2026-2027 Steering Committee
- Basic Info
- Contact
- Work & Expertise
- Current Commitment
- Past Commitment
- Resource
Basic Information
Organization Name:
Legal Empowerment Fund (LEF)Organization Regions:
- Global
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Organization Country Location:
United States -
Organization City/Locality:
Washington
Organization mission and work description:
Access to justice is a fundamental right, yet it remains inaccessible for over two-thirds of the global population. The Legal Empowerment Fund (LEF) was established in 2019 in partnership with Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Namati, and the International Development and Research Centre to support the growing legal empowerment movement and close the global justice gap. The LEF is a program hosted by the Fund for Global Human Rights. The LEF fuels grassroots movements by providing flexible funding to grassroots groups and fostering peer-led networks across the globe. From environmental defenders to community paralegals and organizers, we amplify the voices of those on the front lines of justice who ensure that legal systems are fair, accessible and responsive to those who need them most. Since our launch in 2021, the LEF has awarded over $12.6 million in flexible funding to more than 275 grassroots grantee partners across 73 countries around the world. Legal empowerment enables grassroots communities to know, use, and shape the law, fostering just, democratic, and sustainable societies. Legal empowerment in action encompasses a variety of strategies. The LEF’s grantee partners may educate community members on their legal rights and the processes to access those rights and services (knowing the law). Other grantee partners may provide legal aid or services to individuals who cannot access the justice system (using the law). Additional strategies aim to improve and introduce equitable policies through advocacy, campaigning, or strategic litigation, such as advocating for LGBTQ+ rights or securing land and resource rights (shaping the law). By supporting people-centered, community-led initiatives, the LEF helps marginalized groups create accessible, effective, and inclusive solutions to their legal challenges. Over the past year and a half, the LEF has invested in intersectional climate justice work. As we have engaged with grantee partners, climate injustice has emerged as a crosscutting issue. Proposals and reports have highlighted that groups traditionally excluded from decision-making power and leadership roles, including Indigenous communities and youth movements, are often best placed to lead this urgent work. Additionally, the 2023 LEF grantee survey found that 48% of grantee partners experienced significant effects of climate change, thus reinforcing the LEF’s decision to prioritize climate-related grant making. In addition to grantmaking and movement building, learning is a key strategic pillar of the LEF. We adopt an activist-centered approach to learning and assessment, grounded in trust, mutual accountability, and power-building. We have designed with grantee partners a dynamic learning agenda to strengthen connections and solidarity among legal empowerment groups to explore the power-building for justice theme. The co-creation process revealed that while groups operate in different contexts, their legal empowerment strategies are deeply aligned and mutually reinforcing. They share approaches to making justice institutions more accessible and define the hallmarks of an ideal system. Finally, the LEF seeks to amplify grantee voices and advocate for the resourcing of grassroots justice initiatives at the regional and global levels.
Organization's Contacts
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Primary Contact Name:
Aimee Seligstein -
Primary Contact Title:
Program Officer
Additional Contacts Names:
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Additional representative #1:
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Additional representative #2:
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Additional representative #3:
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Additional representative #4:
OUR INTERNATIONAL COALITION IS MADE UP OF MORE THAN 400 CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS
Learn about TAP Members & Partners
WHO ARE TAP'S MEMBERS?Organization's Work & Expertise
Organization's SGD16 Expertise:
- 16.3 - Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all
- 16.5 - Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms
- 16.6 - Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
- 16.7 - Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels
- 16.8 - Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance
- 16.9 - By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration
- 16.10 - Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements
- 16.a - Strengthen relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels, in particular in developing countries, to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime
- 16.b - Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development
Organization's Areas of Expertise:
- Global/UN Engagement & Advocacy
- Policy Analysis & Advocacy
- Indigenous Peoples
- Gender Equality
- Capacity building/CSO training & education
Current Commitment to SDG16+
Summary of commitment:
The LEF’s commitment to implementing SDG 16 is to resource and connect groups using legal empowerment strategies to expand access to justice (SDG 16.3), hold public institutions accountable and help make them more effective (SDG 16.6), and ensure that the voices of communities are included and present in decision making (SDG 16.7, and 16.b). Legal empowerment combines law and organizing to enable those most affected by injustice to hold government, institutions, private actors, and individuals to account, while advocating for systemic reforms. LEF grantee partners work hand-in-hand with justice institutions. Our own learning has shown that they, as civil society actors, contribute to institution building using legal empowerment strategies. For example, groups provide a key role in helping justice actors understand laws and their implementation, building bridges between justice actors and communities, and helping justice actors use best practices for ensuring access to justice. Furthermore, the LEF recognizes that funding is just one component of what civil society groups need to realize the systemic changes required to achieve SDG 16. Groups that collaborate and learn from each other increase their collective power by working in ecosystems. To that end, the LEF invests in our partners by offering additional opportunities and grants to participate in capacity-building workshops, attend convenings and conferences to network and exchange best practices, and to put into action new ideas and innovations. By 2030, the LEF’s commitment aims to mobilize resources to provide long-term, people centered justice funding and to ensure that grassroots groups have the resources, peer solidarity, and the evidence base to transform justice systems from the bottom up. Our commitment is also that legal empowerment will be recognized as a central pathway to achieving SDG 16+.
Organization's priorities and work in relation to commitment:
The LEF’s mission and strategy are aligned with the TAP Network’s agenda, and the LEF sees its role as bringing grassroots and community perspectives, innovations, and evidence into TAP’s work. LET’s grantee partners are implementing SDG 16+ on the frontlines through, for example, defending civic space, helping communities secure their land and natural resource rights, challenging discriminatory laws and practices, and holding government and institutions accountable. Our grantee partners’ work directly advances access to justice, demands accountable institutions, and at the same time intersects with other SDGs including climate, equality, and health. LEF’s participatory grantmaking model is similar to TAP’s focus on transparency, accountability, and participation. Our core principles of inclusion, participation, and accountability to communities are reflected in our grantmaking process that includes co-creating calls for proposals and decision-making by grants selection committees, which are comprised of persons with lived experience. This is an example of SDG 16+ where funding and decision-making shifts power to grassroots actors. The LEF can contribute to TAP’s network on monitoring and accountability for SDG 16+. LEF’s grantee partners generate qualitative and quantitative information and data that can feed into the TAP Network’s reporting processes. The LEF also contributes to the TAP Network’s advocacy on financing for justice. The LEF was created in response to the access to justice funding gap. We have been mobilizing funding for grassroots groups and will continue to make the case for sustained financing in order to meet the goals of SDG 16+. LEF staff advocate at multilateral spaces for this type of financing, including UNGA, the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, Open Government Partnership, and the Conference on Financing for Development (FfD).
Organization's work related to TAP network's SGD16+ work & accountability for 2030 Agenda:
Plan on engaging in TAP's work as a Partner:
- Regional Engagement Platforms and/or Regional Focal Point
- Thematic Working Groups
- Substantive contribution to any TAP Network resources or advocacy materials
- Interest in leadership/coordination opportunities within the TAP Network
- Exploring partnerships with like-minded organizations
- Global engagement via the UN and other opportunities
- TAP Network joint global advocacy