Program Description
Timap for Justice is a pioneering effort to provide basic justice services in Sierra Leone. Because of a shortage of lawyers in the country and because of Sierra Leone’s dualist legal structure, Timap’s frontline is made up of community-based paralegals rather than lawyers. We presently employ twenty-five paralegals who work in thirteen paralegal offices in the Northern and Southern provinces as well as in the capital Freetown.
We have developed a creative, flexible model to advance justice, one which combines education, mediation, negotiation, organizing, and advocacy. Our paralegals’ efficacy stems from a confluence of 1) a knowledge of, and facility with, formal law and government, and 2) a knowledge of the community and facility with more community-oriented, social movement-type tools. Few social agents in Sierra Leone possess both types of capacity.
Our program is directed by two lawyers who train, supervise, and support the paralegals in their work. The directors employ litigation and high-level advocacy sparingly and strategically to address cases in which a) a paralegal is not able to achieve resolution on her own, b) the harm or injustice is severe, and/or c) there is a possibility of legal impact. Because litigation or even the threat of litigation carries significant weight in Sierra Leone — word spreads like wildfire when a lawyer visits the countryside — our capacity to litigate adds strength to our paralegals’ ongoing work as advocates and mediators.
Timap strives to solve clients’ justice problems — thereby demonstrating concretely that justice is possible — and at the same time to cultivate the agency of the communities among which we work. We adopt a synthetic orientation towards Sierra Leone’s dualist legal structure, engaging and seeking to improve both formal and customary institutions.
Our program has succeeded in achieving solutions to more than a thousand justice problems of poor Sierra Leoneans. We have been recognized by independent institutions including the World Bank and International Crisis Group for developing a creative, effective methodology for providing justice services in the difficult and complex context of rural Sierra Leone.