Procedural Rights W orking Group

1. Procedural Rights Working Group Douala, Cameroon 15 September 2011

2. What are Procedural Rights? • Access to information : all citizens should have access to environmental information • Participation: informed, meaningful, and representative using (C) FPIC principle • Access to justice: securing the 2 other rights and providing rights to redress and remedy

3. International and Regional Commitments to Procedural Rights • Rio 1992 Declaration on Environment and Development • 2002 Johannesburg Action Plan on Implementation of Environment and Development • Aarhus Convention (UNECE, 1998) • Bali Guidelines (2011)

4. Why are Procedural Rights Important? • Information important for holding institutions accountable and operating transparently - including state, parliamentarians, district assemblies, chiefs, community leaders and organisations. • Participation – enables communities to be fully involved in processes so they can inform all decisions and can provide or withhold their consent openly and transparently. • Justice – prevents abuses and empowers community members to resolve conflicts fairly.

5. Challenges to effective procedural rights for communities? • costs, • bureaucracy, • corruption, • capacity, • access and legal standing, • enabling legislation not in place, • accessibility of decision making processes and dispute settlement institutions, • info made in languages, etc.

6. State or Traditional Procedural Rights? • Is it a matter of either or?  • what is the relation between them ? many people depend on traditional systems in forest and rural regions • does state law recognise traditional systems? • are democratic rights applied to the traditional systems including procedural rights – if not why not and how?

7. Good Practice Examples: Information and Participation • translation of law into local languages, • guides explaining the laws, legal acts, seminars, • legal empowerment at the local level, training, education. • community codification of traditional legal systems procedural rights • proactive advocacy, • drafting of legal proposals, • training on the issues (land law, forest law, etc)

8. Good Practice - right to access to justice • ‘open day’ tribunal, • capacity building with government and customary leaders on improving procedural rights • seminar to mobilise people and make them have confidence in justice, • advocacy and promotion of a better access to courts, • legal assistance brought at community level (NGOs providing free legal assistance to those groups)

9. FLEGT VPA and REDD – opportunities to further procedural rights Embed in the VPA and REDD processes and related laws and policies procedural rights. All legislation should include these rights. Also communities need to ensure procedural rights are part of agreements where communities can be held to account

10. Questions for Group • Are procedural rights recognised in your national legal system – both customary and state ? If so are they effective? • What actions can communities and civil society organisations take to develop further and make effective procedural rights? • What steps specifically can you take within the VPA and REDD processes to advance procedural rights? • Lets keep it practical !!!!!

11. Three Suggestions to Improve Procedural Rights • 1 • 2 • 3