Regional Public Organization "Individual and the Law" of Mari El Republic

This three-year grant of $225,000 to Individual & the Law will support a project to advance access to justice at the local level. The grantee, a non-profit based in Yoshkar-Ola (the capital of the Republic of Mari El, a region 500 miles east of Moscow), is one of Russia’s leading regional human rights non-profits. The project will establish a new model for non-profits working to promote access to justice in the Russian regions. In three regions (Mari El, Komi and Kaliningrad) the project will combine strategic litigation with legal work rooted in local communities and effective monitoring of the courts, empowering the public to utilize the courts, conducting advocacy based on careful monitoring of cases and trials, and using local media to publicize both successes and failures of the judicial system.