Lawyers Against Poverty

Justice Fund

50% of all membership contributions go to our Justice Fund to support projects that increase access to justice worldwide. The Justice Fund’s unique model of member-led grant-making is about more than donating money. The Fund’s strategic interventions ally lawyers around the world with projects that contribute to the alleviation of poverty and strengthen the collective voice of the legal profession on issues of social injustice.

Current Grants

£15,000: Training community leaders in Indonesia to fight for land rights

In Indonesia, between 90 and 120 million people access their forests and farmlands through customary and informal tenures and regularly find that their rights are subordinated to national interests and development projects. Weak legal protections and corruption within the judiciary have left communities with little recourse to the law, which has forced many to resort to direct action and resulted in the criminalisation of many demonstrators.

Where civil society organisations (CSOs) are legally trained and supported by local or international lawyers, they have been able to set important precedents – getting charges or convictions dropped against criminalised human rights defenders, getting local government to amend interim permits, getting village lands excised from agricultural permits and even getting final permits rescinded. At the moment, the majority of communities lack access to this kind of legal support.

£6,800: Research on the extrajudicial killings in Colombia

Oxfam Columbia is working with a coalition of regional civil society organisations to gather data on what they believe to be the systemic killings of community leaders and ex-combatants of the FARC. The UN has reported repeated incidences of the murder of ex-combatants since the FARC signed a peace accord with the government in 2016.

This grant is enabling the second stage of this project, building on an initial research phase and focusing on expanding the investigation into regions most affected by the killings. The outcome of this phase will provide an evidence base that will enable the coalition to develop a coordinated strategy to influence the national government and seek public policy guarantees of the right to life for community leaders and ex-combatants and stronger protections for victims.

Previous Grants

Read about our previous grants on our impact page.

Visit our resources section for information about applying for a grant

We particularly welcome projects where the wider skills within the LAP network may add value to the project and are happy to work with partners to explore these opportunities.