In addition to other high impact humanitarian contributions, the TrustLaw Connect has played vital role in protecting and promoting women’s rights in many ways. Connecting women’s rights organizations with free legal assistance, the global hub has accelerated the process of improving laws and policies that affect women globally.
Law firms and corporate legal teams work on global women’s rights issues ranging from domestic workers’ rights to laws on human trafficking and prostitution.
Story 1: Equality Now to impact the trafficking and prostitution laws in the Middle East and Africa
Equality Now is a global human rights organization that acts for the civil political, economic and social rights of girls and women. The organization communicated with TrustLaw to assist in conducting research regarding the mapping of national legislation in specific regions that addresses the demand for commercial sex (prostitution) and sex trafficking. Thomson Reuters Foundation partnered with Latham & Watkins and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to produce a landscape analysis of human trafficking and prostitution laws in selected countries in Africa and the Middle East (Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal.) The research was aimed at better understanding of the legal framework in these countries- what is there, what needs to be changed, what needs to be better implemented, and start talking about how laws and policies impact what actually happens to women on the ground.
This research can also be used to help regional grassroots organizations understand existing laws and create a strategy for policy and legal reform.
Story 2: MADRE to achieve justice for victims of rape and advance women’s rights in Haiti
The international women’s rights organization MADRE requested comparative research on rape legislation through TrustLaw. The research was used to highlight best practices in other countries and support the subsequent reform of rape legislation in Haiti, with a view to ultimately providing better support to rape survivors and increasing the likelihood of prosecutions. Morrison & Foerster worked with DLA Piper, Latham & Watkins and Reed Smith to review rape legislation and procedures in Brazil, Canada, France, South Africa, Sweden and the United States and supply concrete examples of laws and policies that implement women’s human rights. In 2011, the Thomson Reuters Foundation hosted a first-of-its-kind forum of Haitian government official, police, lawyers, prosecutors, doctors and women’s groups in Port-au-Prince, alongside MADRE and their local partner KOFAVIV with the aim to find practical ways to ensure better protection, care and justice for Haitian women and girls. The catastrophic earthquake in 2010 had made the women and girls more vulnerable to sexual violence.
For more information, please visit About TrustLaw Connect.
