With a array of natural sights, Tanzania is a tourist magnet. Revenues from the travel industry, as well as gold mining, have spurred high overall economic growth rates. However, Tanzania remains one of the world’s poorest countries in terms of per capita income.
In September and October 2017, IDLO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) organized 2 workshops and a dialogue forum in Uganda and Tanzania convening law students and legal academics to discuss the role of the law in national and global HIV responses.
One of the challenges in scaling up HIV-related legal services is the limited number of knowledgeable, skilled and committed lawyers to provide such services. Part of the solution therefore lies in building the capacity of law schools to ensure law graduates are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to support human rights-based approaches to HIV. Many universities, including in East Africa, offer clinical legal education programs to give students direct experience of providing legal information to clients.
“How do we know when the rule of law works? What do we mean by justice?” opened IDLO’s Director of Research and Learning, Ilaria Bottigliero, at the expert roundtable, Critical Reflections on the 2nd Generation of Rule of Law Reform. “For IDLO, it’s when women have better access to justice in Afghanistan. It’s when citizens in Uganda have access to the medicine they need.
Adolescent girls and young women account for 71 percent of new HIV infections among young people in sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda reflects this disproportionality, with HIV prevalence among young people aged 15-24 estimated at 4.2% for women but only 2.4% for men.
Adolescent girls and young women account for 71 percent of new HIV infections among young people in sub-Saharan Africa. They are more vulnerable to HIV because they are often subjected to a range of gender and age based biases, discrimination and violence, including sexual assault, forced marriage and trafficking. Despite growing HIV-related responses, they and their communities most often do not have the capacity, voice and power to hold these service providers accountable for improved delivery of quality HIV-related services.
In 100 countries worldwide, women are barred from doing certain work solely because they are women. Over 150 countries have laws that are discriminatory to women, and only 18 countries are free of such laws. In 32 countries, women cannot apply for passports in the same way as men.
Last year Legal Aid South Africa supported nearly 800,000 people who would otherwise have had no recourse to justice because they could not afford legal fees.
The rule of law has often been regarded as an abstract concept in development circles, a poor second cousin to the tangible targets set by the eight Millennium Development Goals. But that changed in January 2015, with the adoption by the African Union of Agenda 2063, which included the rule of law as one of its seven ‘Aspirations’ for Africa.
(Rome, Italy) June 9, 2016
Africa-wide collaboration on strengthening the rule of law will play a key role in realizing international development goals.
This was the consensus at the end of a two-day rule of law and development meeting convened by the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) and the Government of Tanzania last week.
