Advocacy and Legal Advice Centers (ALAC) are anti-corruption initiatives providing free legal aid to victims and witnesses of corruption and seek to empower citizens to demand accountability and transparency. TI-RW opened the doors of their first ALACs in April 2009 in Kigali. In 2011, another five centers were opened in Huye, Rusizi, Rubavu, Musanze and Kayonza Districts. ALAC project is part of the TI Global ALAC program initiative .
Since 2012, TI-RW cooperates with the Anti-Corruption, Justice and Information Clubs (AJIC), that were initiated by Norwegian People’s Aid in another four Districts : Gakenke, Gatsibo, Ngororero and Nyaruguru. AJIC use the well-established ALAC approach to provide legal advice to citizens.
To even reach citizens at sector and village level and provide basic access to legal aid in remote areas, TI-RW has created so called Citizens Concerned Committees (CCC) in 2015. Over time, ALACs and CCCs have created mutual collaboration and a strong relationship in supporting each other in their daily work. It is a Community-based structure of elected volunteers, focal points for anti-corruption. Their tasks include directing fellow citizens in need of legal advice to the nearest ALAC.
ALAC’s and AJIC’s among other activities receive complaints from citizens, provide legal advice and assistance to citizens, advocate for complaints received from citizens. They don’t have competencies of investigation, prosecution or legally represent clients in court, the reason why strong partnership with the institutions in charge have been developed through signing MoUs with the Office of the Ombudsman, Rwanda National Police and Public Prosecution Authority and last but no least a MOU with the African Parliamentarians Network against Corruption (APNAC) has been signed.
Apart from receiving complaints in the centers, sensitizations through outreach program and mobile clinics are organized to increase citizen’s awareness on corruption and other related offences, information and education on this issue were provided to citizens of 14 Districts in 2018. During this program ALACs/AJICs are working with CCCs/Paralegals who are based at the grassroots level
As part of encouraging citizens to report corruption anonymously and to save the time they spend travelling to the centers. A mobile based platform was developed in 2012 for TI-RW by young ICT experts during the “Hackathon against Corruption” in Kigali. The platform serves as an alternative tool to report corruption and, thus, complements ALAC. IFATE web based helps citizens to report issues related to Service delivery especially at the local level.
Since the opening of ALACs, 28,568 cases were received and for 2018, 3080 were received which equals to 40, 085 clients. As far as AJIC’s concerned, in 2018, 915 were received and 37,141 cases were received since the opening of AJICs and it is worth to mention that combining ALAC and AJIC’s case in 2018, 6752 cases were received and 39% were received through CCCs.
Top 5 complaint categories were execution of courts, judgment and other (748), Land issues (866), Family issues (868), family issues (868), Civil matter (898) and criminal matter (755).
Though a lot are being accomplished with centers, they are still challenges such as long travel distances to access to ALACs & AJICs services which makes CCCs and IFATE tool more important because it makes easier access of services from remote areas. Another challenge is that some of complainants provides false information or invalid cases and also outreach activities and legal mobile clinics for mobilization against corruption are not yet enough. TI-Rw’s vision is to increase geographical coverage and also to establish CCCs/Paralegals in other districts/sectors in order to reach more citizens and provide access to solve injustice cases.