Annual Report 2025
LEF at a Glance
The Legal Empowerment Fund (LEF) supports grassroots organizations so communities can know, use, and shape the law to advance justice.
Since its launch in 2021, LEF has worked to shift resources and decision-making power toward communities directly confronting injustice — supporting legal empowerment strategies that combine legal action, community organizing, and public advocacy.
Since 2021
In 2025
LEF’s grantmaking decisions are guided through peer-led participatory processes, ensuring that practitioners and community leaders help shape how resources are distributed.
The Legal Empowerment Fund is a program of the Fund for Global Human Rights.
From the Director
Across the world, communities continue to confront shrinking civic space, deepening inequality, climate crisis, and justice systems that too often fail those they are meant to protect. And while the law has too often been used as an instrument of exclusion and control, communities are organizing and using the law as a tool to defend land, livelihoods, dignity, and hold power to account.
Justice does not begin in courtrooms or capitals. It begins in communities — when people have the knowledge, confidence, and collective power to engage the law on their own terms. The Legal Empowerment Fund exists to resource that moment: to put flexible, trust-based support behind the grassroots organizations that are helping communities to know, use, and shape the law, ultimately building power to pursue justice Communities with collective power can make demands and their organizing capacity can make them heard. Justice, ultimately, depends on our collective willingness to make power accountable. As I have connected with grantee partners and allies over this year, I have been constantly reminded of a quote by Frederick Douglas that said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
In 2025, LEF partners did exactly that. They applied legal empowerment strategies across diverse contexts to demand justice — defending land rights, confronting gender injustice, protecting environmental defenders, and expanding access to justice for communities that have systematically been shut out of decision-making.
This report offers a window into what becomes possible when communities are resourced to build power from the ground upon their own terms.
We share it with the conviction that changing what justice looks like means changing who drives it. The communities closest to injustice are also the closest to the solutions. LEF’s role is to make sure they have what they need to lead.
Atieno Odhiambo
Director, Legal Empowerment Fund
The Global Justice Context
An estimated 5.1 billion people worldwide lack meaningful access to justice. In many contexts, legal systems remain inaccessible to those most affected by inequality, environmental harm, discrimination, and violence.
Legal empowerment strategies respond to this gap by enabling communities to understand laws, pursue remedies, and influence the institutions responsible for protecting rights.
These approaches complement traditional legal aid and reform efforts by investing directly in grassroots actors who mobilize communities to use the law as a tool for collective change.
By supporting locally driven legal strategies, LEF contributes to broader efforts to strengthen democratic accountability and expand access to justice.
Strengthening the Legal Empowerment Ecosystem
LEF’s work extends beyond funding individual organizations. Through partnerships with networks such as the Grassroots Justice Network, LEF contributes to peer learning, cross-regional collaboration, and the exchange of legal empowerment strategies.
In 2025, LEF supported innovation grants, communications grants, and collaborative learning initiatives connecting grassroots legal advocates across regions.
Amplifying Grassroots Voices Globally
In 2025, LEF supported partners to engage international forums where justice, climate, and human rights policies are shaped.
LEF supported nine organizations to participate in COP30, enabling frontline climate justice advocates to engage global climate negotiations.
Partners also participated in international gatherings including Climate Week New York, the World Justice Forum, and events connected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Learning and Reflection
In 2025, LEF completed a participatory mid-term evaluation examining five years of implementation.
The evaluation confirmed that flexible, trust-based funding strengthens grassroots legal empowerment organizations by allowing them to build internal capacity, pursue innovative strategies, and sustain long-term advocacy.
Looking Ahead
In 2026, LEF will prioritize grant renewals and deeper collaboration with existing partners while expanding peer learning and regional initiatives, including the new Caribbean cohort.
By continuing to invest in people-powered legal strategies, LEF aims to strengthen a global movement working to make justice systems more accessible, accountable, and responsive.