History and Development

PLD's development has been an organic process, with each phase building on the learning of the previous work. Established in 1998, PLD's outreach was primarily geared towards establishing partnerships with grassroots agencies that work with marginalized groups. In an effort to take law to the people PLD focused its first 6 years on developing unique partnership programmes, pulling together the strength of community organizations with a locally based lawyer, in order to implement field based law strategies. The focus was on developing local capacities in human rights through direct support and skill building in alternative law strategies that complemented field specific needs. Sectors of work included women's rights, child sexual abuse, common property resources, displacement and environmental justice.

This initial period was formative in highlighting the worrying lack of accessible educational resources on gender and the law in the social justice sector, and the absence of multi disciplinary capacity building programmes on the same theme. It was also during these initial years that we realized our strengths lie in women's rights. The second phase endeavored to fill these gaps in knowledge resources and capacity building. Having established a wide network of social justice lawyers and community organizations our focus since the initial phase has been on sustaining and strengthening the integration of women's rights into social justice initiatives through structured capacity building, and knowledge creation. As an organization keen to adapt to the changing legal needs of the social justice sector, the three broad components of our work - field based collaboration, capacity building, and knowledge creation - are constantly being reviewed, consolidated and developed.

For a more detailed outline of our current programme outreach please follow the link to our work.

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