Barefoot
In 2008 Jason M Hadden MBE visited Columbia with the Law Society of England and Wales to monitor the human rights abuses faced by legal professionals. Jason was part of an international Caravana of lawyers which met lawyers and took testimony from human rights defenders at risk.
Columbia is an extremely dangerous country to be a lawyer and uphold the right of access to justice.
Between 2002 and 2012, there were over 4,400 incidents against lawyers and over 400 lawyers have been killed in Columbia since 1991. On average one lawyer is killed every month. Aside from murder, lawyers are also threatened and harassed. Between 2002 and 2012, there were more than 4,400 aggressions against lawyers.
Columbia is not alone in international countries where lawyers and human rights defenders are displaced, missing, tortured or murdered. Haiti, Iran, North Korea, Honduras and China are amongst other countries which have questionable reputations for human rights abuses against lawyers.
As a consequence of Jason’s visit to Columbia, he set up the @tweetlawfeet campaign to raise awareness about such abuses. It has over 20,000 followers raising issues about human rights abuses and wider issues which are of interest to the legal community.
More recently Jason has been campaigning with charities, academics and politicians to change the law on finding of fact hearings. The decisions from such significant court hearings are not currently being recorded in any appropriate or useable fashion. Jason and other experts are looking to have fact finding decisions in family cases properly recorded and accessed on the Police National Database. It is currently quite remarkable that safeguarding adjudications (findings) made by a court frequently simply remain within that court file. There is currently no process for findings to be recorded and where necessary used elsewhere (unless a specific order by the court in a specific case). It would be hoped that if these could be recorded properly then this would be something which could be accessed in a similar fashion to Claire’s Law. It would also be hoped that non-molestations orders (and FLA undertakings) would also be recorded nationally. Different police forces have different approaches to recording non-molestation orders.
Jason has met with senior police officers and indeed the former shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and there appears to be general support for the initiative.