Questions/Answers

All Bangladeshi citizens have a right to access to justice and fair trial. Legal remedy is a fundamental way of getting proper support against violence against women and children. However, for getting the legal assistance against violence against citizens to overcome many hurdles. Aparazita-Jessore is an ICT based efficient digital service process which eliminates the hassle of age-old traditional legal aid service process. The objectives of this projects are to:  Help oppressed women and children and their families to get legal assistance at their convenience.  Help people to understand and analyze their legal options.  Help the oppressed to understand and analyze available choices, including options that do not involve using police or court.  Help to save valuable time and money of the oppressed.

Aparazita Jessore is a pro-people initiative which was introduced in Jashore to provide both online and off-line legal support aiming at reducing violence against women and children. The previous procedures of lodging complaint in relation to any kind of discrimination against women or violence against women were a lengthy process. But with the introduction of Aparazita Jessore, they can lodge application through on-line or can directly discuss the issues with the assigned mentors over telephone. This resulted in less visit, hence, saves time and cost. Thus, Aparazita Jessore initiative took the services to the door steps of the citizens.

The Aparazita Jessore initiative is fully aligned with goal no. 16 of SDG. Goal 16 emphasizes to reduce all forms of violence against women and children. SDG 16 also aspires to end of abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against women and children, promoting rule of law at the national and international levels and ensuring equal access to justice for all (16.1,2,3). From this perspective Aparazita Jessore is a gender responsive public service. Aparazita Jessore offers an institutional shape to address the century-long sensitive issue of discrimination and violence against women and children.

In Bangladesh there are two ways to get legal support. Firstly, any oppressed woman or girl or members of oppressed families can lodge complaint through filing case directly to courts or can make complaint to Police Stations. Secondly, they can file complaint to District or Upazila Women welfare departments. But these procedures take long time. Previously, it was quite difficult to get legal assistance for the oppressed women and children in Jashore and elsewhere in the country. The victim or her family often seeks legal assistance from district administration, legal aid service center, lawyers and local arbiters. They paid large sum on repeated visits to legal aid service centers or lawyers etc. Often they were exploited by brokers. Delay in court hearing and financial inability to bear case expenditure exacerbated their sufferings. But now, oppressed women and children and their family can get legal assistance over phone call, email, without visiting district administration office or any legal aid centers in Jashore. This simplified service process have saved citizens’ time and cost immensely. Citizens now can get information about different stages of court case, the status of case, procedures of legal assistance etc. from Aparazita Jassore’s website.

It was quite difficult to get proper legal assistance service for the oppressed women and children at Jashore in particular and Bangladesh in general. People had to pay a huge amount of money for lawyer’s fees, repeated visit to legal aid service centers etc. The uniqueness of ‘Aparazita Jessore is that it introduces an online service system (http://www.aparazitajessore.org), a mobile application and provides a hotline number (10921 or 01755663344) ,which is first-time in the history of Bangladesh, to provide legal assistance to distressed women, children to ensure justice which is their fundamental right.

Aparazita Jessore is absolutely an innovative approach of getting legal assistance for women who are the victims of domestic violence and other forms of sexual harassment. In many senses it is an instrument to get remedies about discrimination and violence against women in a faster pace compare to traditional way of getting justice for distressed women and children. Aparazita Jessore ensures that victims will be able to lodge complain through email, off-line mobile apps. After lodging any complain through on-line, they will get an automatic sms regarding their complaint with a receipt number to track the status of their application.

Since Aparazita Jessore is an online procedure as well as off-line mentoring system, it is easily applicable and transferrable to any other places. Any organization that works with women and children issues can easily share the Aparazita Jessore apps with their system. It is cheaper and easy to operate. The inventor, Ms Sabina Yeasmin has already visited couple of districts to share the knowledge and information about ‘Aparazita Jessore’.

The software for the project ‘Aparazita Jesore’ was developed by the financial and technical support of A2I (Access to Information) project, under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Eight Mentors were selected for eight Upazilas. They were given eight mobile phones. These numbers are available on the Aparazita website. Victims, oppressed girl/women or their family members could directly call to the respective mentors and discuss the issues with them. The mentors assist them through counselling (if needed), and

‘Aparazita Jessore’ is an effective and sustainable project. However, to make it sustainable and disseminate the initiative across the country, the Ministry of Women & Children Affairs has taken over the charge of implementing the initiative through-out Bangladesh. A MoU is going to be signed in this regard between A2I & Ministry of Children Affairs. Notwithstanding the problems and challenges, as a new initiative, Aparazita-Jessore holds enormous promise to redefine the nature of legal aid service delivery and broadens the access of oppressed citizens (women and children) to legal assistance services.

Yes

Access to information program of the Prime Minister’s office jointly with UNDP have formally evaluated the ‘Aparazita Jessore’ initiative. Evaluation was conducted with a structured questionnaire. Data were collected through interviews on the basis of the questionnaire. In total 181 interviews were conducted, where 160 interviews conducted via telephones and 21 of them were done face to face. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. The researchers reviewed, edited and cleaned the data by performing a series of frequency and data range checks. Any inconsistency that was identified checked visually by comparing the electronic entry to the entry on the original questionnaire.

A number of indicators were used to evaluate the impact of the initiative: Mode of receiving legal assistance, media preference for acknowledgement about Aparazita-Jessore, Legal assistance services taken by the service recipients, The service points used by the service recipients, Opinion on getting advantages from the service, the amenities of Aparazita-Jessore, level of Satisfaction of the Respondents, Service taken by Legal assistance project in Jessore DC office (past method), Whether respondent faced any problem or not in past method, The drawbacks of the legal assistance service (Past method), Opinion on Opportunity cost etc.

The evaluation report reveals that 60% beneficiaries are satisfied and 25% are very satisfied with the initiative. More importantly, 78% of the service recipients have expressed that though they have taken services from Aparazita Jessore, but they had never taken any legal assistance from Deputy Commissioner's office. They citied (89%) lengthy procedure as the reason behind it. Also lack of cordiality and sincerity (mentioned by 74% recipients), lack of skilled manpower (57% respondents), slow service providing attitude (54% respondents) and lack of proper information about the service (51% respondents) are major causes of dissatisfaction with the existing system.

The office of the deputy Commissioner, Jashore took huge campaign program to engage various stakeholders in designing and implementing “Aparazita Jessore” project. In order to stop eve teasing and sexual harassment s number of committees were formed at school and college levels. Complain boxes were placed in educational institutions. Awareness building workshops, rallies were taken place at district level, in all eight Upazilas ( Sub- districts) and Unions (93) where approximately 1,20,000 people including students, parents, teachers were present.

we have learnt from Aparazita initiative is the importance of change of traditional culture and attitude in providing public services to citizens. The Aparazita Jessore initiative is absolutely an innovative idea to provide public services but within the existing traditional institutional structure. It was a bottom-up approach where people lodge application and complain through on-line, even they can track the progress the status of their application. Also people engagement is important such as involving local level bodies, elected representatives, teachers, NGOs, law enforcing agencies, judicial department etc. If we can involve all sectors of people then any initiative or program can be successful.