Legal Services Facility (LSF) - Tanzania
- Tanzania
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- Access to Legal Aid
- Access to Legal Aid
Quick information guide
The Tanzania Legal Act, 2017 recognises the right of access to legal aid and orients providers to:
- Carry out educational programmes in national or local languages on legal issues and procedures of concern to the community;
- Assist aided persons in the procedures to obtain necessary legal documents;
- Guide aided person to a proper forum or to access justice; and
- Advise the conflicting parties to seek amicable settlement or referring them to dispute settlement institutions
Why is legal aid important for women?
Research studies have shown that women in Tanzania are likely to suffer more when it comes to accessing and utilizing legal services compared to men simply because of:
- Vulnerability: Women are more vulnerable to oppression than men due to socio-economic characters
- Literacy: Majority of the women are illiterate; this becomes difficult for them to connect with legal aid and express themselves
- Income: Women are less paid compared to men what disadvantages them when it comes to affording paid legal services
- Cultural values: Some cultural practices have created in a woman a spirit of underestimation.
This makes it hard for women to fight for their rights.
Women Legal Aid Support Services in Tanzania
The National Strategy for Gender Development (NSGD) aims at guiding all stakeholders to work towards gender equality in a more harmonized manner.
Part four of the Tanzania Legal Aid Act of 2017 gives provisions for legal aid to eligible indent persons such as women and persons in lawful custody. Various NGOs have special programs to provide free legal aid services to needy women.
Legal Human Rights centre (LHRC)
Women Legal Aid Centre (WLAC)
Legal Services Facility (LSF)
| About LSF | The Legal Services Facility channels funds equally to organizations which promote, provide or support legal aid and paralegal services toward empowerment of poor women, children and men. LSF fund legal empowerment activities in all 180 districts of Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar. LSF closely collaborate with the government to regulate and facilitate legal aid provision, including paralegals. Community paralegals are the front line of the legal aid brigade, but in a comprehensive legal aid provision approach they do require the back-up and support from lawyers employed by larger legal aid providers. LSF directly and indirectly support more than 200 implementing partners which ensure availability and accessibility of affordable and quality legal aid services, legal education and facilitate legal empowerment in the communities they serve. |
| Services Provided | Grant making: Results oriented grants aim to facilitate legal empowerment with increased protection of women’s rights to land, property, safety and security. Grant making enables LSF partners to expand and sustain the accessibility of legal aid services. Capacity Development: The LSF supports legal aid providers institutionally and technically, which will assist in their resource mobilisation. A further contribution is made to increase accountability, transparency and quality of legal aid delivery. This in turn will positively impact on the institutional and services acceptability to duty bearers, which assists in creating a conducive environment for legal empowerment. Partnerships, Networking and Fundraising: This aims to substantiate and accelerate LSF inputs, to generate financial resources and provides access to centers of expertise. It includes support to effective legal aid networks and to alliances for protection of human rights. Coordination: The LSF is pro-active in coordinating efforts toward justice for all, in particular for women. Legal aid provider driven design of approaches for urban legal empowerment and for Zanzibar Legal empowerment, are just two examples. |
| Does a Woman need to pay for LSF Services? | LSF support over 4,000 Paralegals in Tanzania who do the counselling, mediation and conciliation in disputes that people, especially women, face. Community paralegals in Tanzania work as volunteers and provide legal services free of charge |
| Public Events | The LSF promote free legal aid to the communities in public events and through edutainment across the country |
| Contact details | The Legal Services Facility (LSF) website: http://lsftz.org/ Names and contacts of paralegals supported by LSF. |