Capacity building

Training and sharing

Convinced that sharing knowledge and experience can help to prevent and fight economic crimes, Sherpa has developed awareness-raising and training activities. Sherpa’s capacity building activities are closely linked to its focus on access to justice.

Strengthening French and International civil societies

Sherpa occasionally speaks at universities and colleges, participates in public events and organises seminars and round tables to explain the issues of economic crime and raise public awareness on its areas of expertise. We also assist partners organizations and networks in developing solid advocacy strategies related to corporate impunity as well as sharing our expertise on strategic litigation.

For instance, Sherpa’s awareness-raising work on the concept of Duty of Vigilance, notably within the FCRSE, had contributed to the successful advocacy campaign for the adoption of the law in 2017 : to build on this success and ensure it has an important impact,, Sherpa, beyond its litigation and advocacy work, co-hosted, . between 2017 and 2019 and with the association RSE & PED, a series of webinars on the Duty of Vigilance law, to ensure it would be adequately and ambitiously used.

Vigilance Project - Togo, Benin, Senegal

Since July 2021, Sherpa and its partners RSE-et-PED France, RSE Benin, RSE-et-PED Togo and La Lumière (Senegal) have been implementing the project “Developing the capacities of civil society in Benin, Togo and Senegal to ensure that companies respect human rights and environmental law, and to enable the implementation of more protective public policies”, co-financed by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
In Togo, Benin and Senegal, the lack of supervision of the economic activities of multinational companies and local economic actors is a major cause of corruption, environmental damage and violations of workers and local communities’ rights. Real respect for these rights can be achieved by strengthening the capacities of civil society to make better use of existing legal mechanisms and by mobilising civil society for a more appropriate legal framework and greater protection.

The project aims to disseminate and implement sustainable human rights, environmental and duty of care practices by companies and, in the long run, to change national legal frameworks.

Legal Caravan

Between 2012 and 2014, Sherpa organised “legal caravans”, a capacity building project for civil society on corporate social and environmental responsibility and litigation.

The objective of these training sessions was to exchange with foreign associations and lawyers, from a comparative law perspective, on the possible remedies to the negative impacts of multinational companies operating locally. The training took place in two parts: a theoretical part and a concrete case study of rights violations by an economic actor.

The legal caravans took place in various West African countries: Cameroon, Togo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Benin and Burkina Faso.

ADVOCACY

Our proposals for legislative reform to ensure corporate accountability and transparency, and justice for victims economic crimes.

STRATEGIC LITIGATION

The latest news on our legal actions to make economic actors accountable

LEGAL LABORAROTY

Our teams offer innovative and concrete legal solutions