Public Interest Legal Advocacy Program (PILAP)

 

Kong Yu press conference - This widely-publicized event drew attention to the case seeking to cancel illegal land deals and prosecute those responsible.

Human Rights Class Action Cases

PILAP’s “class action” and public interest approach to human rights violations is novel in Cambodia, and PILAP’s involvement in time-sensitive and high-profile cases and legal consultations has earned significant attention from the media and the international legal development community. The following are just a few of the worthy cases on which PILAP works:

 

Kong Yu Case

In one of the most glaring examples of land grabbing in Cambodia, an indigenous community has been dispossessed of its ancestral land.  PILAP is assisting the ethnic Jarai people of the villages of Kong Yu and Kong Thom, located in Ratanakiri Province, in their effort to have the land sale contracts cancelled, and their land returned to them. The PILAP team filed complaints in this case in the provincial city of Bunlung in January 2007.  The complaints document the various illegalities of the transfer (threats, lies and intimidation, as well as fraudulent documents and bribery) and seek the cancellation of the land transfer and the prosecution of all those involved.

 

Koh Pich Case

PILAP represented 78 families who lived on the island of Koh Pich in their effort to receive fair and just compensation (as provided under the Cambodian Constitution and the Land Law of 2001) in connection with a proposed redevelopment of their land. Koh Pich is directly offshore from downtown Phnom Penh, where there is substantial development potential, and the case was widely covered by the Cambodian media. Following extensive negotiations with City Hall, the development companies, and its client base, PILAP settled this case for all but a few families in November 2005. The highly publicized, high-impact approach is one of the first collective legal actions in Cambodia to help a community assert its legal rights to land. As one PILAP attorney, Vineath Chou, put it: “By asserting these farmers’ legal right to ‘fair and just compensation,’ PILAP successfully facilitated negotiations and settlements with government officials and private developers—parties who were only recently attempting to evict our clients from the island. We hope that this example, here in the heart of the capital, can set an example of how responsible development should occur in Cambodia.”

 

Group 78

Villagers performing at the Kong Yu press conference. The conference marked the filing of complaints to have their land returned to them.

Group 78 is a numbered land plot located in central Phnom Penh near the Bassac River.  Despite their strong legal claims to the land on which they reside, residents received three eviction notices from government officials in June and July 2006 stating that they will be trucked to an isolated and barren relocation site on the outskirts of the city. The relocation site lacks basic infrastructure, sanitation facilities or potable water, and is prone to flooding. Schools, medical facilities, markets and jobs are not available in this undeveloped area, located more than 20 kilometers from Phnom Penh.  Several adjacent communities have recently been evicted in a manner which involved gross human rights violations, and emotions have been running high for the members living in the community.  The PILAP team has defended Group 78 throughout its struggle against illegal eviction, including press conferences, media events, and dissemination of legal materials to government officials.  Recently, the PILAP team designed a new advocacy strategy to unite the community with a sense of purpose and direction.  Working with architect students and urban specialists, the community has initiated an open process to create it own plan for its future on site.  Such an “on-site upgrade” has been successfully employed in other Asian countries, and would actually cost much less to implement than the payment of fair and just compensation that the government is legally required to provide if it evicts the Group 78 residents.  Government officials will also be invited to participate.  With the plans created, the community will lobby government to select one of the community-created options, rather than resorting to a forced eviction with little or no compensation. 

Public service announcements

The PILAP team created three 60-second-long legal rights-related public service announcements (PSAs) aimed at Cambodian youth aged 11–14. The PSAs, which aired in January and February of 2007 throughout Cambodia, were meant to raise public awareness about legal rights and responsibilities.

The legal education reform and civic education program’s objective is to improve the quality of legal and judicial education at Cambodia’s primary educational institutions, including the Royal University for Law and Economics (RULE) and the Royal School for Judges and Prosecutors (RSJP). ABA ROLI’s legal education advisor, Steve Austermiller, works with faculty at RULE and the RSJP to introduce modern teaching methodologies and materials that focus on enhancing students’ practical lawyering skills and analytical reasoning capabilities. ABA ROLI works in Cambodia as a subgrantee to the East-West Management Institute, under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Program on Rights and Justice II (PRAJ II).

 

Client counseling competition in Cambodia

In 2008, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) organized the first client counseling competition in Cambodia. The contest has developed into an annual event and was again held in January 2009. The competition places teams of law students in a simulated law office environment where they are challenged to conduct a counseling session with an actor posing as a client. The students compete by demonstrating their ability to employ practical legal skills, such as active listening, interrogation, empathy, issue spotting, legal analysis, problem solving and teamwork. Their performances are scored by local and international judges. The 2009 national champion will represent Cambodia in the International Client Counseling Competition. ABA ROLI also conducts interactive client counseling workshops, designed to train the students in practical lawyering skills and to help the student teams prepare for the competition. Both have proven innovative legal education tools.

 

Advocacy skills clinic

In July 2007, ABA ROLI launched an advocacy skills clinic with a classroom and internship component. The classroom program has three topics—introduction to legal advocacy, land law and administrative law. The classes are designed to not duplicate previous instruction. They instead offer an opportunity to take part in interactive exercises focusing on critical thought and practical skills. In the legal advocacy classes, students work on a single hypothetical case throughout the lessons. Using this case, they improve their interviewing, brief writing, interrogation and case strategy skills. The students then further refine their reasoning skills by applying this information to real land law and administrative law cases under the guidance of practicing attorneys and RULE professors.

As part of the internship component, each student initially spent 80 hours at a legal aid, non-governmental organization while maintaining a journal of their experiences. Students engaged in a variety of tasks, including attending client interviews in the provinces, witnessing court appearances, participating in evidence gathering and attending workshops on land dispute investigations. Since 2008, the internship program has been modified into a field trip series during which students travel to courts, law firms, the Arbitration Council and the War Crimes Tribunal to learn about real life advocacy.

In 2008, the advocacy skills clinic further expanded to include an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) component. The class was immensely popular, leading ABA ROLI’s legal education advisor to develop a bilingual, Khmer-English ADR textbook, which was published in January 2009. The textbook is the first ADR resource of its kind and was designed to teach law students, legal practitioners and judicial officers the basics of ADR and the new ADR processes that are being developed in Cambodia

 

Ethics class

In May 2007, ABA ROLI helped RULE establish Cambodia’s first legal ethics class. ABA ROLI collaborates with RULE to develop the curriculum, which incorporates philosophy of ethics, Buddhist ethics, lawyer ethics, judicial ethics and prosecutor ethics. ABA ROLI trained two RULE professors to teach the class. ABA ROLI also cooperates with the university in developing the student selection process. In the first year, more than 70 students applied for the 20 seats in the class; more than 100 applications were received in 2008.

 

Teaching methodology program

The teaching methodology program at RULE began in 2006 by introducing ten law professors to interactive teaching methods. The professors, with ABA ROLI’s support, revised their curricula and lesson plans to make them more innovative and interactive, employing role plays, brainstorming, hypotheticals and case studies. By winter 2006, the professors had successfully developed more than 75 interactive lesson plans on various subjects, including family law, commercial law and ethics. These lessons were implemented in the 2006–2007 academic year. Now, more than 300 students benefit from the interactive classes every year. Since August 2007, the program also includes two private law faculties, Norton University and Cambodian Mekong University, where interactive teaching workshops are held for 20 law professors at a time.

 

Regional study tours

To train public interest legal advocacy project’s (PILAPs) Cambodian staff, ABA ROLI has hosted regional study tours. In 2005, PILAP attorneys were trained in Philippines and Thailand. Such tours provide staff attorneys with opportunities to learn about legal non-governmental organizations in other Asian countries and the impact of their more open political systems and participatory attitudes.

 

Public service announcements

The PILAP team created three 60-second-long legal rights-related public service announcements (PSAs) aimed at Cambodian youth aged 11–14. The PSAs, which aired in January and February of 2007 throughout Cambodia, were meant to raise public awareness about legal rights and responsibilities.

 

Mock trial competition

In spring 2007, ABA ROLI developed the country’s first mock trial competition. The competition allows students to practice important advocacy skills, such as logic, persuasion, interrogation and public speaking skills. Each of the seven Cambodian law schools participated in the contest, held at RULE, which also provided an opportunity to showcase the university’s newly-built moot courtroom. This moot courtroom, the first of its kind in Cambodia, was, with ABA ROLI’s assistance, transformed from an old auditorium into an exciting learning venue with almost 200 audience seats. Boasting state-of-the art audio and video facilities, the competition was highly public and successful. Both international and Cambodian judges sat on panels and scored the teams, with the U.S. ambassador serving as the presiding judge in the final round. In 2008, the competition was repeated at the University of Cambodia and was attended by hundreds of law students and professors. Thanks to this experience, students continue to utilize competition as a new tool inspiring them to enhance skills taught in the classroom. The competitions also afford international experience to winning teams, allowing them to participate in, for example, the 50th annual Jessup International Moot Court Competition—the world’s largest mock trial competition with more than 500 participating law schools from around the world.

ABA-Asia offers Clinical Legal Education through the Lawyer Training Center (LTC).

A Consultant works with two commercial law professors on an interactive exercise during the workshop.

The Legal Education through the Lawyer Training Center, established by the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC) with assistance from the Ministry of Justice, provides a ten-month mandatory practicum for law school graduates who wish to become practicing attorneys and members of the bar. The strategic goals of the Asia Division clinical legal education program are to: (i) professionalize and further institutionalize clinical legal education in Cambodia; (ii) enhance the public interest function of clinics by helping develop substantive specialized skills in particular fields of human rights concern: and (iii) strengthen and develop professional commitment to public service among the members of the bar.

The LTC has been fully operational since 2002, and was opened with significant financial and technical support from the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA). The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) and the Bar of Lyon ( France) also support the LTC. In order to ensure maximum cooperation, in April 2004 ABA-Asia entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the BAKC, the JFBA and the CBA, memorializing a shared commitment to supporting legal education in Cambodia, and since then, has been coordinating closely with these organizations in implementing the clinical program.

Consultant Teri Gould assists the Rector and another professor in developing a syllabus for a new ethics class.

In February 2005, the LTC clinic opened its doors to clients from the community – individuals otherwise unable to afford representation – thereby bridging the LTC to the community. Since then, the clinic has provided much-needed legal services to the community and has allowed young Cambodian lawyers to put into practice the “live client” teaching techniques developed over the course of the program. Clients come to the clinic through a variety of sources, including NGO referrals and walk-ins. Legal consultations and cases cover a broad span of topics including: family law issues (marriage, paternity, and adultery); property issues (land disputes); labor matters; debt; and criminal matters (assault, property damage, possession of an illegal weapon and drug trafficking).

In 2006, the clinic commenced the Law Fellows Program (LFP), under which recent LTC graduates are placed with local NGOs throughout the country for one year of supervised practice. This not only strengthens the professional advocacy capacity of the law graduates, but increases legal services available in predominately rural, underserved areas of the country. The LFP recently completed its recruitment and selection process for 2007 and interested non-governmental organizations were chosen as placement organizations for the 2007 LFP.