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Monopoly and Power Implications for Trans Health Care Specialists Working in a Centralised Setting: A Qualitative Study
Get PDFIn the last decade, the range and number of people accessing trans health care has increased at a faster rate than previously. Globally trans health care is commonly used as a requirement for trans people to access legal gender recognition. In Europe, trans health care is often provided within centralised health systems by a limited number of specialist teams placed in monopoly positions. Through a qualitative study, we sought to understand the relationship and role these teams have with legal gender recognition. We conducted in-depth interviews with a team located in Central and Eastern Europe and consulted with local key informants working in trans health advocacy outside the team. After applying qualitative content analysis emerging themes comprised three sections: the team in context; conceptions of trans health care; and beyond the clinic.Findings indicated that the team conceived trans identities and clinical needs in a medical framework that correlated with the process for legal gender recognition. This followed a similar historical progression across Europe. As the few respected specialists in the country, the team influenced care regulations within the ministry and held a monopoly position. While reform of some regulations was seen as needed, they were met with challenges within the health system and field. These challenges were, however, found to reflect trans health care globally rather than the team itself. Our findings suggest comparisons could be drawn to similar positioned teams throughout Europe regarding decision making, power, and influence. Increased transparency and cooperation between local trans communities and health care providers will be vital
One for one and one for all? Human rights and transgender access to legal gender recognition in Botswana
Get PDFIn 2017 a surprising development took place in an African nation with no lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) rights or protections to speak of. In two separate cases, one involving a transgender man and the other a transgender woman, the Botswana High Court ruled in favour of the two litigants. The rulings allowed each to have their gender markers on their identity documents adjusted. This was a historical first on the African continent. This paper explores how this came to pass. Providing a close reading of the Botswana cases I contend that, perhaps surprisingly, the law though crucial, seems to function as simply the final decision-making tool at the judges' disposal. Drawing on interviews undertaken with both litigants and their legal teams alongside available media including op-eds’ by members of the litigation team, I provide a comparative analysis of the two cases. I argue that each case followed a distinct strategy and that this may prove pertinent to future jurisprudence in the region. Beyond the much-derided framing of gender identity as a human right in Africa, in cases such as these it would seem that for transgender people, the heteronormative ways in which litigants are presented, along with their public in/visibility and perceived im/mobility can be critical to their outcomes
The 4th UK and Ireland Best Practice Street Law Conference 2019
Get PDFThe UK and Ireland Best Practice Street Law Conference has become a popular annual event on the UK clinical legal education calendar. Taking place in early autumn, the conference is unique in celebrating this area, which is often viewed as the smaller sibling of more traditional clinical legal education models. What started as a casual discussion between clinicians at an international Street Law conference, has developed to be a well-known conference attracting national and international delegates as well as input from NGOs and third sector organisations.The unique ethos of the conference is focused on interactivity, delegate contribution and sharing best practice (both theoretical and practical). It aims to be a truly collaborative initiative between the host institution, the oversight and steering committee, and most importantly the conference delegates. It is a valuable resource for those already experienced in Street Law and a helpful platform for those starting out on the journey
Simulated and Real-World Experience - The Challenge of Adapting Practice in Clinical Legal Education in Unprecedented and Challenging Times
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Taking Clinical Legal Education Online: Songs of Innocence and Experience
Get PDFIn common with the wider higher education sector, clinical legal education practitioners are facing the challenge of how to adapt their teaching practices to accommodate the restrictions imposed by governmental responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Facilitating distance learning via online technologies has unsurprisingly become an area of increasing interest in the hope that it may offer a potential solution to the problem of how to continue teaching undergraduates in a socially distanced environment.This paper seeks to provide clinical legal education practitioners with evidence-based insights into the challenges and opportunities afforded by using digital technologies to deliver clinical legal education. It adopts a case study approach by reflecting on the Open Justice Centre’s four-year experience of experimenting with online technologies to provide meaningful and socially useful legal pro bono projects for students studying a credit bearing undergraduate law module. It will analyse how a number of different types of pro bono activity were translated into an online environment, identify common obstacles and posit possible solutions. In doing so, this paper aims to provide a timely contribution to the literature on clinical legal education and offer a means to support colleagues in law schools in the UK and internationally, who are grappling with the challenges presented by taking clinical legal education online
Royal Holloway, University of London and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association: New Partnerships and Challenges During COVID-19 in the Clinical Legal World
Get PDFIn January 2020, Royal Holloway, University of London set up a new Legal Advice Centre offering free legal advice to the local community, including building upon key partnerships to address unmet legal needs. This practice-paper discusses Royal Holloway’s Legal Advice Centre (LAC) and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association’s (ACCA) collaborative approach and response to the global pandemic since March 2020. It will highlight the unprecedented challenges that they have faced, and their efforts to overcome them. In addition, the paper will discuss their research project, which provides Royal Holloway’s student volunteers with the opportunity to gain unique multidisciplinary understandings of the effect of the pandemic in Afghanistan, and a chance to put their legal skills into practice by producing legal information to support local users of both Royal Holloway’s LAC and the Law Clinic at the ACAA.This practice-paper includes a road map to Royal Holloway’s long-term goal, namely, to work with ACAA to research the legal vulnerabilities of women in Afghanistan, with the aid of a research grant supporting international collaboration. Recent reports highlight that lockdown and quarantine measures will have a long-term impact on the basic rights and freedoms of Afghan women, who already face hardship
Clinical Legal Education: A Virtual Mode of Access to Justice
Get PDFLegal education, all over the world uses a mix of practical and theoretical means to train students. For purposes of practical training, specialized legal clinics are established by legal education institutions to train the students to apply the classroom learnt law in live cases. These legal clinics serve dual purposes, first, of training students in the practical aspects of the law and second, providing access to justice to people in areas where it is difficult to get legal help and where reaching institutions of justice delivery is difficult. The pandemic situation prevailing world over now has had deep impacts in imparting legal education. The physical classrooms have turned into virtual classrooms, delivering only theoretical education and leaving doubts in the mind of students due to lack of practical training resulting from non-functioning of legal aid clinics in this situation. In order to ensure access to justice in India during the time of pandemic, the judiciary has taken recourse of virtual courts, whereby the listing and hearing of cases which require urgent hearing are done online. The same methodology has also been adopted by the National Legal Aid Service Authority by conducting virtual Lok Adalats where cases are entrusted to them . By studying the same mode of virtual courts and virtual Lok Adalats, the present paper aims to devise a working model to ensure that clinical legal education is continued in India during these times of pandemic, and that legal aid clinics work efficiently to ensure that people are not deprived of their right to legal assistance. The working model proposes a collaboration between the legal aid clinics of the universities and colleges and the justice delivery institutions to ensure dual purpose of legal aid clinics is met. The model will also be tested in the institution, and a pan India plan of action for implementing this model would be devised
Royal Holloway, University of London and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association: New Partnerships and Challenges During COVID-19 in the Clinical Legal World
Get PDFIn January 2020, Royal Holloway, University of London set up a new Legal Advice Centre offering free legal advice to the local community, including building upon key partnerships to address unmet legal needs. This practice-paper discusses Royal Holloway’s Legal Advice Centre (LAC) and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association’s (ACCA) collaborative approach and response to the global pandemic since March 2020. It will highlight the unprecedented challenges that they have faced, and their efforts to overcome them. In addition, the paper will discuss their research project, which provides Royal Holloway’s student volunteers with the opportunity to gain unique multidisciplinary understandings of the effect of the pandemic in Afghanistan, and a chance to put their legal skills into practice by producing legal information to support local users of both Royal Holloway’s LAC and the Law Clinic at the ACAA.This practice-paper includes a road map to Royal Holloway’s long-term goal, namely, to work with ACAA to research the legal vulnerabilities of women in Afghanistan, with the aid of a research grant supporting international collaboration. Recent reports highlight that lockdown and quarantine measures will have a long-term impact on the basic rights and freedoms of Afghan women, who already face hardship