Mozambique: New chairperson takes over at Bar Association

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: New chairperson takes over at Bar Association

4:35 CAT | 29 Apr 2020

Photo: O País

The new chairperson of the Mozambique Bar Association (OAM), Duarte Casimiro, took office in Maputo on Wednesday, and pledged to fight for an improvement in the status of lawyers.

“Unfortunately, the profession of lawyer is full of risks”, he said. “Our profession has been losing status because of the attacks and lack of consideration directed against lawyers”.

“Today lawyers are subjected to ill treatment”, he continued, and this included being assaulted inside police stations.

The outgoing OAM chairperson, Flavio Menete, said that, over the past three years, the Bar Association had worked steadily on human rights issues – particularly the rights of communities displaced by mining projects.

The OAM, he said, had fought to hold both the Mozambican government and the multinational mining companies “responsible for the violation of human rights, particularly the land rights of the communities affected by major investments”.

Particular attention had been paid, for instance, to communities in Moatize and Marara districts in Tete province, affected by the coal mining companies, Jindal (of India) and Vale (of Brazil), and in Palma district in Cabo Delgado, where the consortium headed by the American company Anadarko (recently replaced by the French company Total) plans to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) factories.

The OAM, said Menete, had submitted 15 cases to the Administrative Tribunal and to the Constitutional Council “in defence of the rights of communities, in defence of the rule of law, and to ensure access to information of public interest”.

There was a “satisfactory outcome” to some of these cases, but not others, and some are still pending, said Menete.

He drew the lesson that “the protection of human rights inside courts is still a tremendous challenge, with judges, prosecutors and some lawyers finding it difficult to understand the legitimacy of the Bar Association as a defender of human rights”.

The OAM, Menete said, had noted a lack of knowledge about human rights among magistrates, and some of them showed no commitment to human rights.

If cases concerned with the human rights of communities being displaced by mining projects “are not correctly decided”, Menete warned, “we run the risk of coming to the end of many projects, with the riches exhausted, and the communities still further impoverished”.

Source: AIM