PARALEGAL PROGRAMS

Paralegal system in Tanzania started in the early 1990’s after the failure of the State to provide legal aid service to all citizens who are in need of it. The failure of the State to guarantee its people different developmental programs such as health and education lead to immense poverty. Citizens cannot make ends meet and their very existence as human beings is totally threatened, hence many of them frustrated and disappointed with unchanging daily life turn to conduct petty and serious crimes.  Frustrations become the source of violence including gender violence and other types of human rights abuses. Therefore many poor and ignorant people are caught by the law while they cannot afford to hire legal counsel to represent them in Court and hence they turn up to the State which is obliged under the Constitution to provide these poor people with legal assistance.

Besides the lack of adequate financial resources by the State, there is also the issue of availability of trained legal personnel. For instance there are only 2003 advocates in Tanzania until August, 2011. This exponential growth in numbers is encouraging but still remains low when viewed against the estimated Tanzanian population of 45 million people. This accentuates the need for the formal introduction and recognition of paralegals to provide basic legal services, especially to citizens based in rural communities.

By recognizing the fact that the State is incapable of providing legal assistance and service to all poor sections of the Tanzanian society, a number of Organizations and Institutions have come up with the variety of programmes to assist indigent people with legal problems.

Similar to State, the said Institutions also cannot afford to cater all the poor accused at their disposal. They also have limited number of lawyers available to them. For that reason, each Institution or Organization has set up its own eligibility criterion for providing legal assistance such as gender only(mainly women), means test earnings capacity of the clients and subject test, the type of cases adopted by the Organization. These Organizations include: Women’s Legal Aid Centre(WLAC), Legal and Human Rights Centre(LHRC), Tanzania Women Lawyers Associaltion(TAWLA), Women Advancement Trust(WAT-Human Settlement), Tanzania Women Volunteering Association(TAWOVA), Tanzania and Environmental and Human Rights Care Organization(ENVIROCARE), just to mention a few.