Legal Aid Network is committed to facilitate efforts of grassroots people and activists, civil society organizations, lawyers and legal teams which aim to achieve human rights by establishing a peaceful, free, just and developed society with the underpinnings of genuine principles of the Rule of Law, mainly from legal aspect. Legal Aid Network is an independent organization. It is neither aligned nor is it under the authority of any political organization.

Work Agenda

1. Raising public awareness for the emergence of just laws and a better legal framework, in which individual freedoms and collective rights of ethnic nationality, social strata and community are reflected, on the basis of international law, international human rights laws and humanitarian laws, and genuine principles of the Rule of Law;

2. Conducting legal analysis and providing legal suggestions in order for the achievement of democratic transition and the right to self-determination of the ethnic nationalities – at maximum, by establishing the Rule of Law or, at minimum, by seeking transitional justice; in addition, for the rectification of criminal justice system;

3. Providing legal aid and assistance to selected victims, facilitation of justice defender lawyers and taking actions on those cases, which would affect structural changes of society;

4. Cooperation with organizations and individuals who have common objectives for the emergence of independent, impartial and efficient judiciary and that of state institutions as well as security forces which would protect human rights, the rights of citizens and those of diverse nationalities; and,

5. Facilitation of efforts for the establishment of genuine principles of the Rule of Law in a way that perpetrators who committed international crimes – but not cooperated for seeking truth as well as for transformation of state institutions so that repeated crimes can be prevented – are indicted in national and international courts.

Our Board Members

1. David Fisher, Professor of International Law, Faculty of Law, Stockholm University, Sweden.

2. Dr. Venkat Iyer, Law Commissioner for Northern Ireland and Barrister, The United Kingdom.

3. Mrs. Pipa Curwen

Founder of Legal Aid Network

Aung Htoo, a human rights lawyer, is the founder of Legal Aid Network. He was a practicing lawyer in Burma from 1977 to 1988. In 1992, along with his lawyer colleagues, he initiated to form a lawyers' organization – the Burma Lawyers' Council (BLC) – with a group of democratic lawyers who have got to liberated area of Burma. The organization formally came to existence on October 20, 1994. As the General Secretary, he led the organization for a number of work programs such as doing legal analysis, research and documentation, conducting human rights and legal trainings, assisting the drafting of a future federal constitution of Burma, providing legal suggestions, legal aid and assistance, doing international legal advocacy, legal campaign for transitional justice, compilations of legal papers and articles, publications, production of television programs, etc. He formally resigned from the BLC on 18 February 2012; afterwards, he founded a new organization – Legal Aid Network – on October 30, 2012.