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Timap for Justice is a pioneering effort to provide basic justice services free of charge in Sierra Leone. Due to a nationwide shortage of lawyers and the nature of Sierra Leone’s dualist legal structure, Timap’s model features community-based paralegals rather than lawyers. Our decade-long experience has allowed us to develop a creative, flexible model to advance justice – one that combines services such as education, mediation, negotiation, organizing, and advocacy. With 20 paralegal offices providing outreach to 22 chiefdoms in 8 districts, Timap for Justice is Sierra Leone’s largest paralegal network.
HELPING WOMEN
In Sierra Leone, women and men enjoy equal legal rights - at least in theory. However, this is not the case in practice. In 2012, 56% of the cases that Timap handled were reported by women. Statistically, domestic violence cases are the second most common case-type handled by Timap. Read more
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
In Sierra Leone, over half of those in prison have not been convicted of a crime. They are pretrial detainees who are being held pending their day in court—they should be considered innocent until proven guilty. Yet many of them languish in jail for months or even years, unaware of their rights. Read more
HELPING CHILDREN
Children can be easily overlooked in traditional Sierra Leonean society. We try to mitigate this disparity in access to justice for minors through an emphasis on the promotion of children's rights. In 2012, nearly 20% of our cases were reported by clients under the age of 18. Read more
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
In addition to serving individuals, our paralegals take on justice-related problems at the community level. Paralegals identify community level problems and tackle them through Community Dialogue Meetings, Mobile Clinics and targeted Educational Workshops. Read more
Our Cases
Timap Can Bite!
In Yele, in the Gbonkolenken Chiefdom, a client came to Timap’s office complaining that her share in the local thrift and credit club had been withdrawn by someone else. In a statement to the paralegal, she explained that her daughter had fallen ill and was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had taken her daughter to Freetown, where doctors performed a mastectomy. When her estranged husband, from whom she had been separated for years, found out about the surgery, he told the other members of the thrift and credit club that she had given him permission to withdraw her shares and profit, totaling Le 4.5 million (ca. $1,050), to help pay the hospital bill. By the time our client and her daughter came back from the hospital in Freetown, she was appalled to hear that her husband had taken all of her money. The paralegal explained her legal rights, then contacted her husband and invited him to the Timap office for mediation. Read More
About our data
Timap is working to improve its monitoring and evaluation system. In partnership with FluidSurveys, Timap has recently developed a database that allows for data collection and analysis.
Learn more in the data section.
