Early last month (August), more than 1,000 people streamed into the Badulla Cricket Ground, not however, for a sports match, but for something far more consequential. They came seeking justice. Over two days, villagers from all walks of life met with lawyers, learned about their rights through games and dramas, and received on-the-spot legal advice.
The event, dubbed ‘Know Your Neethi (Know Your Justice)’, was a first-of-its-kind legal aid and awareness camp designed to bring the law directly to the community. Supported by the Ministry of Justice, European Union, United Nations (UN) Development Programme and UN Children’s Fund, the camp actively reached out to traditionally underserved populations – women, persons with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and other vulnerable groups – ensuring that their voices were heard and their legal needs addressed.
Speaking at the Badulla camp, Justice Minister, Attorney Harshana Nanayakkara captured its significance: “This camp is a testament to our commitment to ensuring that the law serves everyone in Sri Lanka not just in theory, but in practice. By bringing legal education and services to communities, we are taking concrete steps to dismantle barriers and build trust in our justice system.”
His words reflect a principle that has been evolving in Sri Lanka for decades that access to justice should extend to the poorest and most marginalised, through community-based legal aid. Sri Lanka’s experience in this arena is a story of early idealism, hard-won progress, and innovative responses to war, disaster, and social change.
Roots of legal aid
Sri Lanka’s formal legal aid journey began in 1978, when the Government enacted the Legal Aid Law, No. 27, establishing the Legal Aid Commission (LAC) with a clear mandate to provide assistance to deserving persons. This marked the shift from ad-hoc charity by well-meaning lawyers to an institutional commitment, positioning the State as a stakeholder in ensuring equal access to justice. In practice however, the early years of the LAC were modest. For much of the 1980s, it was Colombo-based and resource-strapped, leaving many rural citizens without support. The civil society stepped into the gap. By the early 1990s, non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) from community development groups to women’s associations were offering legal counselling, representation, and rights awareness programmes.
In 1997, eight prominent NGOs joined forces with the LAC and the Bar Association’s Legal Aid Foundation to form the Consortium of Legal Aid Organisations (CLAO), creating a national network to coordinate resources and extend reach.
Expanding access
In 2000, the ministry launched the Community Legal Aid Programme (CLAP), a bold experiment in grassroots legal aid. The CLAP opened full-time centres in nine districts, staffed with paid lawyers who could assist anyone treated unfairly, regardless of income. It targeted both poverty-related injustice and bureaucratic overreach. Although the CLAP was short-lived, closing in 2001 due to cost and structural overlap with the LAC, its lessons on proactive outreach and provincial coverage shaped future strategies.
The LAC itself steadily expanded. By 2009, it operated 47 offices nationwide; by 2015, that number had grown to 75. Government funding increased, enabling more representation in civil and criminal cases, legal literacy programmes, and specialised desks for victims of crime and vulnerable witnesses. Other actors played their part: the Bar Association revitalised its Legal Aid Foundation, and law schools integrated legal clinics into the curricula. By the mid-2010s, Sri Lanka had a mixed model of public and private legal aid, supported by a national policy framework affirming access to justice as a state obligation.
Justice in times of crisis
The internal conflict (1983-2009) and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami tested Sri Lanka’s capacity to deliver legal aid under extreme conditions. The war displaced hundreds of thousands, creating urgent needs for lost documents, property claims, and family law assistance. In the north and the east, community legal aid projects emerged to help civilians settle land disputes, resolve family conflicts, and secure official records, often prerequisites for resettlement.
The tsunami brought a surge of cooperation among legal aid groups. Organisations banded together to assist survivors in replacing identity papers, safeguarding property rights, and accessing relief. This period popularised mobile legal clinics, temporarily set up in temples, schools, and community halls where lawyers could meet people where they lived. In the late 2010s, such clinics in Jaffna and Batticaloa resolved documentation issues for hundreds, enabling families to access welfare programmes and assert legal rights that they had long been denied of.
Civil society at forefront
The civil society has been particularly effective in serving specialised legal needs. The Women In Need (WIN) organisation has provided free legal and counselling services to women and children facing domestic violence for decades, operating shelters and in hospitals. Environmental legal groups have defended rural communities against illegal land grabs. During the war, human rights organisations supported detainees and families of the disappeared. International agencies funded legal aid for internally displaced people to reclaim land or seek compensation. Together, these actors form a patchwork of community-based legal aid tailored to different constituencies.
The landscape today
Today, the LAC maintains a presence in every province, with 85 legal aid centres islandwide, including those managed directly by the Colombo centre from the head office. These regional centres are staffed by attorneys fluent in local languages and attuned to community issues. Legal aid desks in Government offices advise on everything from labour rights to inheritance, while public awareness campaigns demystify the justice system. The ‘Know Your Neethi’ camp in Badulla is part of this new wave: proactive, community-oriented, and inclusive. Recent improvements include expanding access to those earning a monthly income of Rs. 40,000 or less.
Still, challenges remain. Many rural and estate communities lack easy access to legal aid offices. Public awareness is uneven, and shortages of lawyers persist in remote districts. NGOs face funding uncertainty, making it harder to sustain services. Accessibility is also an issue: physical distance, travel costs, and cultural barriers can deter those most in need. Expanding the use of trained community paralegals and integrating local government structures into outreach efforts are seen as promising solutions.
Innovation and adaptation
Recent years have brought innovation. During the Covid-19 lockdown, the LAC introduced telephone hotlines and virtual consultations. It worked with courts to hold remote hearings for bail applications and reached out to women owed child maintenance to secure emergency relief.
Legal literacy has taken centre stage, with camps, media campaigns, and social media outreach aiming to equip citizens with the knowledge to address legal issues before they escalate. These efforts signal a shift from purely reactive legal aid to an empowerment model, one in which communities are not just recipients of legal help but active participants in safeguarding their rights.
Continuing journey towards justice for all
From the establishment of the LAC in 1978 to the grassroots energy of the Badulla camp in 2025, Sri Lanka’s experience with community-based legal aid reflects persistence, creativity, and partnership. Government institutions, bar associations, NGOs, donors, and volunteers have brought justice closer to those who might otherwise be excluded. Each resolved case, whether securing a birth certificate, protecting a home, or obtaining representation in court, reinforces the principle that justice must be available to all.
The path ahead involves refining the system, integrating paralegals and mediators into the legal framework, and securing sustainable funding. Ultimately, Sri Lanka’s journey underscores that justice must live in the community. When the law is present in the language, place, and context of people’s lives, it strengthens rights and public trust alike. That is the vision towards which community-based legal aid in Sri Lanka continues to strive.
(Thilakarathna is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Colombo University and Herath is the Project Coordinator at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the same university’s Law Faculty)
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication