AHRC Paper on Endangered Legal Systems

There are several ventures that have been specifically designed to assist lawyers who are in danger. This applies to a lawyer, or number of lawyers, who have become targets of attacks by the state directly or indirectly, through parties that have been encouraged or assisted by state agencies. The purpose of the attacks is to prevent such lawyers from performing their professional services for their clients.

In these ventures, an area of special interest is lawyers who are engaged in human rights work and who thereby become targets of such attacks. Among these are particularly those lawyers who defend persons with dissenting views that a particular State or government wants to suppress. As a part of the suppression of dissent, lawyers are also targeted. This is a way of blocking dissenters from accessing justice and legal
protection.

This article recognizes the importance of the work of protecting lawyers and is also appreciative of all such attempts to protect the professional integrity of lawyers to enable them to do their professional work in order to provide the possibility of legal protection for their clients. In fact, such protection not only helps the clients, but is also a very important aspect of protecting freedom within societies. The freedom of expression for diverse views is very much part of an open society. It is also important from the point of view of providing social stability and wellbeing.

The theme pursued in this article relates to a wider problem that not only affects individual lawyers but alsothe legal profession as a whole in particular contexts. We refer to countries where the legal system is itself endangered, meaning that lawyers do not even have the possibility of practicing on the basis of universally recognized professional standards.

The article specifically refers to the context of Asian countries, many of which have legal systems that can expose lawyers to great danger when carrying out their normal work, often preventing them from providing effective services to their clients. The popular perception created by the dysfunctionality of endangered systems also affects the clients. Many would rather sacrifice their own right to justice in favour of ensuring their own personal safety. This means that they perceive that embarking on the path of seeking legal redress for the wrongs they have suffered would lead to greater suffering. As a Cambodian woman once said of her experience seeking justice after the rape of her daughter, trying to seek justice was like making a complaint Published by the Asian Human Rights Commission about one’s dress being torn by someone and at the end having all one’s clothes torn off – this was her experience of the process of trying to seek justice.

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