News
Indigent Defense in Kathmandul (7/30/2010)
The ILF has a terrific summary on the ILF's work and I'll borrow language on its website to introduce the project I am involved in. While a number of NGOs in Nepal are providing legal aid services, criminal defense remains timid. Lawyers are reluctant to challenge established practices that often result in arbitrary pretrial and pre-verdict detentions. Without proactive defense lawyers asking the courts to apply and abide by new and existing rules, there can be no change. More...
The ILF sends Letter to UN Security Council (6/29/2010)
On June 29, 2010, the UN Security Council held an open debate on “the promotion and strengthening of the rule of law in the maintenance of international peace and security." The International Legal Foundation sent a letter... More...
The Himalayan Times (6/23/2010)
Offering a ray of hope for juvenile detainees, Patan Appellate Court stated in a verdict issued yesterday that juveniles should be kept in reform homes, not in police custody. More...
The Journal of the Bar of Ireland (12/2009)
Lawyers Fighting for Afghan Justice (11/3/2009)
The Taliban insurgency is spilling more blood and Hamid Karzai's government reeks of corruption, but Afghan lawyers are determined to prove that, if life isn't fair, at least justice can be. A group of committed Canadian and U.S. lawyers spent several years in Afghanistan, training local lawyers to defend indigent Afghans. Next month, if everything goes according to plan, 13 Afghan lawyers and legal aid office managers are scheduled to arrive in Montreal for additional training. More...
Press Release (8/4/2009)
On August 1, 2009, Garth Meintjes joined the ILF as its chief operating officer. A South African lawyer, he received his B.A. from the University of Stellenbosch and an LL.B. from the University of Cape Town. As a conscientious objector to compulsory service in the South African Defence Force, he was effectively barred from legal practice and taught constitutional law and criminal law at the University of the Western Cape. There, he received a scholarship to study international human rights at the University of Notre Dame, where he received his LL.M. and J.S.D. degrees, summa cum laude. More...
Press Release (2/11/2009)
The ILF is pleased to announce that Professor Rüdiger Wolfrum has joined its Advisory Council. Among his many other activities, Prof. Wolfrum serves as the Director of the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. The ILF has worked closely with the Max Planck Institute through its workshops and seminars in Afghanistan and is honored to Prof. Wolfrum joined the organization. More...
Bagram's Black Hole (AmericanLawyer.com, 11/13/2008)
More than 600 prisoners remain at Bagram without being charged; some have been in legal limbo for more than five years. Because the United States calls Afghanistan a battleground in the war on terror, it contends that prisoners held there have no right to challenge their detention. Whether for political or strategic reasons, or merely because of Guantanamo Bay burnout, no more than a handful of detainees held by the U.S. government at Bagram have any legal representation. Yet their plight reflects a problem that extends far beyond the U.S. air base, and has implications for the United States and the prisoners it holds all over the world. More...
Summerside Lawyer Heading to Kabul (CBC News, 11/1/2006)
A public defender in Summerside is leaving for Afghanistan next week to join an international team mentoring lawyers there. "The International Legal Foundation is charged with developing an independent, functioning legal-aid program in Afghanistan," said Trish Cheverie, "starting in Kabul and hopefully branching out to the provinces." Cheverie has been studying Afghan law in preparation for her trip, and is finding it relatively light reading compared with Canadian law. The constitution, the criminal code, the highway traffic act, the narcotics code and the juvenile code don't quite fill a large binder. Cheverie will spend three months working with lawyers in the Afghan capital. "This is really talking about basic human rights and trying to ensure that a whole population, for perhaps the very first time in a long time, has access to basic human rights," Cheverie said. More...
Quebec Bar Journal (5/2006)
Teaching Defense: US Lawyers Teach Afghan Attorneys the Art of Defense (The National Law Journal, 1/10/2005)
Legal Aid Afghanistan's caseload will spike if the country's first elected president makes good on his December post-inauguration promise-a "holy war" against the narcotics industry. That there is a Legal Aid Afghanistan (LAA)-and that its lawyers have been mentored in the art of questioning authority by Western lawyers-is a miracle worked by the New York-based International Legal Foundation (ILF). ILF volunteer lawyers, known as fellows, have been coming to Afghanistan for two-month stints (soon to be six) since August 2003 to teach experienced Afghan lawyers-newly-minted public defenders funded by ILF-the myriad Western skills of criminal defense. But ILF's director worries that the program is in danger of going broke just when it's needed most. In addition to the promised "drug war," the U.S. Department of Defense may soon turn over some detainees to the Afghan government for prosecution. More...
The Case for the Defence (The Guardian, 3/22/2005)
After tea and biscuits, the shackled defendant is brought in by a guard bearing a Kalashnikov. The senior judge, one of three, sits at a desk at one end of the room, flanked by sofas. The evidence is read out by the prosecution, people wander in and out and, after a brief discussion, the judges make up their minds and deliver their verdict and sentence. A typical day in a criminal court in Afghanistan. "The whole trial for something like murder can be over in 45 minutes," says British barrister Noel Casey, who has just returned from Kabul. "What was most noticeable was how informal it was. People would drift in and out of the room and it didn't have any of the gravity that you normally associate with a trial. It was like sitting in a lounge." The football stadium in Kabul may no longer be used for public executions but someone accused of murder can still be tried and sentenced in less than an hour, with no legal representation. Now a group of western lawyers, including British barristers, are hoping to change the nature of Afghan justice with a pioneering system of legal aid for defendants. More...
Legal Momentum's Ambassador at Large: Mary McGowen Davis (Legal Momentum, 6/2004)
Little did we know in 1999 when Mary McGowan Davis, a former Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, agreed to work with us on violence issues, filling in for a staff attorney on leave, how invaluable she would become in shaping our domestic work and strengthening our commitment to international law. "I have learned that the issues for women are the same around the world, and we can only learn from each other how to move forward. Every place I go and each conference I attend, I include Legal Momentum in the conversation. I feel like the ambassador for Legal Momentum," says Visiting Attorney Mary McGowan Davis. Over her long and distinguished career, Davis, who served as Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York and Staff Attorney at the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, has spent much of her free time traveling the world for various human rights projects. More...
Local Lawyer to Share Expertise in Kabul (Concord Monitor, 6/29/2004)
As director of the state's public defender program, Michael Skibbie helped new law school graduates learn to think like defense attorneys - to question judges, prosecutors and police officers. Now he's going to Afghanistan to help lawyers there do the same thing. "You're trying to encourage them to be more assertive with the system," said Skibbie, who will take a leave of absence from his current job at the Disabilities Rights Center in Concord. "Ultimately, that's what defense attorneys are supposed to do. Challenge the system." Skibbie leaves Friday for two months at Legal Aid Afghanistan in Kabul, where he will work with six Afghan lawyers. The International Legal Foundation, the New York-based nonprofit that opened the Kabul office, sees criminal defense lawyers as the engine of a good judicial system. They are a check on prosecutors and judges, a way to make sure that justice is just. More...
Have Degree, Will Travel (New York Newsday, 12/18/2003)
First yesterday, I meet a bodega owner in Corona who said he had a cousin, Wadah, who is from the West Bank and is something in the Al-Jazeera network. Bendek said that the cousin was willing to give him the audio rights to the torture of Saddam Hussein. More...
Afghanistan Gets Public Defense, American Style (New York Law Journal, 8/29/2003)
Young lawyers with eight weeks to spare, three years of criminal defense experience, a yen for exotic travel and few qualms about wearing bullet-proof clothing may wish to investigate a unique opportunity created by a veteran public defender. "Legal Aid Afghanistan" is the brainchild of Natalie Rea, a staff attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society of Queens. Her effort is currently a six-month pilot project operating on a $100,000 budget under the aegis of the International Legal Foundation (ILF) of New York, of which Ms. Rea is executive director. The ILF mission is to assist in establishing fair criminal justice systems in post-conflict countries, with an emphasis on drafting laws that comport with national cultural realities. More...