and protection of justice and welfare of young people in Malawi. It was formed in November 2001 and registered under the 1996 Youth Act and applied for Trustees Incorporation Act in 2007. CIPA is committed to the education and promotion of children’s rights through training, civic education, action oriented research, advocacy and forums for change.
CIPA is a membership organisation that draws its membership from Youth and young people in Malawi irrespective of their status. It is an affiliate member of the Council for Human rights networks Organisation in Malawi with a Board of Trustees, Executive Committee and Secretariat.
The overall objectives for CIPA are:
• To educate young people about their rights, contributions they make, and are capable of making to the country.
• To conduct research on customs and traditions, identify those that discriminate against young people and advocate for their abolition.
• To educate the public that by working together they can promote solidarity and love for each other.
• To advocate and lobby for the involvement and equitable representation of young people in all decision making bodies e.g. parliament, cabinet, district councils, government ministries and departments, NGOs and private institutions
• To advocate for unity and peace
• To monitor children rights violations.
Legal representation is a human right like all other fundamental Human Rights. This is fully supported by the Constitution of Malawi, which emphasises equality before the law and the right to be fairly represented in court or other legal tribunals.
In many of the rural areas of Malawi young people who are in conflict with republic laws find it very difficult to get access to justice. The legal procedures are complicated, take a long time, and often need lawyers who are very expensive. Our society oppressive laws and customs also contribute to children‘s inaccessibility to legal aid representation especially if it is a man that they have to approach. Young people can not freely complain to a man when they have a problem. Therefore there is need for community based young people paralegals who can be easily approached in the communities. Due to poor roads and no transportation at all in some areas, and no money at all for transport in order to access these service providers’s lot of cases, which needs immediate action in rural areas, remain unattended to.
This concept paper has been prepared by CIPA to provide legal education and services through young people Community Based Paralegals to women in rural areas of Chiradzulu, Thyolo, Blantyre Chikwawa and Nsanje rural areas having realised the need to make justice and human rights accessible to the rural community.
CIPA is of the opinion that trained young people community based legal assistance or paralegals would be able to assist people at local level and to empower them. What is also needed is a broad based legal education initiative to educate people about their rights, which would enable them to make appropriate actions if these are infringed.
In the area of legal and human rights awareness, there are of course non-governmental organisations working in that but these do not specifically concentrate or target young people . They work in general. These are like Malawi Centre for Advice, Research, and Education on Rights (CARER and Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR). Therefore, CIPA would like to have programmes in raising community based legal and human rights awareness and legal services specifically targeting youth and having youth as community based paralegals.
The project will focus on creating legal education on the rule of law, mobilizing and supporting community action to respond to violations and abuses through advocacy, counselling to victims and referral to institutions that will provide redress.
The triggering factor for this project is the very limited access to legal education and justice that youth from the rural areas of Blantyre , Chiradzulu ,Chikwawa , Nsanje , Thyolo rural experience.
As discovered by CIPA during the needs
TITLE OF PROJECT: BRINGING JUSTICE CLOSER TO YOUNG PEOPLE
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CIPA is human rights non-governmental organisation that is devoted to the promotion and protection of justice and welfare of young people in Malawi. It was formed in November 2001 and registered under the 1996 Youth Act and applied for Trustees Incorporation Act in 2007. CIPA is committed to the education and promotion of children’s rights through training, civic education, action oriented research, advocacy and forums for change.
CIPA is a membership organisation that draws its membership from Youth and young people in Malawi irrespective of their status. It is an affiliate member of the Council for Human rights networks Organisation in Malawi with a Board of Trustees, Executive Committee and Secretariat.
The overall objectives for CIPA are:
• To educate young people about their rights, contributions they make, and are capable of making to the country.
• To conduct research on customs and traditions, identify those that discriminate against young people and advocate for their abolition.
• To educate the public that by working together they can promote solidarity and love for each other.
• To advocate and lobby for the involvement and equitable representation of young people in all decision making bodies e.g. parliament, cabinet, district councils, government ministries and departments, NGOs and private institutions
• To advocate for unity and peace
• To monitor children rights violations.
Legal representation is a human right like all other fundamental Human Rights. This is fully supported by the Constitution of Malawi, which emphasises equality before the law and the right to be fairly represented in court or other legal tribunals.
In many of the rural areas of Malawi young people who are in conflict with republic laws find it very difficult to get access to justice. The legal procedures are complicated, take a long time, and often need lawyers who are very expensive. Our society oppressive laws and customs also contribute to children‘s inaccessibility to legal aid representation especially if it is a man that they have to approach. Young people can not freely complain to a man when they have a problem. Therefore there is need for community based young people paralegals who can be easily approached in the communities. Due to poor roads and no transportation at all in some areas, and no money at all for transport in order to access these service providers’s lot of cases, which needs immediate action in rural areas, remain unattended to.
This concept paper has been prepared by CIPA to provide legal education and services through young people Community Based Paralegals to women in rural areas of Chiradzulu, Thyolo, Blantyre Chikwawa and Nsanje rural areas having realised the need to make justice and human rights accessible to the rural community.
CIPA is of the opinion that trained young people community based legal assistance or paralegals would be able to assist people at local level and to empower them. What is also needed is a broad based legal education initiative to educate people about their rights, which would enable them to make appropriate actions if these are infringed.
In the area of legal and human rights awareness, there are of course non-governmental organisations working in that but these do not specifically concentrate or target young people . They work in general. These are like Malawi Centre for Advice, Research, and Education on Rights (CARER and Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR). Therefore, CIPA would like to have programmes in raising community based legal and human rights awareness and legal services specifically targeting youth and having youth as community based paralegals.
The project will focus on creating legal education on the rule of law, mobilizing and supporting community action to respond to violations and abuses through advocacy, counselling to victims and referral to institutions that will provide redress.
The triggering factor for this project is the very limited access to legal education and justice that youth from the rural areas of Blantyre , Chiradzulu ,Chikwawa , Nsanje , Thyolo rural experience.
As discovered by CIPA during the needs assessment in these districts, these limited access to justice rendered most rural youth vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
A belief that legal education and access to justice are integral to the foundation required to a stable democratic and tolerance society accountable to its entire people is the driving force behind CIPA planned activity.
CIPA has been carrying out human rights awareness campaigns in some areas of the above mentioned six districts that have confined to small population of CIPA constituencies. The effort was targeted at these relatively small parts of the constituencies due to lack of capacity in such areas as human resource, transport, data capturing and processing and communication, among others.
The experience CIPA has generated, coupled with community interest to promote and protect human rights, has increased its desire to expand its activities to paralegal word CIPA, however, does not have capacity to implement an activity of this magnitude without a significant investment to enhance its capacity. The project therefore, incorporates a capacity building plan to enhance CIPA ability to both cover a large area, and youths does more action work thus reaching out to more people.
Though we already have 14 trained volunteer paralegal youth, these are not enough to give legal education and legal services to the six above mentioned districts, CIPA would like to further train 10 more women paralegals and together they will undergo an intensive one month formal sessions training before going into the field.
After the training, they will be full time in the community where advice centres (clinics) will be set right their in the communities so that people are able to access these paralegals easily. Complicated cases which these paralegals will be unable to handle will then be referred to lawyers that are working for other organisations or government institutions like the ombudsman, Malawi CARER, Legal Aid and Malawi Human Rights Commission etc.
CIPA has committees in the mentioned district; therefore, there will be need for legal training for the committees and local leaders in the targeted districts. This is important as there is need to understand and support the work of the paralegals. Local leaders play a very big role in the communities in helping and solving problems in the community. Therefore, the training for them and the paralegal committee is required.
Quarterly training seminars will be held for the paralegal committee over weekends in their local languages. CIPA feels it is important to train the committees as they themselves need to understand the use and importance of negotiation and wise use of the scarce resources litigation.
There will be community workshops which will be in the form of awareness campaigns conducted by the paralegals and the committees within the communities. This helps to transfer decision making to rural communities. Each paralegal will be required to conduct at least two workshops per month which comes to 24 workshops per year. This is done to ensure that besides handling clients problems paralegals will inform people of the correct procedures and their rights before problems occur.
The Paralegal Coordinator will devote 2 contact days every 2 months with each community paralegal. During this time staff will travel to paralegal offices to review client files, check on the administration of the offices including use of stationery and petty cash and they will also help paralegals with problems that they might be facing in their offices.
The project aims to sensitise and educate communities in Nsanje Chikwawa Chiradzulu Thyolo Blantyre rural and on legal rights with specific interest on youths, generate social mobilisation and communities for strategic concerted action to address identified youth rights abuses at grassroots through 24 youth paralegals.
The objectives of this project are:
• To provide an intensive paralegal training to 24 youths who will be community based.
• To form community based clinics in the communities by providing the means to handle problems locally by rural communities.
• To provide legal advice and counselling to rural youths.
• To generate information which can later facilitate training on legal and human rights issues? Community based paralegals after a certain period of time can identify problems, which are prevalent in the society.
• To strengthen the institutional capacity of CIPA
• To conduct legal education to raise awareness of rural community youths of their legal rights.
• To build the capacity CIPA Community Based Committees.
Women’s Voice project will target all the rural people in the targeted districts but more emphasis is on developing the capacity of the communities to provide services for them including systems for local redress of human rights violations and abuses. The investment that will be made in training volunteers and local leaders will ensure that capacity is developed within the community to promote and protect human rights after the project phases out. At the end of the two years, it is expected that significant progress will have been made towards this objective. The project will be for 1 year, starting upon approval of the project proposal.
The following is the corresponding budget for the 2 years of the project:-
BUDGET
PERSONNEL = 30%
EQUIPMENT = 10%
OPERATIONS = 50%
ACTIVITIES (including evaluation and = 5%
Audit)
ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS = 5%
TOTAL = US$ 543,740.00
Our Contactts
The National Coordinator
CIPA-PROJECT MALAWI
P.O Bx 90, Nkhoma, Lilongwe, Malawi