Africa-Press – Angola. Raul Araújo, full professor at the Agostinho Neto University Law School, defended, Sunday (13), in Luena, the creation of mechanisms for access to legal consultations for disadvantaged people, who do not have the financial resources to pay a lawyer.
The retired judge of the Constitutional Court, who was speaking in a master class addressed to law students from the higher institutes existing in Luena, recalled that, under the Constitution, everyone has the right to appeal to the courts, regardless of their financial conditions.
To this end, he defended that the State create mechanisms that facilitate all people who do not have such conditions to have access to Law and Justice. “When we talk about access to law and justice, this should not be understood only within the scope of the state or formal justice, but also constitutional or customary justice”, he underlined.
“We often think that problems are only resolved through the judicial authorities and the courts, when, in fact, there are other conflict resolution mechanisms, as is the case of Customary Law”, said Raul Araújo, for whom Customary Law it should always be seen as a mechanism that exists with a variety of legal systems that have validity and function.
Class allowed “turn on the headlights”
At the opening, the vice provincial governor for Social, Economic and Political Sphere, Victor da Silva, considered that the master class, held by the Movangola secretariat in Moxico, allowed “turning on the lights” for the identification and determination of functional and contextual solutions for the gradual and full promotion of justice.
Victor Silva said that access to justice, as a system through which people can claim their rights or resolve disputes, under the auspices of the State, is a multifactorial concept in permanent evolution, as it is based on the concept of Human Rights, which has evolved over time, depending on dynamic contexts, in a global world with new phenomena that occur continuously.
The Angolan State, he underlined, has constitutionally enshrined access to justice, law and effective judicial protection, which essentially consists in ensuring everyone has access to the law and to the courts, in order to defend their rights and interests legally protected, and justice cannot be denied due to insufficient economic or other means.
The deputy governor admitted that, despite the work that the local and central authorities have developed, there are still some constraints on access to justice in Moxico province.
Such constraints, he said, demand attention from all actors, for the solution of problems such as the delay in judicial decisions, high number of judicial proceedings, degradation of infrastructure for the accommodation of services and entities of the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Other concerns pointed out by Victor Silva are the shortage of employees, public defenders, prosecutors and judges, low legal culture of citizens, frequent resort to traditional justice and the belief in fetishism.
The provincial secretary of Movangola in Moxico, Valdano de Jesus Canjinji, said that the main objective of the master class was to academically enhance the students of the Law course.
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