Human Rights and Social Justice Center, Inc.
Created in 2014, the Human Rights & Social Justice Center (HRSJC) is a non-profit / non-governmental organization that seeks to both educate and train trial advocates who assist the poor and indigent in the areas of criminal defense and civil litigation. To this end, the HRSJC engages critically in issues of law and social justice on both the domestic and international levels
The lack of qualified lawyers available to provide criminal defense representation to the poor is a serious problem in post-conflict and transitional countries despite many of these countries guaranteeing the right to counsel to persons accused of crimes in their constitutions and other domestic laws despite many of these countries having ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires them to ensure the right to counsel. Yet in practice, there are few defense lawyers for the poor in many developing countries. Those that do practice are often grossly unqualified. Without access to counsel there can be no rule of law and accused persons remain vulnerable to arbitrary detention, wrongful convictions, and other abuses within and without the given legal system. This will be of particular importance in the years to come as global warming and the climate crises will lead to the creation of climate refugees at an unprecedented scale. The HRSJC seeks to position itself on the side of justice by helping those already vulnerable individuals by providing them legal representations as they are forced, and as they attempt, to navigate their way through legal systems foreign to them.
Moreover, the HRSJC seeks to fight against hate, bigotry, social injustice, as well as assisting the most vulnerable members of our global community as they face criminal prosecution. The HRSJC also assists individuals in civil cases as they pursue their legal and civil rights. The HRSJC uses various tools in order to accomplish its goals. The HRSJC uses litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy to foster greater tolerance and insure issues of justice. This multifaceted approach is entirely due to HRSJC’s recognition that the very concept of justice requires not simply the implementation of procedural rules, although clearly this important, but also educational reform regarding the very way in which humans of diverse backgrounds and cultures see one another.
While the HRSJC acknowledges that fostering a more tolerant, and just global community is a generational endeavor it seeks to play its role, however small, in being the change that is needed.