Legal awareness as a basis for expanding access to justice in Ukrainian communities

Publication date: April 12, 2023

Author: Halyna Kolesnyk, communications manager of the Legal Development Network 

Before the start of the full-scale invasion, about half of the adult population of Ukraine faced legal problems or experienced violations of their rights. Therefore, about 14 million people potentially needed legal assistance.

The state system of providing free legal aid for 2020-2021 was able to reach 1.2 million people. Therefore, even before February 24, 2022, there was a rather significant gap between the need for legal assistance and the actually received consultations.

In reducing this gap, one of the main roles could be played by local self-government bodies due to their potential for legal awareness and primary legal assistance. Local self-government bodies are able to effectively coordinate all the necessary infrastructure components for the provision of primary legal aid and legal awareness at the level of their community.

Such a coordinating role is especially important in rural areas and in small settlements, where the level of penetration of state legal support services and non-governmental human rights organizations is much lower compared to large cities. The basic elements in this model are the capacity of the local self-government body to provide legal awareness and basic legal support. However, unfortunately, local self-government bodies use this potential in communities only partially. In this article, we focus on legal awareness as a necessary prerequisite for providing effective legal support to residents of small settlements.

For reference

The infrastructure of access to justice in the community and opportunities for involvement by local self-government bodies.

Full-time legal advisers/ legal units/other qualified employees of local self-government bodies. Have the potential to create legal awareness content and provide basic legal support in the form of legal information and targeted referrals.

Legal advisers and other qualified employees of institutions, organizations, and communally owned enterprises. Coordination regarding the implementation of legal awareness activities and the provision of basic legal support on issues related to the competence of the relevant institution or organization (for example, in the field of providing educational, social, medical services, the sphere of culture, libraries, etc.).

Headmen of districts. Involvement in legal awareness activities and provision of basic legal support.

Center for the provision of administrative services. Organization of an access point to legal services, the providers of which are located both on the territory of the community and outside its borders.

Legal advisers and other qualified employees of territorial executive bodies located in the community. Redirection from local self-government bodies on issues related to the competence of the relevant institution.

Public organizations and initiative groups that operate on the territory of the community and specialize in human rights activities. Involvement in the provision of legal aid.

Centers for the provision of free secondary legal aid (if there is an office in the community or during mobile trips of the lawyers of the corresponding center to the territory of the community). Referral for secondary legal aid.

Employees of the National Police (including community police officers if available), judges-speakers, and communication units of local court administrations. Involvement in the implementation of legal awareness activities.

Legal awareness after February 24, 2022

During August-December 2022, experts of the Legal Development Network conducted research on what access to justice is like in 13 medium-sized and small front-line, temporarily occupied, rear, and de-occupied communities of Dnipro, Luhansk, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Chernihiv oblasts. One of the components of the study was legal education itself.

Experts note that a complex and systematic approach to legal awareness is not typical for communities. Currently, this function is carried out by local self-government bodies only partially and is almost not financed.

Legal awareness in communities almost always takes place in the form of publishing informational materials of legal content online, sometimes in print media and on bulletin boards. The topics of the publications are related to legislative changes relevant to the residents of the community, or the most common questions that citizens address to local self-government bodies. 

“Until February 24, the majority of local self-government bodies did not separately finance services to ensure the provision of free primary legal assistance and legal awareness. Many small communities, which were aware of the importance of legal support for residents, could not hire a lawyer: some – for financial reasons, some – due to the lack of necessary specialists in rural areas. Officials of local self-government in the overwhelming majority are ready to provide advice within the limits of their competence only in relation to the activities they carry out within the limits of the relevant legislation, although people turn to a wide range of legal issues, both to those who are closest to them and whom they are ready to trust. With the beginning of a full-scale invasion, the situation became more complicated. On the one hand, there was an objective decrease in the ability of local self-government bodies to provide the same amount of legal assistance as before the war. The departure from the communities of officials and other specialists who could potentially replace them, the relocation of local self-government bodies from the occupied territories, the loss of established mechanisms of interaction with other legal aid providers, and the reduction of financial resources – these and other factors negatively affect the ability to ensure the appropriate level of access to justice for community residents. In general, after February 24, 2022, local self-government bodies focused primarily on social, security, and defense issues.

On the other hand, the number of legal problems among the population has increased. In addition to the problems that existed before the war, those specific to wartime were added and intensified: issues related to destroyed housing, injuries received, service in the Armed Forces, war crimes, social assistance to internally displaced persons and families of fallen servicemen, departure abroad, etc.,” says Vitalii Okhrimenko, one of the research experts and LDN program director. 

The expert notes that legal awareness at the systemic level would help improve the quality of providing primary legal assistance. It is quite obvious that in the current conditions, it should concentrate on the following tasks:

• helping people to understand their legal problems and understand how they can be solved;
• motivating people to take proactive actions on the way to seeking justice;
• improving people’s understanding of existing institutions and mechanisms that solve their legal problems;
• building people’s trust in legal institutions and mechanisms.

In addition, the expert notes that during communication with community representatives, they proposed the idea of creating a certain institution or structural unit that would be responsible for disseminating key information among residents, which primarily includes legal awareness. 

About legal awareness and how it can ideally be

“In none of the communities covered by the research, there is no comprehensive and systematic work on the collection and analysis of information on legal needs and the quality of legal services. Appeals with questions of a legal nature are recorded and processed in a general manner in accordance with the law “On Appeals of Citizens”, there is no separate procedure. There are also no formalized referral mechanisms from local self-government bodies to other legal service providers. Sometimes monitoring and research of residents’ needs were carried out in communities, but usually, this happened at the initiative of public organizations that cooperate with local self-government bodies,” Vitalii Okhrimenko shares.

Therefore, according to the experts of the already mentioned study, systematic and complex work in the community on conducting legal awareness is possible if it is carried out on a regular basis. Therefore, they propose to implement a specialized division, the main functions of which should be:

● monitoring of current problems faced by residents, changes in legislation, rules, and procedures for the formation of legal awareness materials and basic legal information. Monitoring tools can be: monitoring of local social networks and groups, analysis of administrative

statistics, citizen appeals and complaints received by local self-government bodies, organizations, and institutions subordinate to them, and the system of free legal aid;

● development and support of mechanisms for delivering legal awareness information to residents:

development of the site and social networks of local self-government bodies; development of the institute of public speakers from local self-government bodies on issues of legal awareness and communication of key decisions in the community; development of a network of officials of local self-government bodies, who contribute to the dissemination of legal information in the community, from the number of elders and employees of communal institutions and organizations; development of legal awareness forms of non-formal education on the basis of educational institutions of the community;

● formation of legal awareness materials in accordance with the current needs of residents;

● coordination of legal awareness events/campaigns that take place on the territory of the community and are carried out by other organizations and institutions, in particular, state and law enforcement agencies, the system of free legal aid, and public organizations;

● formation and implementation of legal awareness campaigns on relevant topics of the relevant spheres of social and economic life of the community in close coordination with specialized institutions and organizations. For example, it can be the popularization of the institution of juries in close coordination with the judicial system; distribution of information

regarding mine protection in close coordination with the State Emergency Service; regarding public safety together with the police, etc.;

● organizing and conducting field legal awareness events in rural areas with an emphasis on people with limited mobility due to health, financial situation, family composition, etc.

The experience of the state system of free legal aid can be useful for understanding the approaches to the qualitative implementation of legal awareness. 

Thus, the head of the board of the NGO “Youth Initiative Center” (Chervonograd, Lviv oblast) and the director of the Chervonograd local center for providing free secondary legal aid Nataliia Kostyshyn, reminds: “Legal awareness is an activity to disseminate information in the field of protection of rights, freedoms, and legitimate interests citizens, provision of free legal aid, thematic seminars, lectures aimed at increasing legal awareness, culture and education of the population, crime prevention. Legal awareness activities are combined into legal awareness campaigns, which are time-defined, have a defined goal, target audience, and predicted results, and are based on information about legal problems and needs of the target audience. It is the understanding of the needs of the target audience before the start of legal awareness activities in general that is the guarantee of their effectiveness.” She shared the basic principles that should be followed in the manual “Legal awareness event: from conception to implementation”, which she is the co-author of. In addition, the guide contains examples of legal awareness activities for different audiences and needs.

Nataliia Kostyshyn shared an example of a response to problems and cooperation between the free legal aid center, the public sector, and executive authorities:

“In the first years of the aggression of the russian federation against Ukraine (2015-2016), servicemen and the families of the dead had many legal issues. It was difficult to resolve them then due to the unsettled legal framework. At one of the meetings in the city of Sokal, Lviv oblast, with representatives of the Regional State Administration and the District State Administration and their structural divisions, the center for providing free legal aid, servicemen and their family members, a proposal was made to create a single office where combatants and their relatives were able to receive comprehensive services. In order to realize this, the specialists of the Chervonograd local center for the provision of secondary legal aid have developed the principles of a single window for providing assistance to military personnel. This initiative was implemented by the CF “Caritas-Sokal” for three months. It was there that servicemen and their families could receive psychological and legal aid. We saw that this practice is successful and effective, so we transferred it to the Sokal District State Administration, which introduced a “single window” to the structure of the Department of Social Protection of the Population.”

How to study legal needs not only for legal awareness but also to improve legal services in communities, to build an ecosystem of access to justice will be useful for the development of the Human Rights Friendly Community Program, which has been coordinated by the Legal Development Network for more than three years.

Expert and chairman of the board of the NGO “PRAVO” (Khmilnyk, Vinnytsia oblast) Vitalii Dorokh participated in the Human Rights Friendly Community Program for several years. The study of legal problems and needs, which was conducted by the initiative group together with representatives of the city council and the free legal aid center, and other studies within the framework of various initiatives became the basis of legal awareness in the community.

“This was included in our city’s three-year program to improve access to justice. Legal awareness is carried out even today, even when the program has ended, but efforts are felt to be uncoordinated,” Vitalii Dorokh notes.

The toolkit for researching legal needs is described in the manual “Researching the legal needs of the community”.

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