By Hazel Lavitoria, Executive Director, Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panlegal (SALIGAN, Alternative Legal Assistance Centre), Philippines
The GEM Report’s Learning to build just societies report highlights the essential role of legal empowerment in enabling people to claim their rights, participate in decision-making and hold governments accountable, including for the right to education. Founded in the late 1980s, SALIGAN was one of the first organisations in the Philippines to champion a legal empowerment approach to community justice.
Improving legal literacy in the Philippines
One of the key challenges we address is the lack of access to basic legal knowledge. In the Philippines, the legal system is highly professionalized and only a small segment of the population has the opportunity to study law or gain familiarity with legal processes. At the same time, legal literacy is not widely integrated into the formal education system. Basic legal knowledge – like understanding family law, property rights or workers’ rights – is not taught in schools. So many people simply don’t know their rights or where to go if those rights are violated.
My journey with SALIGAN began when I was still a law student. I first joined as an intern, drawn to its mission of promoting social justice through legal empowerment. After passing the bar, I returned as a lawyer and, over time, took on different roles across the organization—from working directly with communities to helping shape our broader strategy. These experiences have deeply influenced how I understand justice and the role that legal empowerment can play in people’s lives.
Traditional legal aid often focuses on providing lawyers to represent individuals. Our approach at SALIGAN is different. We believe that communities themselves should understand the law and be able to use it to advocate for their rights. For us, legal empowerment is about shifting knowledge and power closer to the people.
To address this gap, SALIGAN works directly with communities through training programmes, workshops and partnerships with grass-roots organizations, in community settings, often collaborating with local groups such as labour unions, community leaders and service providers. One of our flagship initiatives is the Paralegal Formation Programme. Through this programme, we train community members to become legal resource persons within their own organizations and neighborhoods. These are not paralegals in the traditional sense. They are community leaders and advocates who are equipped with practical legal knowledge and skills.
These paralegals become the first point of contact for legal questions in their communities. They help fellow workers understand their rights, assist union members in filing complaints, and sometimes even represent themselves or their organizations in administrative proceedings.
The impact of these programmes has been far-reaching. Many trained paralegals have gone on to play active roles in shaping public policy and advocating for stronger labour protections. Some of our paralegals are now appearing before Congress to propose legislation. They are advocating for laws that protect workers in sectors like business process outsourcing and the gig economy.
SALIGAN’s work also extends to other critical social issues, including gender equality and responses to gender-based violence, housing rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, environmental protection and community participation in governance. Despite this breadth, our mission remains simple and transformative: to empower communities to become their own advocates.
We often say that the ultimate goal of alternative lawyering is to put ourselves out of business. If communities are fully equipped to defend their rights without needing our support, then we have truly succeeded.
Legal knowledge should rely on what works for the community and the critical internationalization of law is important as well. Some legal systems ignore certain qualifications including Diploma in Alternative Dispute Resolution which I have. If we take the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1973 in the UK, pension sharing, since pension is an asset, can not be presented to pension providers without Pension Sharing Order from the British court. Mediation is important before approaching the court unless there is domestic violence. Nevertheless, for the sake of attending the mediation, divorced parties may approach a previously abusive ex-spause and experience physical, emotional, spiritual and/or financial abuse. They may face silent treatment and their action can be misinterpreted as harassment. The British legal system is very complex or it is portrayed as such which means, moral will be low, and moral support can be non-existant. What works in this case is changing the legal system by enabling pension providers to execute pension sharing by using the information that is provided to them. Organizational Behaviour is crucial and changing this should be a community led activity.
The UK runs several legal consultations which is open to relevant stakeholders. Following parliamentary debate, these consultations can be the law. Statutary instrument is a way of changing some aspect of the law by supplying what is known as a prayer. I don’t know how this works for laws that existed for a long time such as the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1973. Besides, this process can be intimidating. Justice may not be attained since community knowledge may be reliant on existing laws and the complex ways of changing the system. Legal knowledge should focus on what works, not complex legal system.