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What We Do
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Legal Aid Afghanistan
ICDAA is concerned with the defence of human rights and the role of lawyers in helping countries make the transition to democracy and rule of law. This has motivated us to become involved in a project to support defence lawyers helping build the criminal justice system of Afghanistan .
The project supports the International Legal Foundation (ILF), a New York based NGO, in its endeavour to implement a fully operational and effective public defender's office in Kabul . In August 2003, the ILF opened a public defender's office in Kabul , known as Legal Aid Afghanistan (LAA), which is currently the primary provider of criminal defence services in Kabul .
ICDAA is supporting the next phase of development, with the goal of training Afghan legal staff and teaching them basic skills, such as making written submissions to the courts and prosecutors based on specific statutory provisions in the penal code or code of criminal procedure. The project also addresses the seeming chaos that reigns among the 16 districts or judicial precincts within Kabul , each of which has a court and a prosecutor's office.
Already, with limited resources, the ILF team has made significant contributions to the building of an entirely new justice system from the ground up in this war-torn country. For example, it has started to instil a culture of criminal defence and a respect for the legal profession in Kabul 's court system. It has commented on draft legislation from a defence perspective and successfully advocated the creation of qualified public defender offices in the provinces.
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