CASTRIES, St Lucia — The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court’s (ECSC) objective for creating and implementing an e-Litigation portal is to provide an efficient, cost-effective, transparent and reliable platform for submitting and processing court documents electronically.
Our stakeholders needed a convenient way to interact with the courts without always having to come to the clerk’s counter, and they needed to do so without the time restrictions placed by filing counters.
The ECSC needed to improve efficiency and reduce the use of paper and provide citizens with improved access to the court system while reducing costs.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines ‘access to justice’ as “the ability of people to seek and obtain a remedy through formal or informal institutions of justice, and in conformity with human rights standards”. The ECSC’s thrust of providing equal access to justice for all is in line with the UNDP’s definition as such, in strengthening access to justice, the ECSC when considering the development and implementation of the current e-Litigation portal, took every citizen in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean (OECS) into consideration.
Moreover, the poor, marginalized and unrepresented litigants were given special consideration based on their current realities. Hence, the introduction and implementation of a Service Bureau, manned by a member of staff from the court office, which has been designed to…
