Namati

Awarded:

2016

Issue Areas:

Arresting Deforestation Environmental Sustainability Health Health Delivery Human Rights International Justice Livelihoods Living Conditions Peace and Human Rights Smallholder Productivity

Web:

namati.org

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About the Organization

Nearly every nation in the world has declared its commitment to the basic human rights of its citizens. In reality, governments rarely deliver on that promise. Billions of people live in impoverished communities, outside the protection of the law. They can be driven from their land, extorted by officials, denied essential services, and intimidated by violence. Governments, rather than upholding and executing the law, often are stymied by inefficiency, chronic underfunding, and insufficient data. Namati places the power of the law in the hands of the people. Namati trains and deploys grassroots legal advocates who work with communities to advance fundamental rights such as citizenship recognition, land tenure, and access to quality health care. Drawing on data from thousands of cases, Namati advocates for improvements to policies and systems that affect millions of people. Namati convenes the Global Legal Empowerment Network, more than 2,100 groups from 150 countries learning from one another and working together to transform the relationship between people and law.

Ambition for Change

Supported by a global movement of community paralegals, people are empowered to know, use, and shape the laws that affect their lives: citizens understand legal rights and how to challenge abuses. Governments improve laws and their administration, more effectively meeting their obligations to citizens.

Path to Scale

Organizational Growth and Partnerships Growth allows broader deployment of paralegals; partnerships enable local NGOs to field teams of paralegals beyond what Namati supports directly.

Skoll Awardee

Vivek Maru

CEO, Namati

In 2003 Vivek Maru co-founded Timap for Justice in Sierra Leone, where he had moved as a recent Yale Law School graduate. The nation was just emerging from a decade-long civil war that grew from poor governance and misadministration. But expertise to enact and administer better laws and policies was sorely lacking. At that point, there were just 100 lawyers in all of Sierra Leone. Timap for Justice, which Vivek led until 2007, trained a frontline of paralegals in mediation, advocacy, education, and organizing. Vivek left for a four-year stint at the World Bank, and then founded Namati with seed funding from the Open Society Foundations and assistance from British and Australian aid agencies, to continue to build the movement for legal empowerment.

See Vivek Maru's profile

Impact & Accomplishments

In 2017, 195 Namati-supported community paralegals initiated almost 6,000 new cases and served more than 13,000 clients across six countries. In Kenya and Bangladesh, a team of paralegals supported individuals from historically-excluded communities to secure more than 3,000 legal identity documents, thereby enabling them to seek formal employment and government services.
Building on the successes of local paralegals, Namati helped Mozamibque draft its first-ever strategy for addressing bribery in health facilities. Approved in 2017, the policy was the first of its kind in the country.”¯Namati continues to monitor implementation of the policy, supporting and empowering communities and health committees to conduct bi-annual health facility assessments across the country.
In 2017, a team of 17 paralegals supported affected communities in India to secure enforcement against 32 violations of environmental law that were harming the health and livelihoods of over 20,000 people.
In 2018, following Namati’s and its partners’ advocacy, Liberia’s government adopted their recommendations for stronger community land rights protections when passing the National Land Rights Act.

Affiliated