20 April 2010

Freetown, Sierra Leone: You can tell Elvis Enoh-Tanyi is a lawyer. It's the care in the way he dresses, the eloquence with which he speaks, and the conviction in the way he looks at you.

But Elvis is also a volunteer, and with less than 98 practicing lawyers in this country of 6.4 million inhabitants, he has an important and enormous task to do to uphold the rule of law.

The UNV volunteer is assigned as a Rule of Law and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) Advisor with UNDP's Improving Access to Justice programme, a three-year initiative funded by UNDP's Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. This means that he leads the integration of civil society into Sierra Leone's judicial and legal system.

Elvis, a national of Cameroon, believes that one of the main causes of the conflict in Sierra Leone was the failure of the rule of law, and people resorting to their own modes of justice due to weak institutions. "After the war, there was complete breakdown of rule of law institutions – not enough courts, magistrates or lawyers," he says.

"To improve access to justice you have to improve the 'supply side', that is the people and institutions who provide justice – courts, magistrates and so on," Elvis explains. "But I work more on the 'demand side', with the people who are seeking justice, who need this justice."

The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund did a lot to establish magistrates’ courts and recruit magistrates in the districts, he continues, but people didn't know how to approach and make use of these courts. There comes the 'demand side' of justice.  There was a need to develop the demand side to enable a proper functioning of the rule of law in the country. So civil society needed support in making the system work, and to institutionalize their participation in it.

One such new institution is the CSO-UNDP Consultative Forum. "It meets every month," says Elvis, "and we bring together civil society representatives from all the 14 districts of Sierra Leone to update each other and UNDP on the state of human rights and justice, rule of law and development."

Members of the forum pick on "burning issues" and Elvis and UN colleagues follow them up to enable change for sustainable human development.

"It's a bottom-top approach to development – they tell us what is happening in the communities and what they perceive as correct or  wrong, and we engage the relevant stakeholders in that regard. They also identify their capacity needs and we provide them with the necessary capacity-building programmes," he says.

Elvis Enoh-Tanyi notes that this is especially important for civil society organizations outside the capital, which have little access to international funding and are reliant on voluntary action.

"It's interesting. It's challenging. It's educative," he says of his work. "And I know what it means to be a volunteer – it's putting your time towards the development of humanity. I feel encouraged when I see my services create an impact."

(Click here to read part two of Elvis's story.)