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Street Law
Imparting the Basic legal knowledge to the Future
Leaders of the Nation
Mahdy Hassan and Emran Azad
DO you support death penalty or not?"- a very simple response to this query from Saraf, a student of class ten of Holy Cross Girls' High School was this: “We can not take one`s life as we can not give life to someone”. Before answering she thought for some moment about humanity, and then she thought that one must not wipe out the smile from the face of humanity . On the second week of March, 10 law students from the University of Dhaka visited the Holy Cross School as part of “Street Law” program, which is only one of the many people oriented socio-legal projects conducted by ELCOP ( Empowerment Through the Law of Common People). ELCOP is a Student-Teacher run Organization which provides Legal Aid service to the common people an d the law students from the various corners from home and abroad. As part of the “Street Law” program, ELCOP sends Law students to different schools of the capital all round the year. The purpose of this program is to provide the secondary and higher secondary level students with a first glimpse of legal knowledge which is a part and parcel of our everyday life. The programme is structured in a manner that gives out the basic legal education which can make the students aware of not only their rights but also duties towards their family, society, community, country and the universal humanity. The majority of the people of our country do not have the minimum knowledge about their rights and duties individually as well as collectively. The Constitution of our country spells out eighteen fundamental rights which have been adopted in 1972 having been inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948. Right to know one's the fundamental rights is thus a core human right of a person.
As a member of this present modern world and as an ideal citizen of an independent democratic State, every person should have some realistic legal knowledge of their daily life. Law exists in our personal, family, societal and political life in some form or other, and we resort to legal knowledge with our subconscious mind. .But unfortunately the students of our country at the school and college levels are not flourished with the basic legal knowledge. Nevertheless by ignoring this type of knowledge, the characteristics of a good citizen become hard to obtain. Thus such education must be disseminated from the school level. Whom we call the “roots of future”, obviously are the students of our country. To make the country cope up with the rapid development of the international; arena, not in theoretical but in practical sense, we must work hard at the grass root level.
The Street Law programme is designed to introduce the young minds with the primary ideas of human rights, fundamental rights, equality before law, rights of children, crime and sin, law and morality, civil rights, court structures, justice system, family matters such as marriage, divorce, maintenance, succession etc., suppression of domestic violence, juvenile justice system consumer rights, the sanctity of the constitution etc. If the students of every corner of our country become conscious about their legal and moral rights and duties, ultimately our society will be changed and law of the State will be pro-people. Everyone will enjoy his rights and perform his duties equally. As we have already recognized the students as the future of the nation, their thinking will be more developed only when legal based education such as Street Law program will be continuing. This is what ELCOP calls making Future Conscious Citizens
The most fascinating aspect of this whole project is that, this helps not only the trainees, but we the Street Lawyers enrich ourselves through this whole process which only class room learning can never achieve. From our experience at the Holy Cross School while conducting Street Law program we were astonished to know that sometimes people not connected with the legal arena interpret certain aspects with such novelty that the legal minds might never even conceive.
ELCOP started the program named “Street Law” (Protidiner Ain) since more than a decade. It started as the Law review programme by the law students from the University of Dhaka. Since 1998, Prof. Dr. Mizanur Rahman with the help of Ford Foundation as well as the USAID formally launched this programme which is run in more than 77 countries worldwide. The inception of the Street Law was in Georgetown University of USA in 1970 where the law students as part of their academic curriculum went to the Ghetto areas to share legal knowledge with the backward sects of a society suffering from the vice of apartheid. Thereafter it flourished in its best form in South Africa, and Professor David MacQuaid Mason from Natal University of South Africa is considered one of the most successful proponents of Street law. In South Africa, Street Law is a major part of acquiring a formal law graduation degree. In the Subcontinent, Bangladesh with the help of ELCOP is the pioneer of Street law which we the Street Lawyers love to call Protidiner Ain, as it is necessary to cross the paths of out everyday life smoothly. The last two Street law Programs at the Nilkhet High School and the Holy Cross have been a real booster to reenergize our strife for quenching the thirst for sound jurisprudential knowledge and sensible ways to implement that I the practical life. We believe that the motto that” Each One, Teach one” shall one day establish the Shonar Bangla we all crave for, and hence we carry forward the motto of ELCOP: Lawyering with the Poor, Lawyering for Justice; and that is the essence of pro-bono education, empowering the toiling mass of Bangladesh.
The Writers are Street Lawyers, Students of law , University of Dhaka.
