Strategies, programs and activities

To achieve our mission, vision, and goals, we conduct three strategic programs: Defend, Empower, and Influence. Through these programs, we support lawyers at risk worldwide and raise awareness of the importance of the independent functioning of lawyers for the protection of the rule of law and human rights and fundamental freedoms to which all persons are entitled.

2.2.1    DEFEND

We defend lawyers at risk globally to end, mitigate, or prevent infringements of their professional rights as well as reprisals against them for simply doing their job, and ensure accountability where such acts occur.

We’ll do so by:

  • Providing tailor-made support to individual lawyers at risk, guided by the lawyers concerned or their representatives.
  • Monitoring and highlighting violations of lawyers’ professional guarantees, immunities, and privileges, and the consequences thereof
  • Conducting advocacy on targeted impunity cases.
  • Building networks and alliances to act in collaboration and solidarity.

 

2.2.2    EMPOWER

We empower lawyers and associations of lawyers to help support and safeguard the independent functioning of the legal profession in their home countries.

We’ll do so by:

  • Sharing best practices on core values and ethics underpinning the legal profession.
  • Providing interactive training sessions and resource materials on international human rights treaties and mechanisms for the protection of human rights.
  • Developing tools, such as the Lawyers for Lawyers database of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, to access, manage, and analyse data that help inform public discussion and decision making.
  • Using our convening power to facilitate communication, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing among international networks of lawyers, associations of lawyers, and other stakeholders.

 

2.2.3    INFLUENCE

We advocate for laws, regulations, and practices that provide or reinforce effective protections for the independent functioning and security of lawyers in accordance with internationally recognized laws and standards at all levels.

We’ll do so by:

  • Engaging with global and regional bodies and their mechanisms to advocate for standards, resolutions, and recommendations that strengthen the independence and security of lawyers.
  • Lobbying governments and professional associations of lawyers to adopt, implement, and enforce effective legal protections, including effective legal remedies against improper interferences, and change laws, regulations, and practices that encroach on the independence of lawyers.
  • Promoting the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and other guiding principles recognising the independence of the legal profession as an essential component of the rule of law.
  • Informing the public about what lawyer independence is, how it affects peoples’ lives or what life might be like without it, and what governments should do to ensure the independent functioning of lawyers in accordance with international standards.

Read more in our Strategic Plan 2024-2028.