Project/Consultancy Title: Consultancy for the Revision of IEC Materials for Prison Paralegal Program Interventions.
Location: Sindh
Project: Committee for the Welfare of Prisoners-Legal Aid Office.
1. Introduction
The Committee for the Welfare of Prisoners-Legal Aid Office (CWP-LAO) is a successful example of a public-Private Partnership in Sindh. The CWP-LAO was notified by the government of Sindh in 2004 by appointing Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid as chairperson to provide legal aid to underprivileged adult, female and Juvenile Prisons. Its scope was expanded in 2011 to include prisons accommodating adult male Prisoners, and in 2017 to allow for a greater focus on the rehabilitation process and legal empowerment of prisoners to discourage recidivism. The objective of the CWP-LAO is to improve access to justice for prisoners. And its build around the belief that free legal aid is a fundamental right, as well as the right to face trial and representation before the court.
Over the last seventeen years of operations, LAO has spread its operations to 24 Prisons and 23 judicial districts in the province of Sindh.
2. OVERVIEW OF THE CONSULTANCY
CWP-LAO recognizes that there is a lack of facility available for new UTPs and other prisoners to have access to basic and regular legal information. CWP-LAO took an initiative of creating a program known as The Prison Paralegal Programme. The Prison Paralegal Programme has responded extremely well to this gap by training convicts as paralegals, who assist in running information sessions in their prisons. The pilot Programme is being conducted in Women Prison, Karachi, and under Home Department funding in Central Prison Karachi, Central Prison Hyderabad and Central Prison Sukkur. The primary intention of this is to create a sustainable mechanism of legal awareness within the prison through the training of convicts as paralegals. The convicts are being provided training and resources for this purpose, and in return, are being rewarded by remissions and a sense of purpose and fulfilment. For prisoners, there is a readily available resource within the prison to provide them with basic legal information. The legal awareness Programme, through modules (Paralegal Reference Guide ) of eight training sessions, was conducted which included topics of the constitution, fundamental rights, criminal law, criminal procedure, family law and inheritance, probation and parole. Every session was organized with role-playing activities to understand case histories as well as skills on conducting exercises of interactive teaching among the participants.
To complement this, CWP-LAO is looking to hire a consultant to facilitate us in the revision of our Paralegal Reference Guide Book. The specialty of this guide is that it mentions the techniques on practical bases, various options of methods such as games, role-plays, simulation, exercise, group activities, and the table of content relevant to basic knowledge of the law, prison rules, criminal law & different stages of a trial.
We seek incorporation to reflect the major changes of the Sindh Prisons and Correctional Services Act 2019 and current reforms law changes should be part of this paralegal teaching curriculum.
3. CONSULTANCY SCOPE:
CWP-LAO is looking for a consultant to develop, and revise and print information, education and communication materials (IEC) to raise awareness and adoption of Paralegal Program interventions implemented by CWP-LAO.
4. DELIVERABLES
The consultant in this assignment is expected to carry out the following tasks:
Development to revise the content (both English and Urdu version) based on Paralegal guide modules for relevant internal and external stakeholders. The modules are as follows:
- Lesson 2: Fundamental rights. (Content will remain the same but we need to revise interactive activities for the audience)
- Lesson no 3: New Amendments of Powers of Police and Regulation ( The Sindh (Repeal Of The Police Act, 1861 And Revival Of Police Order, 2002) (Amendment) Act, 2019)
- Lesson No 4: Family and inheritance laws
- Married Women’s Property Act, 1874
- Sindh child marriages restraint bill, 2013.
- Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939
- Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961
- Hindus marriage act, 2016
- West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law Shariat Application Act, 1962
- Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act, 2011
- Lesson no 5:Property laws
- illegal dispossession act, 2005 act no. xi of 2005
- Women’s Property Rights Bill, 2020
- Lesson no 6: Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2018
- Lesson no 7: new amendments in Parole and Probation (New notified Prison Rules 2020)
- Lesson no 8: Major incentives of Covid-19 Emergency Relief (Amendment) Act, 2020
5. TIMELINE: 3 months
6. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
- Submit technical and financial proposals indicating key experience of the consultant/firm in similar assignments. This should include the key expertise of each individual suggested to work on the assignment. Individual CVs of the team should be included.
- At least five years’ experience in designing and developing IEC materials with relative content as indicated above.
Payments will be made to the selected consultant/vendor, upon successful and timely completion of the tasks.