A Fellowship for lawyers on gender and rights was initiated to encourage to young lawyers to take up human rights and gender rights lawyering at districts. The objective was to create a network of lawyers in districts to offer legal aid to women in crisis, linking them to other help desks in courts, NGOs and women's collectives.
We have presently 19 lawyers form 14 districts offering legal help for women in crisis. (These districts are Bijapur, Koppal, Mysore, Bangalore Urban, Kolar, Bagalkote, Davanagere, Raichur, Bellary, Gadag, Bidar and Gulbarga.) These lawyers have been linked to help desks, counselling centers, legal services authorities and women’s groups and NGOs in their respective districts.
Some of the achievements of this Fellowship of lawyers are listed below:
- They have trained a group of lawyers on women’s rights and especially on the new law on domestic violence.
- Lawyers under this fellowship program were some of the first people to file cases under the new domestic violence act in their districts
- Lawyers have been able to conduct awareness programs on the legal rights of women in rural areas and litigate for women in distress
- They conducted a survey of services available to women facing violence in their districts, which has been very useful for us to push for changes in the system.
- They also been offering legal counselling to women in crisis.
.jpg)