International Bridges To Justice

China: in 2024, ibj continued to support chinese lawyers with online training resources. Our china elearning website currently hosts 120 modules on topics ranging from basic advocacy skills such as developing a theory of the case, reviewing a case file, and cross-examination, to more complex topics such as understanding forensic evidence and defending clients with mental or physical disabilities. In 2024, we created a new four-part series of elearning modules to form a course on negotiation skills. This course covers basic negotiation concepts such as how to identify the interests of the other party, how to separate interest from positions, how to identify alternatives to a negotiated agreement, and how to generate workable options. They also take lawyers through hypothetical scenarios, such as negotiating with a key but reluctant witness who can testify to a client's alibi, while applying these concepts. The goal is for lawyers to apply these skills in negotiating not only with witnesses, but also police, prosecutors, and detention center officials. Our modules were viewed over 13,000 times in 2024, and attracted over 2,956 new viewers, not including returning learners.

Indonesia - launched in january 2024, the eu-funded *bridging the justice gap* initiative in indonesia has significantly advanced access to justice for women and minorities in conflict with the law, while bolstering protections for human rights defenders. Key achievements include the signing of six mous enabling legal aid lawyers to access detention facilities and provide critical early-stage legal and psychosocial support, benefiting over 480 women. The project has also reached over 11,000 people through an online rights awareness campaign and fostered legal reform by convening 119 stakeholders to generate 45 policy recommendations. Additionally, 15 female defense lawyers are implementing regionally tailored projects under ibj's justicemakers competition. By prioritizing early access to legal counsel and enhancing defender skills training, the initiative is reducing the burden on underfunded legal aid systems and shifting organizational approaches toward prevention and systemic change, ensuring marginalized women are protected and empowered within the justice system.

Myanmar: access to justice progress in 2024: despite ongoing operational challenges since 2021, ibj has remained committed to legal aid and strengthening access to justice across the country. Its justice centers have continued to establish themselves as trusted legal service providers, delivering direct legal representation to economically disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals. In 2024 alone, the justice centers assisted 2,434 marginalized individuals, of which 500 politically motivated groups, with quality legal defense services. Beyond representation, ibj's legal helplinesoperating in five key locationsprovided over 2,000 instances of holistic legal advice and referral support. Public legal education remained a key focus, with "know your rights and "focused group" outreach sessions benefiting over 700 participants, 60% of whom were women. The initiative also strengthened the capacity of legal professionals, offering training to more than 150 lawyers throughout the year.

Other program services - africa - in 2024, the ibj programs in africa demonstrated their dedication to strengthening the rule of law through providing legal assistance to vulnerable, monitoring of detention centers and police cells, training justice actors and raising rights awareness among ordinary citizens, including detainees and high school pupils during youth school visits on crime prevention. In burundi, drc and rwanda, ibj has developed strong relationships with key justice stakeholders through roundtables and trainings to 245 criminal justice actors (lawyers, correctional centers agents, judges, judicial police officers, magistrates). This has enabled and facilitated ibj to provide legal representation to over 3,000 vulnerable arrestees from the police stations to court. In burundi, ibj has strengthened and improved its strategic relations with those involved in the criminal justice system through memorandums of understanding with inspectorate general of the national police, the ministry of justice and the bar association, and by maintaining its collaboration with ngos and csos. Thanks to these relationships, ibj burundi has been able to remain one of the few human rights ngos working to protect the legal guarantees of vulnerable people from the earliest stages of criminal proceedings. This has been made possible through mentoring sessions for defense lawyers on capacity-building issues, capacity-building for stakeholders involved in criminal proceedings in collaboration with the independent national commission on human rights, the monitoring of places of detention, and so on. Ibj was also able to raise awareness among thousands of ordinary citizens via a radio station with nationwide coverage on the special procedure of flagrante delicto, the prevention of certain offenses such as sexual harassment, and the subjective and objective grounds for lack of criminal responsibility or mitigation of sentence. In rwanda, ibj has taken the leadership to convene the government, state agencies, professional bodies as well as the civil society organizations to continue its work to strengthen human rights within the criminal justice system. In 2024 ibj convened a national event to review progress of implementation of recommendations by the universal periodic review of the human rights councils of united nations.

Cambodia