GITAM conducts workshop on 'access to justice'

Visakhapatnam: Access to justice can help people sustain their lives and not be hampered by the lack of legal representation or expensive legal fees, said Margaret Philips, a Fulbright Scholar teaching and conducting research at the National Law University Delhi and the Human Rights Law Network in India.

Participating as a chief guest in a workshop on 'access to justice' organised by School of Law at GITAM here on Thursday, Prof. Margaret mentioned that access to justice involves legal literacy, remedies and legal representation and fairness in legal procedure.

Further, she observed that lack of access to justice is not merely a country's problem but a global problem. Encouraging the law students, she advised that they could contribute to access to justice through sensitisation by volunteering that could help them gain experiential learning, thereby, bridging the legal needs of community, involving law students, enhancing legal literacy and access to justice. The law students can help in ensuring fairness to further access to justice by researching on sensitive issues that could become the basis of policy making, she added.

Institution's School of Law Director Anita Rao emphasised that regardless of socio-economic background, everyone should have access to justice, which is unavailable to various classes in the public for various factors, including socio-economic background, diversity in religion, caste, gender, illiteracy levels and the distance involved in travelling from remote areas where they reside to courts.

As the workshop drew to a close, the students addressed their queries to the chief guest and expressed their gratitude for the enlightening discussion.