The Fund for Global Human Rights, in collaboration with the Charles Stewart Mott and William and Flora Hewlett foundations and Namati, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing social and environmental justice through grassroots legal empowerment, has announced the launch of the Legal Empowerment Fund.

LEF aims to raise $100 million over the next ten years to provide urgently needed long-term support for grassroots justice defenders and organizations fighting to help people understand and claim their rights while shaping the laws that govern them. According to the Fund for Global Human Rights, an estimated 5.1 billion people — two-thirds of the global population — lack meaningful access to justice and, as a result, Indigenous peoples' lands are taken without their consent, the air and water of low-income communities are polluted with impunity, and ethnic minorities are denied basic government services such as health care and education. To address the "global justice gap," LEF will provide grant funding and technical assistance to resource frontline civil society organizations; drive and share learning around effective legal empowerment strategies; build the collective power and agency of excluded communities, including women, Indigenous people, and children; and work to enhance access to justice, improve laws and policies, and advance systemic change.

To be led by Atieno Odhiambo, a human rights lawyer based in Kenya whose work has focused on access to justice, democracy, and governance, LEF also is supported by Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a group of thirty-nine United Nations member states, international organizations, global partnerships, civil society organizations, and private-sector entities working to accelerate action to implement the targets for peace, justice, and inclusion in Sustainable Development Goal 16.

"We believe in a future where all people enjoy equal protections and remedies under the law," said Fund for Global Human Rights president and CEO Regan Ralph. "By supporting justice defenders in local communities, the Legal Empowerment Fund is an opportunity to afford people the dignity and protection they deserve."