Human Rights and Legal Empowerment
Human Rights and Legal Empowerment
This program is dedicated to promoting and defending the human rights of miners and communities living in and around mining areas. Mining particularly when dominated by large-scale operations often results in a complex web of human rights challenges. These include land dispossession, unsafe working conditions, exploitation, environmental degradation, gender-based violence, and lack of access to justice.
The program empowers small-scale miners, women, youth, and affected community members to understand, claim, and defend their legal, social, and economic rights. It provides critical support through community-based legal education, paralegal training, direct legal aid services, and collaboration with civil society and public institutions.
Key interventions include:
- Legal aid and advice for individuals and communities facing evictions, arbitrary arrests, contract disputes, or workplace abuses.
- Human rights monitoring and documentation of violations, helping bring visibility and accountability to injustices often ignored or covered up.
- Media and public awareness campaigns that amplify marginalized voices, shift public discourse, and build solidarity across regions.
- Parliamentary and policy engagement to influence national laws, regulations, and mining governance practices in favor of justice and equity.
- Community dialogues and legal empowerment forums to strengthen grassroots understanding and encourage collective action.
This program has been instrumental in bringing national attention to serious human rights abuses in Tanzania’s mining sector, including unlawful evictions, forced relocations, gender-based discrimination, and excessive use of force by security personnel. By exposing these issues and advocating for institutional reforms, the program helps build a more accountable and inclusive mining industry.
Ultimately, the goal is to strengthen community resilience, promote access to justice, and create an environment where human dignity and rights are respected and protected—regardless of one’s economic or social status.