It is true that in Ethiopia, as in any developing country for that matter, the number of lawyers compared to the size of the population is insignificant. It is also true that these lawyers are concentrated only in big towns and getting legal service is expensive by nature. As a result, the marginalized communities and the poor hardly benefit from the legal system being also unaware of their legal and human rights. It is now over a decade since development and human rights activists bring to use the law and human rights as tools to conscientise the poor and women thereby empowering "to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from the development process."

In appreciation of these facts, APAP has thus taken the humble initiative of conducting a legal education progamme which commenced in month of March, 1994.

This programme, the first of its kind in our country, has mainly two objectives. First, creating awareness about the law, human rights and the legal system at the grass root level. Second, to enable the poor and women to use the law as an instrument in their effort to change their living conditions for the better. The programme is also expected to contribute to the democratization process by enhancing the conscious participation of those to whom it is addressed.

In a view to achieve these objectives, APAP's legal education programme contains the following workable specific programmes which have been developed and are being undertaken. These specific programmes are:-

1. The Para-Legal Training (PLT)

2. The Basic Community Legal Education (BCLE) programme

3. The Community Legal Awareness (CLA) programme

The PLT programme, the first round of which stays for three to four months, is formed to produce an in-based resource group of "bare foot lawyers" to be referred to by members of a community. Individuals participating in the para legal training programme are usually those possessing some respectable or influential social standing of showing a marked social commitment. The participants in this programme are primarily trained with substantive laws, modules of client handling, ways and skills of documentation, procedures of instituting a case, and modes of resolutions of settlement of dispute outside of a court. So far two programmes of this nature are being undertaken in two areas of the city. These are the slum areas of Repi and Teklehaimanot which are marked by high incidence of complex social problems such as a high level of poverty, unemployment, crime, prostitution, and child abuse.

In the BCLE, which lasts for three months, APAP primarily concerns itself more in disseminating information about the law and human rights than in actual case handling skills. The participants in this program are thus encouraged and are expected to part the information acquired in the programme to their respective communities. They are also, though in a secondary position, stimulated to render basic legal services to problems that commonly occur in their communities such as those related to maintenance of children, inheritance and bail.

The Community Legal Awareness (CLA) Programme has the objective of raising the legal awareness of the general community on specific social problems or legal issues. So far preparations have been underway in identifying appropriate models and themes for the programme. The programme will be conduced in the coming few months on such issues as constitutional right, violence against women, and child prostitution.

In all these, the objective of APAP is not one of simply passing on information about the nature of a complex system. It is rather to help participants to view the law and their human rights not only as related to their lives but also as a means of examining and changing their lives.