More Rwandans need legal aid

Elias Hakizimana Dec 1, 2022Dec 1, 2022 0 Comments

By Emmanuel HAKIZIMANA.

While a big number of Rwandan citizens (38 percent) live in poverty, the minimum cost to get a lawyer is Rwf 500,000 for each court proceeding, which makes a big gap in delivering equitable justice, new assessment says.

Between 2017 and 2021, 173, 297 suspects were prosecuted before different courts, out of which only 18, 428 suspects, representing 10.6%, were provided with free legal representation by the Rwanda Bar Association.

The Assessment that was officially presented on Tuesday, November 29,2022 was conducted by the Center for Rule of Law Rwanda (CERULAR). It aims at exploring the progress made, existing opportunities and challenges, lessons learnt and good practices in relation to access to legal aid along the criminal justice chain in order to inform the legal, policy and institutional reforms.

**John Mudakikwa, Executive Director of CERULAR says that there is a big gap in criteria for a citizen to get legal aid.**

“Currently, Ubudehe-socio-economic categories are the main criteria to get a lawyer, but the cost of a lawyer is still expensive, so, there is need for other criteria for a citizen to get a lawyer because it is not enough to rely on ubudehe category,” Mudakikwa said.

He added that a need for quick approval of the criteria for a citizen to get legal support is needed. He gave a typical example of some citizens whose further investigations on their alleged cases are done while they are imprisoned, and without money to pay a lawyer.

Anastase Nabahire, JRLOS Director General of Justice, Reconciliation, Law and Order Sector Strategy (JRLOS) in the Ministry of Justice (MINIJUST) says that there are some achievements done so far, despites the gaps in providing legal aid to the citizens. He explains that legal aid journey starts by explaining the existing laws to the citizens.

“We can’t have an equal number of lawyers to the citizens but there are some provisions by the constitution, regarding special categories of people who need legal aid. These include children, needy people and other disadvantaged people,” Nabahire explains.

He adds that there are some solutions expected from joint collaboration with different entities as well analyzing legal aid policy.