Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE)
7th Worldwide Conference
“Advancing Justice Education through Global Commitments and Connections”
10-18 December 2013
Delhi, India
About the organizers and host
GAJE’s 7th Worldwide Conference, held in December 2013, was hosted by the Jindal Global Law School of OP Jindal Global University (JGU) and the National Law University-Delhi (NLU-Delhi). It took place in two parts, with the first part (10-14 December) at the JGU campus outside Delhi in Sonipat, Haryana, and the second part (16-18 December) at NLU-Delhi in the New Delhi district of Dwarka.
GAJE has organized seven worldwide conferences, as well as a number of regional conferences in collaboration with other national and regional clinical organizations. The six prior worldwide conferences were held in India (the inaugural conference, in 1999), South Africa (2001), Poland (2004), Argentina (2006), the Philippines (2008), and Spain (2011). GAJE’s 8th Worldwide Conference will be held in July 2015, hosted by Anadolu University campus in Eskişehir, Turkey. To learn more about the upcoming 8th Worldwide Conference, click here.
Jindal Global Law School has incorporated justice education into its curriculum though the Centre for Clinical Programmes, which works in collaboration with several law schools and NGOs to reach out to underprivileged communities on several aspects of social justice. The National Law University-Delhi shares the broader vision of justice education and weaves public interest work into the curriculum and its pedagogy and teaching to prepare students as humane lawyers and agents of social change.
About the conference
The Delhi Conference provided the opportunity for law teachers, law students, legal practitioners, jurists and social activists to acquire new ideas, models, and skills for the use of education to promote social justice. The overarching theme of the conference is reflected in the conference title: “Advancing Justice Education through Global Commitments and Connections.”
The aim of the conference structure was to facilitate as much participation as possible by those attending. While there were a small number of plenary sessions, including a few keynote speeches, most of the conference consisted of small group sessions, interactive workshops, and other opportunities for sharing ideas, teaching materials and exercises, etc. In addition, there were organized site visits to local justice education projects and a social calendar.
The first part of the conference explored eight themes and sub-themes though a mix of plenary and small-group concurrent sessions, with an emphasis on interactive presentations by justice educators from around the world:
- Legal Empowerment and Economic Justice For Rural and Marginalized Communities
- Health and Environmental Justice
- Human Rights and Rule of Law
- Gender Justice, Equality and Violence Against Women and Children
- Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility, and Promotion of Pro Bono
- Legal Literacy (Street Law, Legal Awareness and Citizen Participation)
- ADR and Informal Justice Systems
- New Initiatives in Justice Education
The second part of the conference was a 3-day training session designed for relatively new clinical teachers, led by an international group of highly experienced justice educators.
Throughout the full conference delegates were able to explore innovative ideas for promoting justice education through new and existing university legal clinics as well as in other aspects of the law school curriculum.
For further information on the conference program and speakers, click on the links in the “7th Conference Details” box on the right. For a copy of the conference report and reports of the other worldwide conferences, click here.
