Established in 1995, we are a pioneer of human rights training across the region and as a result were awarded the prestigious Maurice Pate Award in 1998 for our work. Our highly qualified team of legal and community development trainers design and deliver comprehensive, sustained, quality training programmes tailor-made for all levels of government and civil society, from MPs to rural community-based advocates, from social workers to judges.

Our inclusive and interactive training approach has proven to be highly effective. We run training workshops for Community Paralegals, the judiciary, lawyers, medical practitioners, teachers and police on human rights and gender equality issues, community-based women and men on their legal rights, government departments and personnel on human rights issues and CEDAW. For example, over the past seven years we have trained close to 300 Pacific Island law graduates undertaking the University of the South Pacific’s Professional Diploma in Legal Practice on human rights and family law and a regionwide network of over 300 community-based advocates through our Community Paralegal Training programme.

We take a rights-based approach to development – a key objective of our training is to clearly demonstrate the linkages between democracy, good governance and human rights and their impact on development and the alleviation of poverty.

We also conduct regional workshops for human rights and women’s advocates in partnership with other regional or international organisations on such issues as gender and economic literacy, the right to land and adequate housing, feminism and legal theory.