About Us

PART III strives to engage with the overlapping themes of law, human rights and social justice. We work with survivors/victim families of systemic and identity-based violence and community organizations supporting the survivors.

PART III believes that all instances of individual violence are rooted in structural and functional realities of society. Hence, an intersectional approach in understanding the problem is critical for a pursuit towards positive transformation or justice.

Our Mission

PART III is envisioned as an organization committed to reclaiming and deepening the values enshrined in Part III of the Indian Constitution. We believe that the Constitution serves as a reference for an informed and pedagogical engagement on the subject of rights and freedom of disadvantaged groups and vulnerable communities. Part III strives to bridge the gap between formal and substantive actualisation of Fundamental Rights through collaborative, action-oriented research, coupled with strategic litigation and advocacy. Through persistent engagement with intersecting and overlapping thematics of Human Rights and Social Justice, Part III imagines the sustenance of a just and equal society.

Our Approach

PART III envisions itself to be an Action Research and Resource Centre with projects being designed and implemented within the ‘action research’ framework. We attempt to use the law and research as tools for systemic transformation. On one hand, Part III directly intervenes as lawyers, mitigators and activators of the community support system and on the other, we conduct in-depth participatory and legal research apart from advocacy work around the themes of human rights and social justice. The idea also is to intervene and conduct research on issues simultaneously to devise a mixed method where our intervention work directly feeds into the policy research and strategic litigation and similarly the research component of the work informs and sharpens the intervention tools.

Areas of Work

Research

Part III is currently involved in in-depth participatory and legal research apart from advocacy work around the themes of human rights and social justice. We work in collaboration with disadvantaged groups and oppressed communities around the themes of gender, caste and other atrocities, forest rights, criminal law and special legislations

Intervention

Part III directly intervenes as lawyers, mitigators and activators of the community support system. We are working on cases of persecution and violence faced by disadvantaged groups and provide pro bono litigation assistance to partner organizations. Our intervention team of lawyers and mitigators works extensively with the victims and survivors of violence.

Training

At Part III, we conduct participatory training workshops with survivors of identity based violence and activists from community organizations. We also conduct workshops with survivors and women from disadvantaged communities for perspective and leadership building, legal awareness and empowerment. In addition to that we are also involved in a similar activity with activists associated with community organizations on documentation and evidence building and paralegal training.

Advocacy

Research and intervention inform the advocacy carried out by Part III around thematic issues and in individual cases. It further entails legal advocacy which is based on the research findings around a thematic issue in order to devise public interest litigation seeking systemic accountability. Apart from that, Part III also recognises media and campaign strategies as important tools in the pursuit of justice. We strive to use these for strengthening and increasing the scope of impact in selected cases and around pertinent thematic areas.

Resource Centre

The Resource Centre aims to create educational and informational bridges linking the criminal justice system and the citizen. The idea is to promote public participation through debate and deliberation on systemic issues of concern.

Human rights and Social Justice Archive

Part III aims to create accessible theme-based archives on issues of gender, identity based violence, etc that can be used by activists, lawyers and paralegals. The documentation and data collated during our research along with secondary literature collected on the issue will be categorized, labeled and annotated and presented in the form of an online archive on our website.

Part III Samvidhaan Series

An annual publication of Part III on contemporary aspects of Fundamental and Constitutional Rights. The publication is also aimed towards simplifying complex legal concepts and debates into easy-to-understand material that can be used by diverse groups of activists, lawyers, paralegals, journalists, students etc. The publication will be accompanied by explainer videos for larger dissemination. Considering freedom of speech and expression as an essential constitutional and human right, our first volume attempts to demystify and critically evaluate the contempt law in India and study its impact on the freedom of speech and expression and judicial accountability.