With the objective of ensuring access to justice at the local level, APAP, with financial support from the French Embassy, gave training to a total of 44 social-court judges and registrars as well as 30 CBO leaders at the town of Arbaminch, SNNPRS. The social-court judges and registrars were drawn from 11 kebeles of the town, and the CBO leaders from idirs, youth associations and women’s associations.

The training given to the social-court judges and registrars lasted eight days (from June 07 to 14, 2008) and focused on human rights, basic laws, the application of the Social Courts Proclamation and alternative dispute-resolution methods. The training given to the CBO leaders, on the other hand, lasted for ten days (from June 07 to 16, 2008).

As many of the judges were newly appointed, following a recent organizational re-structuring of the kebeles in the town, the training could not have come at a more opportune time.

Since the CBO leaders had no prior knowledge of basic law and human rights, they were given theoretical and practical information regarding the promotion and protection of human rights as well as the basic procedural and substantive law of the land. Now that they have been given the appropriate training, the CBO leaders are expected to develop human-rights projects and implement them in their local communities, with some technical and financial support from APAP.

As part of this project, a similar type of training is currently being given at Mizan Aman and Hossaena.