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James Ewins, the Field Office Director of IJM in Bangalore, explains how he is using his legal experience and skills gained at the family Bar to his advantage in freeing slaves in India.
It may seem like a career at the family Bar advising upon and litigating big-money divorce cases has nothing in common with freeing slaves in South India. And I confess it was not any similarity in the subject matter that persuaded me to move to Bangalore with my wife and three children, to be Director of the International Justice Mission (“IJM”) field office there. But having been here for a few months, I have come to appreciate how my experience can be used to my advantage, and through me to the advantage of the millions of slaves in India today.
Here in IJM’s Bangalore office, much of what we do is based upon the provisions of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976, a 30-year old piece of legislation that declares the entire system of bonded labour slavery illegal and criminalises the perpetrators. Rather like my favourite other piece of (roughly) 30-year old-legislation, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and its supporting case law, I am becoming equally conversant in the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act and all its nuances, idiosyncrasies and associated procedure.
My team consists of investigators, lawyers, social workers and support staff. To this new and very different context, I bring my experience in the UK—including many years’ experience of (and I generalise) husbands reluctant to disclose the true nature and extent of their financial resources, and wives trying to prove there is more than meets the eye. This has given me many useful skills which I apply daily here. The men and women who exploit slave labour to enhance their own bottom lines also rely on deception to maintain their criminal enterprises. With an investigative, detail-oriented skill-set developed on this proving ground, I am more able to support my team as they work to document proof of slavery crimes in our region.
Transferrable skills
At the Bar I also learned the need for patience and tenacity in obtaining evidence and pursuing justice for my clients. Here, the obstacles to be overcome include not only defendants whose methodology in seeking to escape justice would provide ample fodder for any ethics lecture, but also courts, local administrations and police who are often overstretched, sometimes uninformed and occasionally worse.
For example, in a recent case following the rescue of a group of slaves from a brick kiln, we embarked on the legal procedure to obtain their formal release from bonded slavery. We encountered, first, a physical challenge: a mob of nearly 50 people including a local politician, roused by the brick kiln owner burst into the local tribunal when it was in session to try and terminate the hearing and return the slaves to the place from which they were rescued a few hours earlier. Fortunately, this attempt was resisted, and the tribunal recommended the legal release of the slaves. Next, a legal challenge: this recommendation was rejected by a higher official for the most insubstantial and dubious of reasons. We may never know if the mob got to that official first. In any event, my team’s patience and persistence over literally hundreds of what I used to think of as “billable” hours resulted in a reconsideration of the slaves’ case and a wonderfully reversed verdict: they were released from their bonded debt and made completely free.
The final similarity with family law is people. At the family Bar, my clients were invariably people, not institutions. And they were people going through one of the most traumatic and stressful experiences the developed world has to offer – a fully litigated divorce. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to work within a (broadly) fair legal framework to help bring justice and order out of the wrong and disorder in the divorces in which I was instructed. I am still working for people, but a very different group – slaves. Many have never known freedom, having been born in slavery – and many have no idea that their bondage is actually against the laws of their nation. Whilst there is just law here, the system does not often work for the poor, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. But I have the privilege of watching the faces, the lives, the hopes and the opportunities of enslaved people transformed when we fight successfully for their freedom and rehabilitation. With each case we undertake, we ensure that the legal systems actually works for the people it was designed to protect and we learn more about how to correct it in the future. And I would not be doing any of it without the experience I gained at the Bar.
James Ewins, barrister, IJM Field Office Director, Bangalore
Here in IJM’s Bangalore office, much of what we do is based upon the provisions of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976, a 30-year old piece of legislation that declares the entire system of bonded labour slavery illegal and criminalises the perpetrators. Rather like my favourite other piece of (roughly) 30-year old-legislation, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and its supporting case law, I am becoming equally conversant in the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act and all its nuances, idiosyncrasies and associated procedure.
My team consists of investigators, lawyers, social workers and support staff. To this new and very different context, I bring my experience in the UK—including many years’ experience of (and I generalise) husbands reluctant to disclose the true nature and extent of their financial resources, and wives trying to prove there is more than meets the eye. This has given me many useful skills which I apply daily here. The men and women who exploit slave labour to enhance their own bottom lines also rely on deception to maintain their criminal enterprises. With an investigative, detail-oriented skill-set developed on this proving ground, I am more able to support my team as they work to document proof of slavery crimes in our region.
Transferrable skills
At the Bar I also learned the need for patience and tenacity in obtaining evidence and pursuing justice for my clients. Here, the obstacles to be overcome include not only defendants whose methodology in seeking to escape justice would provide ample fodder for any ethics lecture, but also courts, local administrations and police who are often overstretched, sometimes uninformed and occasionally worse.
For example, in a recent case following the rescue of a group of slaves from a brick kiln, we embarked on the legal procedure to obtain their formal release from bonded slavery. We encountered, first, a physical challenge: a mob of nearly 50 people including a local politician, roused by the brick kiln owner burst into the local tribunal when it was in session to try and terminate the hearing and return the slaves to the place from which they were rescued a few hours earlier. Fortunately, this attempt was resisted, and the tribunal recommended the legal release of the slaves. Next, a legal challenge: this recommendation was rejected by a higher official for the most insubstantial and dubious of reasons. We may never know if the mob got to that official first. In any event, my team’s patience and persistence over literally hundreds of what I used to think of as “billable” hours resulted in a reconsideration of the slaves’ case and a wonderfully reversed verdict: they were released from their bonded debt and made completely free.
The final similarity with family law is people. At the family Bar, my clients were invariably people, not institutions. And they were people going through one of the most traumatic and stressful experiences the developed world has to offer – a fully litigated divorce. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to work within a (broadly) fair legal framework to help bring justice and order out of the wrong and disorder in the divorces in which I was instructed. I am still working for people, but a very different group – slaves. Many have never known freedom, having been born in slavery – and many have no idea that their bondage is actually against the laws of their nation. Whilst there is just law here, the system does not often work for the poor, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. But I have the privilege of watching the faces, the lives, the hopes and the opportunities of enslaved people transformed when we fight successfully for their freedom and rehabilitation. With each case we undertake, we ensure that the legal systems actually works for the people it was designed to protect and we learn more about how to correct it in the future. And I would not be doing any of it without the experience I gained at the Bar.
James Ewins, barrister, IJM Field Office Director, Bangalore
James Ewins, the Field Office Director of IJM in Bangalore, explains how he is using his legal experience and skills gained at the family Bar to his advantage in freeing slaves in India.
It may seem like a career at the family Bar advising upon and litigating big-money divorce cases has nothing in common with freeing slaves in South India. And I confess it was not any similarity in the subject matter that persuaded me to move to Bangalore with my wife and three children, to be Director of the International Justice Mission (“IJM”) field office there. But having been here for a few months, I have come to appreciate how my experience can be used to my advantage, and through me to the advantage of the millions of slaves in India today.
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