A Legal Aid Steering Committee that was meant to provide comprehensive policy guidance, strategic planning and coordination of how the vulnerable can access free legal aid services is yet to be established six years on, The New Times can reveal.

Although Rwanda still has no Legal Aid Law and depends solely on the policy established in 2014, lawyers say that the inexistence of the steering committee is costing many vulnerable people their right to justice.

In a telephone interview with the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Forum, Andrews Kananga said that the steering committee would have been instrumental in providing planning, guidance and quality control on how best the vulnerable can access legal aid.

The Legal Aid Forum is a non-governmental organisation bringing together 36 national and international organizations that provide or support legal aid services to the country’s poor and vulnerable population.

"If that committee was established and it started working, all the other legal aid providers would have something clear to guide them. We have a policy but it’s not really clear. What we need are clear guidelines and that’s what the committee would have given us,” he said.  

Need for law

Kananga said that the excuse of financial constraints, often cited by the government in terms of affordability of the cases that could be deemed pro bono by the law is not convincing enough. 

He, however, agreed that legal aid cannot go to everyone but the government should learn from other countries’ processes.

"In other countries, you do what we call a means test. You don’t give to everyone who comes asking. The policy stipulates that there is a legal aid committee which is in charge of assessing every application so that they can determine the urgency, need and financial need,” he said.

The President of the Rwanda Bar Association, Julien-Gustave Kavaruganda, says that more and more cases continue to come up, which emphasises the need for the law.

"We are in discussion with the ministry of justice. Even if there is no law yet, there should be guidelines and a budget,” he said. "They accept this in principle but they also have to discuss this with the Ministry of finance. In the revised budget in January, it can be revisited because we have cases that continue to come up that show us that we need this law more and more.”

The Executive Director of Transparency- Rwanda, Apollinaire Mupiganyi, said that there is a need for this law.

"We depend on the existing legal framework when providing legal aid but it would be much easier if there was a law. There is no harmonisation in how we do things. Who protects the client who has been treated unfairly,” he said.

Of 193 countries, less than 50 have a legal aid law.