| Overview : Access to justice and law is a basic principle of the rule of law as well as a right recognized under the main international and regional human rights instruments. As a guarantee of the effectiveness of individual and collective rights and the rule of law, the Government of Mozambique considers access to justice and law a fundamental right recognized by the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique (CRM), and is committed to protecting access justice and to ensure its protection through the various political and regulatory instruments of the sector, including the Government's Five-Year Plan 2015-2019, whose strategic objective IV aims to “ensure closer and fairer justice for all, focusing on effectiveness of fundamental rights, duties and freedoms of citizens whose materialization prioritizes the need to ensure greater access of citizens to justice and law and to promote research projects on justice matters ”, and the Integrated Strategic Plan of the Administration System of Justice. Notwithstanding its importance and interventions by the Mozambican Government during the last quinquennium, access to continuing justice is an exclusive right for some and not comprehensive. Some of the problems of access to justice for the Mozambican citizen are: - Limited citizens' access to local justice services and legal aid and legal assistance services: There is a significant gap between the demand for justice and the system's ability to meet this demand on a national scale. This is mainly linked to (i) the poor availability of human resources; ii) the significant geographical distance between the courts and large portions of the population and the predominant use of the Portuguese language in the courts, unknown to the population; iii) the inadequacy of the legal regime for exemption from court fees remains one of the main factors limiting citizens' right to access to justice.
- Weak concrete and indiscriminate judicial enforcement and cross-cutting issues: There is weak capacity of judges, prosecutors and lawyers in the interpretation and application of national and international law and human rights standards which have important cross-cutting ramifications for the criminal justice system. Mozambique and in the sphere of individual and social rights. Cross-cutting areas of the sector are the national response to domestic and gender-based violence and the fight against HIV / AIDS, the dominance of law enforcement and jurisprudence in these areas still weak, and the structural problem of overcrowding in the Mozambican prison system. Mozambique suffers a structural condition of overcrowding of prisons and as a result detention conditions barely meet minimum human rights standards, in particular with regard to access to water, food, medical care and sanitation, with a high coefficient of the prison population affected by HIV / AIDS. Within the scope of the Legal Reform underway in the country, the Penal Code (Law 35/2014), which establishes, among other institutes, alternative penalties to imprisonment was approved. Nevertheless, its implementation has been slow on the part of the judges. These challenges, together with the exuberance of the procedural volume for each magistrate, determine a solid stagnation of judicial execution. Moreover, the manifest judicial corruption undermines all reform efforts and the hope of an equitable justice.
- Limited availability of quality data on access to justice, especially existing justice services for the most vulnerable groups: there is a lack of available data from the justice sector on what types of cases are reported by whom and subsequently tried; which aggravates evidence-based planning and policy-making, in particular to secure responses in the areas of interventions for women, youth, victims of gender-based violence and domestic violence, children as well as people affected by HIV / AIDS, people with disabilities and inmates among other vulnerable.
The lack of timely and relevant legal and human rights information and data for evidence-based planning and policy-making is a major problem for the development of evidence-based sectoral policies that can be monitored, evaluated and improved. There is therefore a need for further investigation into access to justice in Mozambique. Accordingly, the MJCR intends to prepare a Baseline Study on Citizens' Access to Justice Services 2015 – 2019. The study will be conducted with the support of the Project “Strengthening Access to Justice, Promotion and Human Rights Protection 2018-2021”, activity 1.2.1. The project was launched in November 2018 and aims at strengthening access to justice and the promotion and protection of human rights with a focus on women, PLHIV, prisoners and other vulnerable groups, as well as to strengthen the capacity of lawmakers and law enforcement agents to prevent and combat gender-based violence and to deal with situations arising from stigma and discrimination associated with HIV and AIDS in Mozambique. The baseline will contribute to the following project results: Outcome 1: “Increased Access to Justice at national and local level, focusing on leaving no one behind”, Output 1.2: “Strengthening Provision of Justice Services at Local Level”. These TORs also allow, within the scope of the Spotlight Initiative, to implement Activity 5.2.4: Implementing the justice sector baseline to assess the current state of justice services. Outcome 2: “Quality, disaggregated and globally comparable data on different forms of VSCMR, including VSBG / PN, collected, analyzed and used in accordance with international standards to inform laws, policies and programs.” Output 2.1: “Quality data on girls and women victims of sexual violence prevalence and/or incidence, including GBV, are analyzed and made publicly available for monitoring and reporting on SDG indicators 5.2 and to inform evidence-based decision making.” |
