Middle East

Overview
The LACEC Middle East sub-program was initially started in late 2005, when the Justice Initiative invited representatives from Lebanon, Egypt, and Palestine to participate in the first Turkish CLE workshop as observers. Starting 2006, an initiative to launch CLE was proposed by the Lebanese NGO PINACLE public interest law center in Beirut. In parallel, Justice Initiative initiated discussions with OSI Middle East/North Africa-MENA program to assess the ways to incorporate legal clinics into the strategy.

In November 2006, a regional CLE workshop was organized in Istanbul for representatives from universities in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Lebanon. The workshop resulted in proposals to launch legal clinics programs in Afghanistan and Lebanon. To date, the Justice Initiative works on providing the necessary technical and partial financial support for the introduction and development of university legal clinic in both countries.

Objectives
A. to support the creation of university legal clinics in the region;
B. to provide capacity building and training support for involved university faculty;
C. to organize inter-clinical exchange programs with the purpose of stimulating networking and future cooperation on specific matters of public interest;
D. to provide the opportunity for existing clinical programs to undertake work in promoting community empowerment, public interest and human rights initiatives.

Project and Activities
1. Promoting Criminal Defense Clinics in Afghanistan
This project aims at building the capacity of scarce pool of Afghan lawyers to undertake social justice and human rights work in the future. It also aims at building a new generation of criminal defense lawyers that would be trained in the spirit of client –centered approach to legal representation. Major Justice Initiative partners in the project are the International Legal Foundation-ILF and OSI-Afghanistan office through OSI Middle East & North Africa program MENA.

As a follow up to November 2006 regional meeting in Istanbul, an externship model legal clinic was initiated in Herat in December 2006, run by ILF-Herat office with financial support from OSI MENA and technical support from the Justice Initiative. The clinic enrolls 10 law students for 3 months internship with ILF criminal defense attorneys in Herat province. Students start their experience by undergoing practical skills development trainings for one month followed by a two-month practical work.
In addition to externship model, the Justice Initiative has provided technical assistance to the university in developing model of community education clinic in-house. Faculty members from Herat University traveled to South Africa in May 2007 for a 10-day study tour aiming at building the capacity for establishing and running in-house legal clinic. The model and structure of the clinic are expected to be finalized by the end of 2007.

2. Promoting Public Interest Law Clinics in Lebanon
The project was initiated in June 2006 and is an initiative of the OSI-MENA program, PINACLE public interest law Centre in Beirut, and the Justice Initiative, in cooperation with two universities in the country – Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) and Lebanese University (UL) in Beirut. The project aims at introducing the concept of legal clinic and public interest law into the academic field. The concept of CLE is entirely new in Lebanon. In March 2007, the Justice Initiative and PINACLE organized the first meeting and workshop on CLE in the country for representatives from both universities. The project is a two-year effort and it is expected that both universities will engage in public interest law activities jointly and under the coordination of PINACLE and with the technical advice from the Justice Initiative.