LAND FOR LIFE TRAINS ITS TEAM MEMBERS ON THE WORK OF A PARALEGAL IN SIERRA LEONE
The three-day training in Bo City, Southern Sierra Leone, was attended by Land for Life’s District Directors, District Facilitators (DFs), who have now been transformed into Paralegals, key members of the District Multi-Stakeholder Platform (DMSP) from the project’s four operational districts in the country, and Land for Life Secretariat staff.
The primary goal of the training was to give the various teams the necessary expertise on how to mediate land conflicts, document land cases reported to them, perform follow-ups at the community level, and store the information collected.
Berns Komba Lebbie, Land for Life National Coordinator, opened the training session by stating that in the second phase of the Land for Life Project, which ended in December 2023, the DMSP and DFs were able to skilfully arbitrate so many land issues in their respective districts. Berns stated that to further resolve land conflicts in the various districts, each partner team and DMSP member must be trained as a paralegal.
Facilitating the training, Legal Consultant Emmanuel Gbondo, Esq., stated that the work of a paralegal in Sierra Leone, particularly in rural regions where the bulk of persons involved in land issues are not well educated, is extremely challenging. He walked the participants through the ethics and concepts of paralegalism. By the end of the trianing each participate was able to get an understanding of how the Sierra Leone legal system works.
