Paralegal (Pakistan based)

Global Rights Compliance

GRC is an international human rights law and development firm based in the Hague, committed to promoting international law, particularly international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights. Our BHR team works on a number of projects globally, in collaboration with governments to strengthen the regulatory environment, with businesses to raise their standards and with civil society organisations (CSOs) and communities to build capacity, helping to ensure that where rights are violated, there is enforcement of remedy for those affected.

We are looking for eight candidates to act as paralegals in a Pakistan-based project within the BHR team. Candidates will be paired with local partner organisations for the organisation of their day-to-day work.

Context

Across many industries in Pakistan, workers, particularly women, face abusive, bonded, or unsafe working conditions, including low pay and forced overtime. Many of these workers lack basic human rights protections and are denied freedom of association. In addition, workers in Pakistan’s informal economy typically do not have access to social insurance, paid leave, fixed remuneration, health benefits, and safe working conditions, thus finding themselves vulnerable to exploitative practices. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified these issues, causing increased economic and physical vulnerability for workers, and in some sectors, widespread layoffs, and failure to pay salaries.

GRC and its partners will shortly be launching an innovative project to promote and advance international labour rights in Pakistan. The project will provide technical capacity building, legal assistance and advocacy for CSOs and workers organisations seeking accountability for labour rights violations in the garment and textile sector in the country.

Key tasks

Investigation and assessment

• Collaborate with local partners to advance labour rights in the country
• Develop and facilitate workshops, multi-stakeholder events and training courses

Legal clinics

• Establish legal aid clinics in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad
• Use a bilingual investigative documentation and monitoring tool to document workers’ rights violations
• Take workers’ complaints on labour rights violations
• Build trust with victims and respect confidentiality rules

Gender-sensitive work

• Organise women workers cafes
• Provide women workers with training on labour rights

We are looking for a candidate with

• Pakistan nationality (including dual citizenship)
• Urdu and Punjabi speaker for Lahore and Faisalabad and Urdu and Sindhi speaker for Karachi
• Basic English knowledge is required
• Practical experience working in Pakistan
• Experience working on labour rights abuses (in a practical application, not just academic study/work)
• Basic knowledge of legal concepts
• Comfortable with the use of electronic tools (computer literate)
• Practical thinker, able to break down and pursue the elements required to operationalise a strategy
• Full driving licence

What we can offer you

• A twelve months extendable contract with an initial six-month probationary period
• Competitive salary
• Two-weeks training focused on labour rights and hands-on experience