Juristes-Solidarités’ action is based on the observation that law can also be an essential tool of social transformation, provided that the target people take it into their hands by gaining knowledge on the subject, learning to relate it to their daily life and use it, and when necessary by contributing to its evolution.
Numerous popular practices worlwide are thus a token of people’s and group’s ability to take possession of the legal field in order to best facilitate their own autonomy and reach the lifestyle they crave for - collective movements which use the law and claim rights, pacific and extra-judicial solving of local conflicts (mediation...), community-based democratic organizations, paralegal actions of training...
Created in 1989 at the instigation of a group of activists (farmers, social workers, lawyers) who worked on the field outside or within the judicial system, Juristes-Solidarités is an international network of information and training in legal and judicial action. The organization supports groups carrying out or related to law practices (1), both in countries of the Norths and the Souths. Juristes-Solidarités claims that law is neither neutral nor external to the citizen, and its mission is to provide support in the practices which aim at having people act in favor of - and produce - rights.
The Juristes-Solidarités Network activites consist in:
- Identifying, listing and promoting, both in the Souths and the Norths (2),the various law-using or even rights-generating practices initiated by the population, by organizations or groups which conduct information campaigns among the most resourceless people and train them in legal and judicial action ;
- facilitating the sharing of experience between the different people involved in those practices by organizing regional meetings, circulating the information (through various publications and the website: www.agirledroit.org), supporting and setting up collective projects (methodological support and/or organization of activities) ;
- raising the awareness of - and training -, in France and in Europe, various audiences (pupils, student, academics, social workers, elected representatives, and people at large) regarding the role that law can play in the exercise of one’s citizenship and the development processes carried out by the populations ;
- training, in France, organizations members and social actors in the use of law as a tool for reinforcing collective actions.
The Juristes-Solidarités Network is a meeting point of experiences and know-how, and an information relay that creates links among people. Its composition and relational modes are informal and it has a light community-based structure. Lawyers or non-lawyers, individuals, and structured - and non-structured – groups all interact with each other, each person and each group defining the quality and importance of those links with the network (around 100 groups).
(1) Popular practices of law refer to every individual - or collective - action which relied on law to favor the empowerment as well as the economic, social and cultural development of the person or community who initiated it. Such practices can refer more particularly to collective movements of use and production of law, and pacific solving of local conflicts (mediation...).
(2) In the development and cooperation field, the world is often perceived as divided in two blocks – the developing coutries of the “South” and developed or industrizalized countries of the “North”. In this article, the plural is used in order to underline the diversity of the backgrounds characterizing all those countries.
For further information
Juristes-Solidarités
Espace Comme Vous Emoi
5, rue de la Révolution
93 100 Montreuil, FRANCE
Phone number: 0033 1 48 51 39 91
E-mail: jur-sol@globenet.org
Website: www.agirledroit.org
