Holding the Line: Rule of Law Project
When lawyers are connected, supported, and able to draw on trusted professional networks, they are better equipped to continue serving their clients and upholding rule of law principles.
Explore the project ↓
Supporting independent legal practice
Across many parts of the world, legal professionals are working in increasingly complex and challenging environments. Changes affecting judicial independence, civic space, and the administration of justice make it harder for lawyers to carry out their professional responsibilities effectively and independently.
In some contexts, lawyers face surveillance, harassment, or restrictions simply for defending due process and challenging unlawful detention.
Supporting lawyers in these contexts is therefore an important investment in the resilience of legal systems and the continued functioning of the rule of law.
Holding the Line is built on a simple principle: when lawyers are connected, supported, and able to draw on trusted professional networks, they are better equipped to continue serving their clients and upholding rule of law principles.
By strengthening professional solidarity across jurisdictions, the project helps sustain legal capacity today while contributing to more resilient justice systems over the longer term.
Trust, professional standards and connections that endure
History shows this works. Lawyers who kept practising procedure and accountability, connected to each other and grounded in shared professional standards, provided the foundation that endured across apartheid South Africa, military-ruled Pakistan, and authoritarian Latin America.
When conditions shifted, there was something to build on. That is what we are building here.
CLTC works through trust and follows the lead of partners whose on-the-ground credibility is already established in Myanmar, Ukraine, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
What this project does is make those connections count: three targeted, lean, and mutually reinforcing investments that strengthen independent legal practice without creating the large, visible structures that authoritarian governments are best at dismantling.
Turning professional solidarity into practical support
Peer networks and learning exchange
Holding the Line connects independent lawyers across jurisdictions through peer networks and solidarity, reinforced by rule of law learning exchanges both virtual and in person.
Capacity building and sponsorship
The project builds professional standards and skills through targeted capacity building grounded in the realities of practising law under pressure.
Sponsorship works in both senses: modest financial support that protects lawyers’ time, and active backing from senior practitioners and bar leaders who advocate for those doing the hardest work.
Practical resources and co-leadership
Lawyers are supported through practical legal tools, guidance, and knowledge developed for and by practitioners in repressive or fragile contexts.
Delivery takes place through co-leadership with lawyers’ networks, national partners, bar associations, legal aid organisations, and civil society networks.
New jurisdictions will be added as the project grows.
Resources, events and continued exchange
Resources
A practitioner library built by and for lawyers working under pressure. Resources will be organised by jurisdiction and topic as the library develops.
Events
Where the Holding the Line network comes together, in person, online, and in-country. Events range from closed practitioner sessions to open learning exchanges.
Learning Circles
The closed digital space where the Holding the Line network continues its work between events through peer exchange, shared resources, coordinated action, and solidarity across borders.
Strengthening the people who keep legal systems working
Learn more about CLTC’s wider approach to transformative justice, or get in touch about Holding the Line.