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INDIGENOUS PROJECT

ACCESO is working with common law and civil law jurisdictions in our attempt to assist in the judicial reform underway in much of Latin America.

We are developing leapfrog technology for judicial reform. Our curricula promote an enlightened and measured transition to justice. Our approach recognizes that criminal procedures must be more transparent, open to checks and balances that come with oral testimony and other rules of evidence, and also recognizes that the Americas is multicultural. Specific cultural institutions - including indigenous peoples' peacemaking and conciliation - must be brought within the system, not shunted aside as archaic mechanisms.

By researching and developing an encyclopedia of best practices in problem-solving techniques, we can build a living casebook. New hybrid models of conflict resolution fora must be generated, archived and modelled in order to bring about effective and sustainable legal and judicial reform. Too often, however, the aboriginal peoples of the Americas are left out of the legal and judicial reform process. Their respective, culturally specific modes of dispute resolution tend to be ignored and are not built into the reform initiative. Indeed, access to justice includes more than transparent criminal procedures. It requires the incorporation of local conditions and solutions into the state-sanctioned dispute resolution system.

We are working with the Mapuche people, the largest indigenous group in Chile, in exploring the legalization and integration of traditional problem-solving mechanisms into the judicial reform process.

In October 2000, we presented a workshop on indigenous peacemaking with the nationally-selected Chilean public defenders during a large regional conference. We are coordinating the research by several judges and public interest lawyers, as well as Ministry of Justice officials and indigenous groups to develop horizontal restorative justice mechanisms that can be integrated with the judicial reform process. Proyecto ACCESO faculty went with Ministry of Justice officials to the remote Guapi Island to test training workshops about justice issues with two communities of Mapuche.

We are exploring various success stories providing access to justice. We are archiving and working to integrate the design of indigenous and other horizontal justice principles into the development of the legal reform currently underway. The rule of law requires a mechanism to approach traditionally underserved populations and aboriginal peoples in a culturally sensitive manner.

With its Indigenous Project, Proyecto ACCESO is exploring the ways in which Latin America has experimented with horizontal justice principles. We will explore existing problem-solving courts and other diversion programs, often as a result of and in spite of institutional neglect, and develop a best practices manual for their management and institutionalization. In short, a series of models must be engineered, tested - and above all - replicated where appropriate. Our Indigenous Project will undertake this as part of its program in shepherding and empowering judicial innovation in selected targets throughout Latin America.