EAJ's Approach
EAJ’s new strategic approach envisions program approaches tailored to respond to contexts along a stabilization continuum that begins with areas newly recovered from Al-Shabaab through to intermediate areas where increased stability is conducive to more comprehensive justice support work. The program’s goal has been modified to emphasize this stabilization intent (see emboldened addition to the original):
Lasting improvements in access to justice and effective mechanisms to address grievances for stability in Somalia
Changes to EAJ’s scope of work
The Program Description consolidates significant changes in the scope of the EAJ program’s justice support work. In the Description, EAJ’s initial focus on legal aid is extended to include support for justice actors across the broader justice chain. The Description also promotes increased community participation in co-creating justice services and advances efforts to maintain community involvement in continually improving those services. EAJ’s objectives describe of how the program intends to achieve the program goal. These objectives are:
- Support and improve inclusive community engagement in justice solutions
- Strengthen justice services
- Improve navigation of justice pathways by aggrieved parties
Accordingly, our Theory of Change (TOC) has also been adapted by incorporating the new objectives to strengthen its logic chain.The Description sets out in detail EAJ’s approach to providing tailored context-specific support for each of its implementation areas across the stabilization continuum.
Organizational Structure
The Description introduces several organizational changes that will allow EAJ to better integrate relevant research, legal, and institutional strengthening capacities and direct them to the service of program objectives. EAJ’s previous objective structure aligned objectives by component units in a manner that impeded required multi-disciplinary support. Service Units will replace objective components in providing program and ancillary support. Service Units will operate collaboratively to ensure objectives and activities are appropriately supported. To further assist, Operational Centers will be established at EAJ’s Mogadishu and Baidoa offices to coordinate Service Unit responses based on real-time analysis of the operating environment. EAJ’s research capacity will be directed to providing a range of quality-research products to inform the understanding of EAJ and partners on the operating context and existing justice services to inform program decision-making. EAJ’s capacity to support legal cases will also be strengthened by the establishment of a multi-disciplinary Case Review and Response Team, which will evaluate, advise and make support decisions on legal cases collected by our partners and the newly established EAJ Field Team.
