The assistance of the government to establish legal aid centres in Essequibo and Berbice is clear evidence that it recognizes the necessity of expanding the social service of legal aid to all the citizens of Guyana, Speaker
of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran said on Friday.
“This is a hopeful beginning and I look forward to the day when legal aid would be available to all Guyanese,” the Speaker said during his feature address at the launching yesterday of the Guyana Legal Aid Clinic in Region Five at Fort Wellington, West Coast Berbice.
“Now that the government has come forward in an even more substantial way and is making an even greater investment in providing legal aid, I hope that it will continue and build on this effort,” Ramkarran said, adding that in most countries civil society makes a large contribution to legal aid and other social services.
And expressing confidence that in Guyana this will continue to be so, he said that it was expected that the stalwarts who have pioneered legal aid in Guyana and their successors will continue to lead the way.
Ramkarran noted that many persons ask whether legal aid would be extended to those who have been charged with criminal offences, but in Guyana the funding currently available does not allow for the service to be extended to such cases. The principal recipients of legal aid here are persons who are facing domestic and matrimonial difficulties, eviction from tenanted premises, and other such matters. These are persons whose rights are daily trampled for want of legal services, Ramkarran said.
However, he added, legal aid is provided in the US by virtue of the Gideon case, and also in the UK and other developed countries.
There is no question today, Ramkarran said, that legal aid is an integral part of social services which a state is obliged to provide to its citizens.
He pointed out too that the protection of law is an obligation of nations in international law and is provided for by the Guyana constitution and those of most other democratic constitutions. He said further that where it is not specifically provided, it is recognized as a duty by the state as the protection of law is a meaningless right unless it can be equally accessed by all citizens regardless of their social or financial status.
The growing recognition over many decades that the poor and the disadvantaged do not get adequate protection of law, Ramkarran observed, led gradually to the recognition that legal aid is vitally necessary for the enforcement of legal rights of citizens. This recognition was advanced in 1963 by the case of Gideon v Wainwright decided by the United States Supreme Court in which it was held that accused persons are entitled to legal representation and it must be provided where they cannot afford it.
He also recognized the pioneering role of a number of attorneys who have been working tirelessly to establish legal aid here since in the early 1970s, and donor funding from USAID.
