Legal aid in Ningxia committed to safeguarding minors’ rights

In recent years, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region has made the best of legal aid services to safeguard minors' rights and interests.

In 2017, Ningxia revised its regulation on legal aid for the first time, lowering the criteria for identifying citizens in financial difficulty to no more than twice the local minimum subsistence allowance and extending legal aid to eight more matters including the confirmation of minors' right to inheritance. 

Last April, the region released guidelines for accelerating the construction of a public legal service system. The document identifies special groups including juveniles and single mothers as the focus of the service, and vows to take multiple measures to protect minors' rights and interests.

Also in 2020, Ningxia built more legal aid stations for minors and opened a right protection fast track for the group. 

Over the past three years, legal aid agencies across the region concluded a total of 41,389 cases, 3,112 of which, or 7.51 percent, involved minors. In handling the cases, they helped minors avoid or recover over 12.21 million yuan ($1.89 million) in economic losses.

Ningxia also strictly conducts its quarterly review of the handling of legal aid cases, with its focus on cases involving matters such as school bullying, right to custody of children and property inheritance. 

In addition, by actively adopting internet and smart technologies, the region has greatly improved the accessibility of public legal services.

Ningxia has also put great effort into minors' legal education. During the past three years, it has held more than 2,200 lectures on legal knowledge for about 92,000 juveniles, and distributed over 200,000 copies of learning materials.