The Hague, 18 December 2024 – The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is delighted to announce the appointment of Udo Jude Ilo as its new Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Sam Muller, the founding CEO.
Udo Jude Ilo (photo credit: Harmen de Jong).
This leadership transition provides an opportunity to further expand people-centred justice, building on HiiL’s solid foundations. It follows a strategic decision by Sam Muller, who informed the Supervisory Board at the start of the year of his intention to step down and pave the way for a new leader. After a rigorous and thorough recruitment process, the Supervisory Board selected Udo Jude Ilo as the ideal candidate to lead HiiL into its next chapter of innovation and growth.
Udo Jude Ilo brings over two decades of experience in security governance, democracy promotion, and social innovation. Over the past year, he has served as the Interim Executive Director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), where he successfully enhanced the organisation’s effectiveness, resilience, and global profile. Throughout his career, Udo Jude Ilo has demonstrated a remarkable ability to drive systemic change through creative programming and by fostering new ideas and organisations. His dedication to democracy and innovation aligns seamlessly with HiiL’s mission to ensure justice for all through cutting-edge solutions.
« I am deeply honoured to lead HiiL into its next chapter. Sam Muller has built an extraordinary foundation that has redefined access to justice. As we move forward, I am committed to expanding our impact, harnessing innovation to meet the evolving needs of justice systems globally, and ensuring that HiiL remains at the forefront of creating impactful people-centred solutions. » said Udo Jude Ilo.
The Supervisory Board also takes this opportunity to deeply thank Sam Muller for his outstanding leadership and vision. As founding CEO, Sam Muller has been instrumental in building HiiL into a globally recognised organisation that champions innovation in justice systems worldwide.
« Sam Muller’s exceptional leadership in the last 20 years has been pivotal in shaping HiiL’s growth and global impact. As we look to the future, we are confident that Udo Jude Ilo will continue to build on this legacy, bringing fresh energy, vision, and strategic insight to drive HiiL’s mission forward and further amplify our commitment to people-centred justice,” said Ingrid van Engelshoven, Chair of the Supervisory Board of HiiL.
Udo Jude Ilo will assume his new role on 1 February 2025, and HiiL looks forward to continuing its impactful work under his leadership.
Sam Muller and Udo Jude Ilo have started an onboarding process that will continue in the coming month.
About Udo Jude Ilo
As a Nigerian with firsthand experience of decades of dictatorship and impunity, Udo’s concept of democracy and good governance evolved with a keen understanding of the importance of building solidarity, knowledge and networks for protecting rights and strengthening democratic practices. His 21-year career has focused on addressing impunity, creating innovative approaches to citizen mobilisation, and facilitating a solidarity network for the protection of human rights. He has been a consistent voice for democratic reforms and his most recent work on democracy regression in West Africa is among a growing body of work and thought leadership.
As the leader of Open Society Foundations in Nigeria for a decade, Udo provided strategic leadership on expanding civic space, supporting new organizations and activists, and promoting accountability and good governance. He played a key role in opening the space for new ideas and new organizations and was directly instrumental in birthing or supporting new social innovation and activist groups in Nigeria who have gone on to become major influencers within and beyond Africa.
Udo’s leadership and management experience span founding and running organizations like the Nigerian Bar Association’s social justice program, the pioneer country manager of the Forum of Federations and leading the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC). As CIVIC’s Senior Director for Advocacy, he expanded partnerships and restructured internal systems to bolster external advocacy. Appointed Interim Executive Director in 2023, he strengthened CIVIC during a critical transition, raising resources, energising CIVIC’s global standing and reforming internal processes.
Udo has demonstrated in his 21 years of professional career, consistency, innovation, audacity, and empathy, which has made him effective in leadership, impactful in programming and remarkable in public engagement. Udo’s most recent writing is a Primer on Influencing Change, which has received rave reviews.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is an organisation dedicated to people-centred justice. This means justice that is accessible, affordable and easy to understand. We collaborate with justice providers, including ministries of justice and judiciaries, to develop solutions and improve systems so that more people can effectively prevent or resolve their justice problems. This not only benefits individuals; it also contributes to societal well-being and economic growth.
HiiL has programmes in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tunisia, Niger, Burkina Faso, with UNHCR in various countries, and projects in Iraq and Syria.
HiiL is delighted to share that our CEO, Sam Muller, has been appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau – a distinguished Dutch royal honour conferred on persons who have rendered outstanding service to society. It was presented by Mayor Leendert de Lange on 12 December during a special event marking Sam’s farewell as HiiL’s founding director. The appointment recognises his exceptional and long-standing services in the field of law, peace, nature conservation and security.
Sam has been a transformative figure in the world of justice, playing a key role in shaping national and international legal frameworks, including contributing to the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
As a passionate advocate for justice systems that meet people’s needs, Sam’s mission has been to apply principles of improvement and accessibility to justice systems. His belief in people-centred justice has shaped his work at HiiL, which he founded in 2005 to empower 150 million people to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems by 2030.
An international lawyer by training, Sam has worked at the highest levels of justice strategy and innovation. By connecting knowledge about justice needs with impactful change processes, he has supported governments, judiciaries, and civil society organisations in creating more effective justice systems.
Over nearly two decades under his leadership, HiiL has delivered impactful solutions in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tunisia, helping to create more effective, inclusive justice systems.
The award also recognizes his significant contributions to nature conservation including as Chairman of WWF Netherlands and through his work to combat wildlife trafficking with the Wildlife Justice Commission.
Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau
Sam’s appointment as Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau highlights his dedication and impact in the field of justice, peace, and conservation. As Mayor Leendert de Lange noted during the ceremony, “His work as a leader, innovator, and bridge-builder has left an indelible mark on the global pursuit of justice.” (translated from Dutch)
Sam Muller in the middle, with his wife Elke Stenfert and mayor Leendert de Lange
The entire HiiL team extends heartfelt congratulations to Sam on this well-deserved recognition. His vision and leadership have inspired us all, and his legacy will continue to guide our work to ensure justice for everyone, everywhere.
About the Order of Orange-Nassau
The Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau (Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau) is a distinguished Dutch royal honour, established in 1892 by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. It is one of six ranks within the Order of Orange-Nassau, awarded to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to society. The rank recognises outstanding achievements in areas such as justice, innovation, and humanitarian work. Typically conferred upon those whose impact extends nationally or internationally, the honour reflects a deep commitment to service and the betterment of society, acknowledging individuals whose work leaves a lasting legacy.
Domestic violence is one of the most pervasive legal challenges Nigerians face. A 2023 Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey by HiiL estimated that in Ogun state alone 15,000 domestic violence cases occur each year – and domestic violence is likely to be underreported. Behind this statistic are women struggling to feel safe and heard in a system that has not met their needs.
This pressing reality calls for innovative approaches to support survivors effectively. The Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Law, enacted by Ogun State in 2018, was a significant step in addressing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). However, translating this legal framework into meaningful change for survivors requires effective implementation and innovative solutions.
Innovating Justice Delivery: The Justice Innovation Lab in Ogun State
In response to these challenges, justice providers, legal experts, community leaders, and healthcare professionals came together in a HiiL-convened Justice Innovation Lab to co-design practical solutions. This collective effort led to the creation of Ibi Isadi—which means « a place of refuge » in Yoruba—a service designed to truly put the needs of survivors of domestic violence first by integrating legal, medical, and community-based support systems.
Ibi Isadi operates with two key components. First, individuals experiencing domestic violence can directly connect with Community Justice Representatives (CJRs) stationed at Primary Health Care Centres (PHCCs). Second, an online portal allows CJRs to offer support, information, and personalised referral plans. This multi-channel approach ensures survivors can choose the most accessible and comfortable way to seek help—whether through a phone call, online interaction, or visit to a health centre.
For those working on the front lines—community justice workers, legal professionals, and law enforcement—Ibi Isadi provides essential tools like advice, guidelines, training, and referral networks, ensuring that cases are handled with care and consistency. This ensures a more coordinated response to domestic violence cases, improving outcomes for survivors.
‘’For sure, I want to prophesy that Ibi Isadi has come to stay whether the devil likes it or not because the poor must breathe emotionally, psychologically and in all ramifications. With the Ibi Isadi Solution cases of DV must be reduced to the barest minimum particular for persons with disability who have little or no voice in our various communities.” —Dr. Ebonhor Michael Ndidi, Chairman, Joint Association of Persons with Disability – Ogun State Chapter.
Backed by Commitment and Resources
The Ogun State Government is creating an enabling environment for this initiative to thrive including committing funds for a pilot phase. This year-long pilot of Ibi Isadi will provide an opportunity to test and refine the model, with the aim of scaling up the service across the state.
This initiative exemplifies HiiL’s Diagnosis, Design, Delivery (3D) approach in action. By starting with a deep understanding of justice challenges through data and insights (Diagnosis), accompanying stakeholders in co-creating solutions like Ibi Isadi (Design), and finally moving to supporting implementation (Delivery) so that people-centred justice services that address the most pressing justice needs are embedded in the system. Ogun State’s experience demonstrates how a 3D approach can turn bold ideas into practical, scalable solutions for lasting impact.
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Justice is taking justice delivery at the community level decisively forward, aligned with priorities identified in their three-year justice transformational plan. As part of a broader ambition to build a more responsive justice system that works for people, two important milestones were achieved this week, alongside strategic alignment between Ethiopia’s Ministry of Justice and HiiL.
The Ethiopian Land Justice Guidelines
This week, we had the privilege of joining the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice and court leaders in a pivotal joint session, coordinated by the Ministry’s local partner, Destiny Ethiopia. The gathering marked the launch of the Ethiopian Land Justice Guidelines—a set of tools to standardize evidence-based practices, which is a key factor in scaling community justice services effectively.
This event also included a session with justice leaders from the ministry, courts, and academic experts, to discuss the scaling of community justice centres. The foundation for this conversation was a legal impact assessment of customary courts in Oromia, which HiiL and the Oromia Legal Training and Research Institute conducted together. The findings set the stage for a dynamic, interactive session that brought in voices from regional and federal government, first-instance courts, law schools, and civil society organizations.
The main takeaway? Establishing effective linkages between customary and formal justice systems is challenging but can be game-changing when focused on people-centred outcomes.
Ethiopia’s first Community Justice Centre
The next day, in Addis Ababa, we joined the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice and State Minister Dr. Ermias Yemanebirhan to officially open Ethiopia’s first Community Justice Center, a crucial step in expanding access to justice. Our CEO, Dr. Sam Muller, celebrated the moment, saying”
“It is now concrete. We have a physical location that serves as the first point of contact for those in the community seeking to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice issues in a way that is accessible, affordable, and based on solid evidence.”
Two additional centres are set to open in Afar and Sidama, underscoring the Ministry’s commitment to regional diversity and inclusive community justice. With a clear vision, the Ministry plans to roll out pilot centres in every region across Ethiopia.
In partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice and Destiny Ethiopia, HiiL is committed to supporting a robust, people-centred justice system in Ethiopia, with a special focus on strengthening community justice.
Most justice systems prioritise caseloads and efficiency over well-being, missing the bigger picture. Our experts argue that justice systems should aim for meaningful outcomes that improve lives, making justice a tool for poverty reduction and social inclusion.
In a recent report, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty contends that prioritising GDP growth as a strategy for poverty eradication is flawed and advocates for transitioning to a human rights-centred economy. Prof. De Schutter points out the shortcomings of GDP as an indicator of well-being, noting its inability to address social exclusion and environmental stress.
The report calls for recognising the value of unpaid care work, democratising workplaces, sharing employment, countering consumerism, and ensuring universal access to basic services. The Special Rapporteur concludes by urging a post-growth development model focused on human rights and environmental sustainability.
What does the predicament that the philosophy of ‘growthism’ is counterproductive mean for justice and the role of justice systems? And while growth can occur without prioritising human rights, equality, and social inclusion, is this truly desirable?
People-centred justice refers “to a human-centred approach that adopts the perspective of people as a starting point and places people at the core when designing, delivering, implementing and evaluating public policies, services and legal procedures within and beyond the justice system. It considers the perspectives and needs of specific communities, including marginalised, underserved and groups in vulnerable situations”1.
In this debate, PCJ is both an end goal and a method for increasing justice, poverty reduction, and well-being. To illustrate the point, imagine you are the Minister of Justice, the Chief Justice, or the Supreme Judicial Council chairperson in a proverbial country. How do you contribute to the fight against poverty?
Justice services are truly people-centred when they look beyond “case resolved” or “case pending”.
The orthodoxy is that establishing and strengthening institutions that maintain the rule of law (courts, police, central and local public authorities) is the way forward. This view led to an extreme focus on rules and institutions and an acute disregard for the justice users. The consequences are that justice systems fail to guarantee accessibility, equality, prevention and fair resolution of disputes, social order, and stability. The justice gap is more significant than ever. An estimated 5.1 billion people worldwide are deprived of the rule of law.
People-centred justice shifts the gravity of the justice system back to individuals and businesses who need just resolutions in their lives. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gives five concrete directions on how to move towards a people-centred justice system.
First, the justice system should establish a people-centred purpose and culture.
Second, design and deliver justice and legal services which are people-centred.
Third, a sound governance system for people-centred justice should be established.
Fourth, constantly strive to empower people.
Fifth, OECD recommends keeping the user in the picture by using data in planning, monitoring and evaluating how the justice systems perform.
HiiL has spent the last 15 years learning about the crucial role of people-centred justice in enhancing well-being. Justice systems do not “see” well-being. Most leaders and service providers are preoccupied with measuring caseloads, backlogs, case clearance rates, disposition times and simple case outputs. The most important metric is whether a case is resolved or is pending. This is easy to measure, but it is like judging a hospital’s performance by the ratio of discharged patients and those still in the hospital. Not to mention that these statistics apply to only around 5% of the justice needs that people experience in their daily lives.
There is a circular reinforcement between well-being and PCJ. Well-being increases when justice is people-centred. On the other hand, well-being is a critical justice outcome dimension and target. Justice services are truly people-centred when they look beyond “case resolved” or “case pending”. Picture the hundreds of thousands of divorce, employment or inheritance cases. Just saying that the case has been resolved tells how the institutions see it.
The flat resolution metric tells us nothing about the well-being of the people and communities engaged. Do the spouses agree on how to continue further? Are the interests of the children protected? How well are parental rights and child support arrangements organised? These questions tell us whether and how the justice system considers the well-being of the users. When this metric becomes central, we can say that justice is people-centred and contributes to the well-being of individuals and communities.
Back to the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty. We can agree that GDP is not the only measure of poverty and well-being. Fairness, security, stable relationships, freedom from fear and many other values that justice protects are integral parts of well-being. Transformative and lasting poverty eradication requires justice centred on the users’ needs, experiences and outcomes. A growing body of justice leaders and practitioners calls this People-centred justice.
OECD, Recommendation of the Council on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems (2023). https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0498↩︎
In Ethiopia, over 7 million legal issues arise annually, with most remaining unresolved. Many people turn to shimagillé—respected community elders—to mediate disputes. However, the volume of disputes has overwhelmed both this traditional system and the formal justice system, emphasising the need for reform.
In 2019, the Federal Ministry of Justice used a data-driven approach to tackle this challenge. A Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) Survey found that most people preferred community elders over formal courts, yet millions of cases still went unaddressed. This insight guided the government’s three year justice sector transformation plan, focusing on enhancing community-level access to justice.
Ethiopia’s long-standing tradition of community justice has always been essential. However, with about 5 million unresolved disputes each year, formalised support is also needed. Regional authorities in Oromia revived customary courts which the Federal Ministry of Justice has been keen to learn from. These courts have shown impressive resolution rates, processing an average of 376,000 cases each year the past two years for a total population of 45 million people. They offered a scalable approach to bringing justice closer to the people.
The Federal ministry and local experts, supported by HiiL, launched the Justice Innovation Lab to explore how to increase resolution rates at community level in Ethiopia by improving justice delivery models that work effectively at community level. The goal was clear: to integrate traditional justice mechanisms with modern legal frameworks and ensure justice was accessible to everyone.
The idea of Community Justice Centres (CJCs) emerged as a consensus response to increase resolution rates. The model was built on the successful experiences of the government with customary courts in the Oromia region and the widespread use of the shimagille, well-established community justice providers and preferred route to conflict resolution in both urban and rural areas. The CJC model allowed communities to resolve disputes locally while aligning with international human rights standards. Yonas Birmeta, a professor at Addis Ababa University Law School, described the CJC model as a “game-changer,” blending Ethiopia’s traditional dispute resolution practices with modern systems.
The collaborative approach taken during the innovation lab is proving to be successful. Representatives from the Federal Ministry of Justice, legal experts, and community leaders worked alongside HiiL to co-create solutions rooted in Ethiopia’s context. Wondwossen Sintayehu of Destiny Ethiopia emphasised that this was not a top-down solution:
“It’s something we created together, based on the realities we face in our own communities.”
Dagmawit Alamnie, Director of Women and Cross-Sectoral Affairs at the Federal Ministry of Justice, praised the lab for its inclusiveness. “The simplicity of the process allowed us to develop solutions that respect both our federal and regional legal structures,” she noted. This balance was essential in ensuring the model could function within Ethiopia’s complex governance framework.
As Ethiopia prepares to roll out the CJC model, stakeholders are optimistic but recognize the need for flexibility. Each region of the country has unique needs, and the model will have to adapt as it is scaled. Yonas Birmeta stressed the importance of maintaining this flexibility, while Filipos Aynalem, former president of the Ethiopian Bar Association, noted how the initiative forms part of a broader movement to reform justice in Ethiopia.
For the Federal Ministry of Justice, the CJCs offer a bridge between the formal and informal systems. By creating pathways for communities to resolve disputes locally, the centres are expected to make justice more accessible and familiar to the people.
Ethiopia’s journey towards people-centred justice is already offering lessons for other governments. The CJC model demonstrates how tradition and innovation can come together to solve real-world problems. Governments facing similar challenges can look to Ethiopia’s approach, which honours local traditions while implementing scalable, sustainable reforms in a data-driven, evidence-based way.
As the Federal Ministry of Justice moves forward, the vision is clear: a justice system that is accessible, inclusive, and designed to meet the everyday needs of the people. “This initiative,” Yonas concluded, “marks the beginning of a new era for justice in Ethiopia—one that truly serves the people.”
Every year on 27 June, the UN commemorates Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) Day. These enterprises which account for 90% of businesses, more than 70% of employment, and 50% of GDP worldwide remain the core of the economy for most societies (source: UN). The theme for this year’s celebration is “MSMEs and the SDGs: Leveraging the Power and Resilience of Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) to Accelerate Sustainable Development and Eradicate Poverty in Times of Multiple Crises”
At HiiL, we know that justice providers face key challenges — Lack of innovation expertise, limited funding for transformation and growing public demand for transformation — and that justice start-ups can be integral partners in addressing these challenges. Our Accelerator is the only programme targeting innovations that support the resolution of justice problems. It supports tech, entrepreneurship, and innovation to improve access to justice. These partnerships bring innovative, scalable models that can develop and provide new services and support governments in realising people-centred justice.
On this World MSMEs Day, we are delighted to highlight one of our standout Justice Accelerator startups, Willminds, as a testament to the power of innovation in transforming the justice sector.
Two years after she participated in the Justice Accelerator programme, we met with Pascale Dahrouj, founder and CEO of Willminds, which provides new solutions to justice problems in Lebanon.
“It was 2020, amid the Covid pandemic. I live in Lebanon where we had so many problems. Insecurity, instability, inflation, recession, the Beirut port explosion,’’ says Pascale Derouj, an international lawyer and a native Beiruti as she describes the moment she reached a tipping point and decided to act. ‘’The institutions were no longer functioning, are still not functioning. The courts were no longer taking on cases.’’
“But you don’t have to just sit with your problem,” says Pascale who set up Willminds, her mediation and arbitration company in 2020 which today is a leading innovator in the area of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and people-centred justice.
“I knew that ADR is a solution but then thought: what if everyone turns to it and ends up facing the same backlog that we have in the courts? So, I started thinking about how we could innovate the process.”
Willminds approach to ADR is one that is accessible to all and offers sessions both online and in-person. The online platform is clear and intuitive — no law degree required to understand how it works.
“We have already seen 32 cases,” says Pascale. “Approximately 85% of them reached a settled agreement.”
Willminds’ impressive results stand as a testament to the fact that most justice problems in Lebanon can be resolved. And when they are, the impact is not just on the individual level, but on wider society. This is testified by Willminds’ users who say the resolutions they found extended beyond them, to their families, their businesses and their neighbourhoods.
For Philippe Khoury*, a dispute with neighbours who were repeatedly trespassing on his land was taking its toll. “It was a violation of our privacy and property rights. It was causing us stress, frustration and made us feel insecure.” He had tried to reason with them to no avail, and was preparing to pursue the issue in court, at great personal cost – time, money, yet more stress. But then his lawyer suggested Willminds. “They assigned a mediator who guided both sides through the entire process, kept the conversation focused on finding solutions, and assisted us in reaching an agreement. Throughout the process, I kept reminding myself I wished I had discovered Willminds sooner. I could have solved the conflict sooner and saved myself a lot of trouble and money.”
Now, says Philippe, “I feel comfortable and safe, and I live joyfully and with peace of mind. We even became excellent friends with the neighbours – we host them for dinners on occasion and they reciprocate. It is a two-way justice. We are both pleased with the outcome. It is a win-win situation.”
Mrs. Haddad’s* problems started when arguments broke out between her and her siblings. “The company is a long-established family business that my siblings and I inherited. We couldn’t agree on how things should progress within the organisation, and there were numerous third parties interfering with the decision-making process. This problem was affecting our family, the entire workplace, the employees, and the business results. The only option we had in mind was a lawsuit, which we did not want to pursue due to the time, costs, and public exposure. We attempted to negotiate among ourselves, but each time the conflict escalated further.”
The family turned to Willminds and, according to Mrs. Haddad: “Through the sessions we found common ground and shared goals, which were not apparent at the beginning. The solution not only allowed the family business to function, but the family itself. Before I started working with Willminds, I was angry, stressed, frustrated and confused. This situation affected our family relationship in all aspects. We couldn’t be around each other anymore, we couldn’t sit together without fighting, and the problem seemed persistent and unsolvable. I couldn’t sleep at night because I felt overwhelmed and anxious. But now, thanks to Willminds, I am relieved, satisfied, and happy. I am now calm and tranquil, and I am sleeping well. Our family regained the feeling of closeness and feel more united as siblings than ever before.”
Willminds’ innovative approach to resolution and restitution is a clear example of People-Centred Justice. It is justice that is accessible, effective and designed to deliver solutions that not only resolve people’s issues, but preserve – even strengthen – their relationships.
Pascale recognises that solving these problems is not just about the individual but society as a whole. When peoples justice needs are met there is a greater social cohesion. She is now keen for Willminds to do more than just provide ADR services but to reach and empower citizens with information and skills. They have launched a series of initiatives, such as producing a library of online videos that explain to Lebanese people their legal rights, in plain, everyday language. In schools and universities, Willminds are holding workshops to teach students the principles of mediation and arbitration, giving them a new way of thinking about problems that will serve them, and their communities, for the rest of their lives.
“Everything we do,” Pascale says, “is focused on building trust within society. People-Centred Justice is not about solving any one problem or any dispute for the people. It’s about giving them tools so they can seek justice for themselves or help others get justice. This is how you empower them.”
Through HiiL’s work with justice providers in the private and public sector, as well as the data gathered in the Justice Needs and Satisfaction surveys we conducted throughout the world, we understand the significant challenges both citizens and justice providers face, such as a lack of innovation expertise, limited funding, and growing public demand for effective solutions. Collaborative innovation between ministries of justice, judiciaries, and startups like Willminds is essential to addressing these challenges.
By designing and delivering people-centred legal and justice services, we can ensure that justice is within reach for everyone.
*Willminds’ alternative dispute resolution is a confidential process; some names have been changed to preserve the claimants’ right to anonymity.
In 2023, we saw ministries of justice and judiciaries across the world acknowledge the need to respond to the fact that far too many people who have a justice problem do not get a solution. One minister we spoke to called this a ‘state of emergency.’ Our 2023 Annual Report details what we have been doing to support them.
We are pleased to announce the release of our Annual Report 2023. This comprehensive report details what we have been doing to support Ministries of Justice and Judiciaries in implementing people-centred justice programmes. It highlights our impact and learnings, shows where we have worked, the progress made, and the insights gained in our ongoing journey as we put the people-centred justice approach into practice.
Some highlights include:
Ethiopia: Justice Sector Transformation We are a core partner in Ethiopia’s ambitious Three-Year Justice Sector Transformational Plan (2023-2025), which aims to make justice more affordable, accessible, and easy to understand. One of the 10 pillars of the plan revolves around scaling up community justice platforms, based on, among other best practices, a successful customary court model in the Oromia region which has been processing an average of 376,000 cases each year for the past two years for a total population of 45 million people. At the request of the Ethiopian Government, we are partnering with experts from the Ministry of Justice and the Oromia Legal Training and Research Institute to assess whether the Oromia example is an effective and replicable model to increase resolution and prevention rates at the community level.
Nigeria: Justice Innovation Labs In Imo and Ogun States, Justice Innovation Labs brought together diverse justice stakeholders to collaboratively develop sustainable solutions to legal problems. This resulted in a one-stop-shop offering tailored support for domestic violence survivors and the creation of a Community Justice Centre model. Both state governments have allocated funds in their 2024 budgets to pilot these initiatives, demonstrating a proactive approach to people-centred justice.
Tunisia: Employment Justice Platform In Tunisia we facilitated and supported a process for the Presidency of Government, the Ministry of Justice, the Bar Association and the General Directorate of Labour Inspection to innovatively address employment justice issues. This led to designing an innovative online platform that helps employees and employers understand and resolve disputes. The platform is based on insights from our Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey.
The Netherlands: Criminal Justice Reform In the Netherlands, we are building a movement to reform the criminal justice system. We convened professionals from various sectors to create a more effective and socially relevant system. The discussions have provided insights into shared goals, pressing bottlenecks, and broad solutions and strategies, all paving the way for sustainable change.
Our annual report also highlights support for justice providers in Burkina Faso, Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Niger, and Uganda.
« The central message of 2023 is that our responses to the access to justice challenge are becoming more concrete and now need to scale. The OECD Recommendation provides a roadmap for this. We need ministries of justice and judiciaries to set clear targets and create an enabling environment for people-centred justice services. We must empower people to access and participate in delivering better justice outcomes. Solid monitoring and evaluation are crucial, and we need the necessary funding to support these efforts. » — Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL
Lessons Learned and Future Directions We also share what we have learned, asking:
How can we make our data more actionable?
What can we do more to enhance evidence-based working?
How can we help overcome the challenge that most innovation initiatives find it difficult to scale?
Can we develop better budgeting frameworks for ministries, judiciaries, and funders to support people-centred justice work?
The lessons and changes shared are significant, but there is still work to be done. We stand ready to continue supporting ministries of justice and judiciaries as they lead crucial endeavours to realise people-centred justice.
Knowing the legal needs of the justice users and acting to provide better dispute resolution mechanisms is the foundation of people-centred justice. In its rule of law policy, USAID states that “people-centred justice is an approach to rule of law promotion that starts with identifying and understanding what people need and want when they seek justice…Simply put, people-centred justice puts people, and their justice needs and legal problems, at the centre of justice systems and services.”
In Colombia, HiiL partnered with USAID’s Justicia Inclusiva Activity to experiment further with the fast, affordable and agile gathering of legal needs data. With our eJNS method, we collected data from people living in 75 municipalities where Justicia Inclusiva works to improve access to justice.
Respondents were recruited via social media ads and snowball sampling from Justicia Inclusiva’s regional teams and partner civil society organisations.
By design, the sample is not representative, but the experiment was a success. It demonstrated how to gather quickly and economically valuable data about justice needs, preferences and actions. The approach can be used in many scenarios. For example, a programme delivering legal or justice services can evaluate how the users perceive process and outcome quality. Formal and informal providers of dispute resolution services can gather evidence about the experiences of their users and improve service delivery accordingly.
At its core, people-centred justice is exactly about this cyclical process: gathering data on needs and experiences, transforming this data into actionable insights, and implementing measures to enhance the accessibility, affordability, and efficiency of services for the people!
The actual findings paint a striking picture, with a staggering 75% of participants reporting encountering one or more legal problems within the previous year. These issues span a wide spectrum, but the most commonly reported ones revolved around debt and money, neighbour disputes, and access to essential services such as health, pensions, education, and access to public services.
A significant majority—86%—of individuals took some form of action to resolve their problems. However, despite these efforts, half of all reported issues remained unresolved at the time of completing the survey. Two primary reasons impede resolution: perceived procedural complexities and a lack of knowledge about what steps to take.
In navigating these challenges, participants predominantly sought assistance from acquaintances and directly communicated with the other party involved. The preference for non-institutional routes underscores a reliance on personal networks and informal negotiation channels.
In conclusion, the survey highlights the experimental value of new approaches, like the eJNS. It offers valuable insights into the multifaceted nature of legal challenges and the diverse strategies individuals employ to address them. By understanding these dynamics, policymakers, legal practitioners, and service providers can better tailor interventions to enhance access to justice and empower individuals in navigating the justice landscape.
Comment l’innovation de la société civile pourrait-elle contribuer à transformer la justice au Burkina Faso et au Niger ? Notre programme d’innovation pour les organisations de la société civile (OSC) s’attaque à cette question importante. Le programme est conçu pour aider les organisations locales du Burkina Faso et du Niger à résoudre directement les problèmes critiques de justice. Dédié à la promotion d’initiatives innovantes qui préviennent et résolvent les problèmes juridiques urgents au Burkina Faso, le programme s’attaque aux conflits fonciers, aux conflits familiaux et à la violence domestique tout en se concentrant sur les conflits fonciers au Niger. Voici un aperçu de nos domaines d’intervention :
Burkina Faso :De nombreux défis en matière de justice
Conflits fonciers : Les questions foncières sont au premier plan des problèmes de justice au Burkina Faso, impactant près de 40 % des personnes ayant des problèmes de justice. Les problèmes de gouvernance foncière, la dégradation des sols et les concurrences entre les régimes fonciers alimentent des conflits, qui affectent plus durement les populations rurales, moins éduquées et plus pauvres.
Problèmes familiaux : Représentant 12 % des problèmes de justice, les problèmes familiaux ont un impact sur des dizaines de milliers de personnes chaque année et touchent principalement les femmes. Des considérations traditionnelles concernant le genre profondément ancrés, l’instabilité économique et l’accès insuffisant aux services de base contribuent à ces problèmes.
Violences domestiques : Le Burkina Faso est confronté à des taux élevés de violences basées sur le genre, les facteurs économiques, les dynamiques du pouvoir et certaines normes de la société jouent un rôle important dans l’accentuation de ce problème. Fait surprenant, une grande partie des femmes, trouvent certains actes de violence domestique acceptables, ce qui implique la nécessité d’un changement social transformateur.
Niger :Les conflits fonciers au cœur des défis de croissance et du climat
Les conflits fonciers : Ils représentent un problème de justice majeur pour 27% de personnes confrontées à des problèmes de justice, les conflits fonciers au Niger sont souvent la résultante de conflits intrafamiliaux, d’affrontements entre éleveurs et agriculteurs, et de désaccords avec les chefs traditionnels sur l’utilisation des terres. Une croissance démographique rapide, les changements climatiques et des systèmes d’administration foncière inadéquats accentuent ces conflits.
Pour ces deux pays, les causes profondes de ces problèmes de justice demeurent liées à des facteurs socio-économiques, environnementaux et de gouvernance. Pour y remédier, il est important d’adopter une approche holistique qui associe l’innovation juridique à l’engagement et à l’éducation communautaires.
Grâce à un processus de sélection rigoureux, HiiL identifiera et soutiendra trois à quatre initiatives à petite échelle qui démontrent une expérience opérationnelle et un historique de succès dans l’utilisation d’approches innovantes pour relever les défis mentionnés au Burkina Faso et au Niger.
Le programme s’articule autour de trois composantes clés : des sessions de formation en personne, des sessions en ligne et un accompagnement personnalisé. Ces composantes sont conçues pour offrir un appui important et garantir l’impact durable des initiatives qui seront retenues. En plus de la formation et de l’accompagnement, les initiatives sélectionnées peuvent bénéficier d’une contribution financière pouvant aller jusqu’à 10 000 euros, destinée à affiner davantage le processus de mise en œuvre.
Critère d’éligibilité
Nous invitons tous les candidats potentiels à lire attentivement les critères d’éligibilité avant de soumettre leur candidature :
Expérience opérationnelle : les candidats doivent démontrer une expérience opérationnelle pertinente avec un plan réaliste et un historique de réussite dans des domaines thématiques.
Alignement de la portée du projet : les idées proposées devraient se focaliser sur le renforcement des systèmes judiciaires, la fourniture de services juridiques, la priorité aux groupes vulnérables et l’offre de solutions innovantes.
Innovation et orientation thématique : les initiatives doivent présenter des solutions innovantes et axées sur les personnes, en lien avec la résolution des problèmes fonciers.
Enregistrement légal : les OSC candidates doivent être légalement enregistrées dans leur pays d’activité.
Engagement envers les composantes du programme : les candidats doivent s’engager à participer aux trois composantes du programme, y compris la formation en présentielle et en ligne, ainsi que les séances de coaching. Le fait de ne pas terminer le programme ou de manquer un ou plusieurs éléments entraînera la disqualification à la contribution financière.
Les critères de sélection
En plus des critères d’éligibilité, les candidats sont encouragés à examiner les critères de sélection suivants
Capacités et expérience de l’équipe : Leadership et expertise démontrés dans les conflits fonciers, la violence domestique et les conflits familiaux au Burkina Faso et les conflits fonciers au Niger.
Compréhension du problème et de l’impact potentiel : les candidats doivent faire preuve d’une compréhension globale du problème abordé et articuler une vision claire pour obtenir un impact significatif et durable.
Faisabilité de l’initiative proposée : les candidats doivent présenter un plan de mise en œuvre réalisable et réaliste, garantissant la viabilité et la réussite de l’initiative, qu’elle exploite ou non une technologie de pointe.
Alignement avec les objectifs du programme : les solutions proposées doivent traiter efficacement les problèmes de justice et s’aligner sur les objectifs et les priorités du programme, visant à promouvoir une Justice axée sur les Personnes.
Caractère innovant de l’initiative : les candidats doivent mettre en évidence les aspects innovants de leur solution et expliquer en quoi elle offre des avantages ou des améliorations uniques par rapport aux approches existantes, faisant preuve de créativité et d’originalité.
This study of over 6,000 people provides a clear lens into their legal problems. It also equips justice practitioners with the knowledge needed to enact informed decisions.
We sat down with Alejandro Ruiz-Acevedo, the chief of party of USAID’s Inclusive Justice project in Colombia, to understand how the JNS and the utilisation of data and insights surrounding justice needs can foster positive transformation within communities across Colombia.
Our conversation took place on the same day as the launch of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction report in Bogotá, Colombia.
“Data to action is what we saw today. Data to action is seeing local justice committees taking that data and understanding that they need to do more in terms of, for example, dealing with conflicts between neighbours, and how they need to actually make available alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, for the municipality itself, so that these issues can be addressed as soon as possible.”
Watch the full interview:
Q&A
Q: How has data been used in Colombia throughout the years and has it yielded any results in the justice sector?
»Okay. Yes, data has been utilized, as we saw today. Since 2007, roughly, the country has taken a decision to actually gather data on the state of justice in the country.
That has been, for many years, data that comes directly from the main cities. And the main idea is to see how the justice systems, basically the institutions, are operating. If there are enough judges, if there are enough attorneys, if the services, if the number of cases, what is the speed of the cases, their resolution.
And that gathering of data has been started from 2007 up to now, but it has been slowly starting to focus on the user. The first questionnaires that started to ask this started a couple of years ago, around 2016-2017, they started to ask people how they perceive justice is operating, mainly in main cities. The surveys that the national planning department has been doing has mainly focused on bigger cities.
And what we have done this time is actually to gather the same type of data with a much more deeper understanding of how people relate to the conflict that they have. As you know, if there is any further consequence on their health, or how much money they have spent on the case, that gives us a little bit of a better understanding of how people at the rural level are dealing with issues. And this complements very well with what the national planning is actually doing.
They have been thinking at the national level, and also how services are being provided at the main cities. But this data actually correlates and gives a better outlook on what is the need in terms of services, and how they can start linking themselves with other operators of justice. For example, community mediators, community conciliators, that actually can deal with issues and with conflicts themselves.
And I think from today, the launching that we did today was very special, because for the first time I heard one of the magistrates that was there at the event and said that he had actually, I mean, that his mind blow of understanding how important it is to start bringing other stakeholders, different than the judges, different than the attorneys, to really think through what are the needs and how justice issues can be solved from a perspective of so many different stakeholders, different than just the high-level entities.
So we’re breaking barriers here, and also I want to mention that in the implementation that USAID has been doing for many years, starting smaller municipalities on setting up their own decision bodies on justice that we call local justice systems and local justice committees, the entities that actually make decisions. They have been making decisions based on qualitative data, basically not quantitative data, qualitative, based on the stories that they know that is happening around their own communities, on the stories of gender-based violence, on the stories, for example, on issues that have been raising from a neighbor’s conflict to a big sort of like homicides itself. But it has been working so far, and the data that we have been utilizing has been different up to this point.
I think this survey and the collection of more data that we’re trying to do from the entities themselves to bring into a bigger consortium of data to really make decisions is actually going to be changing the way that justice local committees are actually making decisions and how we bring data down to the beneficiaries and to the stakeholders that actually deal with the issues so that they can actually push further their own agendas at the municipal level. So I think this was a very important event here in Colombia.
Everyone, as you saw, from the magistrates to the Department of National Planning, the Ministry of Justice, and the academia, and also the private sector and civil society students, they do now understand that we are now moving the agenda forward into making sure that decisions are being made based on data, based on analysis, and that justice is an important fundamental structure to build peace in this country.
Q: How did this particular JNS come about? What were the steps that led to the initiation, from thinking: ‘we are going to do a JNS that will look at the 16 municipalities’ to today having the launch and inviting all the different stakeholders?
I mean, this is an idea. I mean, USAID has been working in Colombia for many years, for more than 30 years have been working here. They started to support initially justice houses, then they thought that they move into the oral panel system.
That was basically before the judge was making the decision himself or herself based on data that they were gathering. But then they brought the two parties so that they have equal representation and on an oral basis they can actually represent themselves. A full structure was established, and this is the current structure that works here.
And the US, with US support, this new system was evolved that was the main focus of USAID for many years up to the year 2010. USAID was actually supporting that. But then they shifted from the year 2010-12 onwards on understanding that access to justice was about working with people, working with conciliators, working with mediators, working with the structure at the local level, understanding what is in there.
And there is ongoing practices taking place at the municipalities where the state is not present. They have already established mechanisms of dealing with issues. USAID comes on board, understands this, builds these local justice systems and local justice committees from the year 2012 onwards.
However, that setting up, making everyone, all the stakeholders to understand why this is important, why decision-making bodies at the local level were critical to build trust, not only from the municipalities, but also trust in the way of how decisions are being made, and also trust in the institutions, because of the war in Colombia, the internal war, different stakeholders have played justice roles in their municipalities. And then from the sound, when they are empowered to have that capability and really build on their own decisions at the local level, they started to bring different ways, as I mentioned before, on how to bring data and what data we have, and the data were mostly oral data, that we know that this happened here, that we know this happened there.
And for this new iteration of USAID, USAID in these 30 years have had different programs on board. For this new program that we started in the year 2022, we came with the idea, we proposed to USAID to gather data at the municipal level, to fulfill the gap that was not there. The decisions were based on oral information, but not on quantitative data.
Therefore, we pushed the idea to USAID to put, along with HiiL, this JNS and the eJNS, the way why we ended up with the 16 municipalities was just more of a methodology arrangement that we did with HiiL. And I think at the end it went really well, because we have representation of smaller, very rural municipalities to municipalities that are of a medium scale, they’re not that big, but we have a very good representative sample that actually talks about how, because this sample is replicated in the entire country, mostly about the same. So we can actually make an estimation of how these municipalities are, but we’re going to be correlating that data that we gathered with the JNS with the eJNS, because the eJNS is now specific on municipality-wise.
So we expect with this first iteration that HiiL will help us to do that. We will see how we can actually deal in the future with new iterations and new ways, and also with DNP and other stakeholders that really want to continue supporting this, so that we can gather that data, bring that data down to those municipalities and start really pushing the idea that decision-making processes should be based on data to fulfill the people-centered justice premise of having decisions based on evidence.
Q: Would you say that it has always been important, the use of data in the justice sector in Colombia, or is it something that is becoming important now with this new data that has been released?
I think, as I mentioned before, we started to collect data as a country since the year 2007 onwards. And from that time onwards, the different stakeholders that work in justice, in the justice sector, started to understand why this is important. And why this is important also to have a mechanism of ensuring that the system is working well.
Because before they were just working by themselves and nobody was noticing that. Now, on this area of communications and data, everyone is really ensuring that accountability happens in all the different sectors, including the justice sector. So with this new launching, and with this event that we have, the data shouldn’t be stating at the national level that we need to make sure that it actually goes into the municipality and to the people who are actually dealing with it.
I think this is going to be triggering a lot of different changes. At the national level, definitely. We saw the magistrate, the magistrate from the Judicial Council, she said that they’re going to be building a greater database that is going to conglomerate all this information.
Because they are now aware that they cannot actually fulfill the need of justice in the country, but just by looking at the number of judges and where they’re located, but they need to look into a larger perspective about what are the needs of justice and how they can center those needs and actually bring the appropriate solution based also on the context of each one of the different places that they have. They’re just having the same approach everywhere.
It doesn’t work, so they will need to change and trigger different policies and approaches to do that better.
Q: Is there a need right now to integrate data in the work of the public sector, in your opinion?
I think there is, I mean, in Colombia there is a lot of data being collected by the prosecutor’s office, by the judges, by the Minister of Finance, by the private sector. I think it’s not, I think data is already there, but it’s how we collect that and how we present that. So I think the upcoming challenges are going to be how we are going to be starting integrating this data, how we understand the differences of ethnicities, of particular characteristics of an ethnic population with the differences also that LGBTIQ plus people have, and women have, and youth, etc.
So that the policies at the local level can actually be raised, the right policies and approaches to deal with those issues at the local level. I think that’s very important and I think also that data is going to start, has changed somehow the way that the justice sector has improved, but I think this new approach is going to be furthering, increasing the amount of surveillance from the civil society on what is going on in justice, but also people will know and will start demanding more services and better services from the justice sector.
Q: What is your vision for the future of working with data in Colombia?
I think in Colombia there’s a lot of opportunities and there’s lots of different stakeholders willing to support this. I think the private sector is doing something very interesting because of their interest to make sure that they have data that they place in the private sector. They are willing to support this type of initiative.
We also understood that having data helps people to make proper and good decisions. Santander de Quilichao, one municipality that we support, the secretary of state was there, the part of the municipality was there, and he mentioned that they’re doing day-to-day. So definitely data is going to be critical, for sure, but the decentralization of decision-making at the municipal level has been one, has been triggering that need for the entities themselves to gather that information.
So it’s not decentralizing funding, it’s just decentralizing the decision that they made at this local justice system and local justice committee to bring all the key critical stakeholders so that they can improve the way access to justice is taking place. And data is enhancing that capability, definitely.
Q: And for this JNS in particular, do you expect that there will be a second fold? Sometimes we’ve done that at Hill where we had a first JNS, then a second wave, a third wave, sometimes asking exactly the same people. Is that something that you could envision for this type of work?
I would love to have a second and a third. I think it would be good to have or continue that conversation with national entities. I think, as we did today, we have passed this process.
As you know, the international cooperation stands for a short period of time. We don’t know what is going to happen with the Colombia-US relationship and if they will continue funding this type of programs in the future. And I certainly advocate for Hill to continue having these conversations with the national government, with academia, with all the critical stakeholders that we have already discussed.
Because I think a second iteration, a third iteration, etc. onwards, I think will make a lot of sense. The government definitely is planning to have one soon.
As a program, the inclusive justice program of USAID, we don’t plan to do that anymore. We’re planning now to see how we can utilize that data, but I think it will be important for Hill to continue this conversation and see if we can continue improving the way the data is being collected and how that data can continue fueling all these different communities that are actually making decisions at the local level.
Q: The theme of HiiL’s next newsletter is ‘From Data to Action’. Is there is one thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘data to action’, especially in the context of this JNS done in Colombia?
Data to action is what we saw today. Data to action is seeing local justice committees taking that data and understanding that they need to do more in terms of, for example, in neighborhoods, conflicts, and how they need to actually find mechanisms, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, to be available to the municipality itself, so that these issues can be addressed as soon as possible. And we have already, through the project, have been implementing an alternative dispute resolution toolkit to be given to lots of different stakeholders that actually deal with this type of issue.
yeah, I think the action to data is that. It’s actually bringing that data. I think this neighborhood, these neighbor conflicts that was raised in the report actually bring a very clear headlight that many municipalities will immediately start reacting to that.
So, I think it’s just finding the mechanisms, the ways, and the places where the decision can be made. Otherwise, I mean, we end up having another beautiful report that is going to be in a beautiful shelf in somewhere in this world and nothing will happen. I think it’s just how you bring that data and give to the critical stakeholders, the decision makers at the right place and they can start triggering immediate actions.
Highlights from the JNS report
The results of the survey provide a clear picture regarding the landscape of legal problems in the selected municipalities.
Access to justice is a broad societal problem—55% of the population experienced at least one legal issue in the past four years, with only 47% of those having been resolved.
The most common problems are related to neighbour disputes, crime, access to public services, and land issues.
58% of people take action to solve their legal problem. 43% of them try to do it by talking directly with the other party.
Although less than half of the problems are resolved, most people who achieve a resolution (60%) consider it fair.
Ten years ago, the Dutch Embassy in Yemen asked us to measure the justice needs experienced by Yemeni people. To say that this was a challenge is an understatement. The country was on the brink of a civil war (which would erupt in 2015), the Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda was highly active and a chaotic process of national constitution-building was taking place.
Despite these challenges, we managed to interview randomly selected people from the country’s three most populous governorates. We found that almost everyone in Yemen has to deal with multiple legal problems, most often related to land, crime and family disputes.
Many more such studies have followed in the past 10 years, from Fiji to the United States and from Colombia to Burkina Faso to Bangladesh. These insights about people’s needs for justice became the foundation of people-centred justice and have had a major impact at a global level. A global movement has emerged, and advocates that people-centred justice policies and services must start from robust knowledge about the justice needs in daily life. The Task Force on Justice used legal needs data, including from HiiL’s surveys, to calculate that the global justice gap encompasses a staggering 5.1 billion people. One of the critical indicators of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 is tightly linked to the study of legal needs. The OECD is championing evidence-based people-centred justice among its member states.
We also witness that more and more countries gather systematic and regular data about people’s and businesses’ justice needs. UK jurisdictions, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have accumulated decades of experience measuring justice. Countries from the global South join this approach. Uganda, Colombia, South Africa and Indonesia are just a few examples of repeated justice needs studies.
Justice is vital to all, regardless of background. Yet, the ubiquity of legal problems is not matched by well-functioning justice journeys where half of global needs remain unmet.
Data and knowledge are the cornerstones of the people-centred justice programming that we apply in Tunisia, Nigeria, Niger, Kenya, Mali, Ethiopia, Uganda and all other countries where we work. Bottom-up data is the essential foundation for designing justice services that meet the needs of users and are evidence-based, innovative and scalable.
What did we learn in these 10 years from interviewing tens of thousands of people about their justice needs?
Justice is an intrinsic and growing part of everyone’s lives. Regardless of age, wealth, education or political views, everyone needs support from the law. The ubiquity of problems, however, is not matched by well-functioning justice journeys. Roughly half of global justice needs are not resolved.
Our analysis clearly shows that ‘justice as usual’ will not meet people’s immense and growing needs. The way ahead is to rethink justice systems and engineer them as tools for delivering fairness and value to their users. This is now known as people-centred justice.
The world needs many more justice needs and satisfaction studies. But people-centred justice also needs smarter, more strategic and more efficient use of data. Data must be quickly transformed into knowledge and insights, and more closely linked to decision-making and implementation.
Specifically, the broad justice sector critically needs strategies and methods for streamlining insights about people’s justice needs and justice journeys into policies and services. Most policies, laws, and services are designed without much thought about the user’s needs and experiences. The growing body of justice needs knowledge gathered by HiiL and other international and national organisations is a powerful guide for designing and redesigning justice and legal services in ways that best address the users’ needs.
It is clear: a well-designed justice system is overdue. JNS studies provide the first snapshot to reform. They enable the design and implementation of justice services that meet the needs of people.
Another key challenge over the next decade will be uncovering and using creatively new data sources. We aim to develop new tools to measure justice procedures’ medium—and long-term outcomes. The field of legal needs research must keep up with technological, scientific, social, and political transformations.
We welcome you to contribute your thoughts on the future of people-centred justice data, particularly transforming data into actionable insights and exploring novel data sources.
The first 10 years of surveys taught us valuable lessons and prepared us for the next stage. Most importantly, the people-centred justice coalition is growing. With committed partners in ministries of justice, judiciaries, donor organisations, international organisations and research institutions worldwide, we are confident that legal needs, data and knowledge will grow to become “business as usual” for the justice sector.
Iraq has grappled with housing, land, and property (HLP) challenges for decades, exacerbated by periods of conflict, including the turmoil caused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) between 2014 and 2017. These challenges have been particularly acute in regions like Sinjar. The aftermath of the conflict has left deep scars, with over 6 million Iraqis displaced, including approximately 250,000 in the Sinjar district of Ninewa Governorate, Iraq, alone. While some progress has been made with the return of around 4.8 million individuals, many challenges persist, especially in areas such as Mosul, Sinjar, and Al-Ba’aj. In response to these formidable obstacles, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL), with the support of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, RVO) and in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, introduces the Iraq Justice Innovation Initiative, aiming to empower local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and initiatives to address these pressing concerns with innovation and determination.
The landscape of HLP governance in Iraq reflects some challenges, characterised by displacement, land seizures, and violations of property rights, especially to the vulnerable. Despite the country’s formal legal framework, which includes laws on land and property registration, implementation remains weak due to several hardships, such as institutional capacity constraints. Moreover, overlapping and conflicting legal frameworks, coupled with competing claims over land ownership and use, have further complicated matters, limiting access to justice for individuals and communities seeking to resolve disputes.
In response to these pressing challenges, the Iraq Justice Innovation Initiative is poised to make a difference. Our program aims to support Iraqi Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and initiatives in addressing HLP issues with innovative solutionsin the Sinjar District. Through a rigorous selection process, HiiL will identify and support three to four small-scale, Iraqi-led initiatives that demonstrate operational experience and a track record of success in utilising innovative approaches addressing HLP challenges.
The Iraq Justice Innovation Initiative is structured around three key components: in-person training sessions scheduled for early June, online sessions running from June to October, and personalized coaching also available from June to October. These components are designed to offer crucial support and ensure the lasting impact of participating initiatives. Alongside the training and coaching, chosen initiatives stand to gain financial contributions of up to €10,000, intended to streamline the implementation process further.
Eligibility Criteria
We kindly urge all potential applicants to carefully review the eligibility criteria before submitting their applications:
Operational Experience: Applicants must showcase relevant operational experience with a realistic plan and a history of success in thematic areas.
Project Scope Alignment: Proposed projects should focus on strengthening justice systems, providing legal services, prioritizing vulnerable groups, and offering innovative solutions.
Innovation and Thematic Focus: Initiatives must present innovative, people-centred solutions aligned with addressing land and housing issues.
Legal Registration: While applicants are not mandated to be legally registered, it is preferred.
Commitment to Program Components: Applicants must commit to participating in all three program components, including physical and online training, as well as coaching sessions. Failure to complete the program or missing one or more components will result in disqualification for the financial contribution.
Selection Criteria
In addition to the eligibility criteria, candidates are encouraged to review the following selection criteria to ensure alignment with Iraq Justice Innovation Initaitve’s objectives and priorities.
Team Capabilities and Experience: Demonstrated leadership and expertise in land and housing issues, with a focus on the Sinjar area.
Understanding of the Problem and Potential Impact: Applicants should exhibit a comprehensive understanding of the addressed problem and articulate a clear vision for achieving meaningful and sustainable impact.
Feasibility of the Proposed Initiative: Applicants must present a feasible and realistic implementation plan, ensuring the initiative’s viability and successful execution, regardless of whether it leverages cutting-edge technology.
Alignment with Programme’s Objectives: Proposed solutions must effectively address justice issues and align with the program’s objectives and priorities, aiming to promote people-centred justice.
Innovativeness of the Initiative: Applicants should highlight the innovative aspects of their solution and explain how it offers unique advantages or improvements compared to existing approaches, demonstrating creativity and originality.
Applications are closed
Timeline
Call to Application Opens: April 02
Call to Application Closes: May 6th
Interviews: Expected to be held between May 17th and May 24th.
Program Details:
In-person kick-off in Iraq: Second week of July
Online training and coaching sessions: July through October
Final sharing event in Iraq: To be Determined – Expected in December or January
All applicants will be informed of the results by the end of May
** Please note that we will not accept any applications submitted via email or after the deadline under any circumstances. If you have any questions about the program, please reach out to Salam Nukta, Innovation Officer, at salam.alnukta@hiil.org. For inquiries regarding the application form, please contact Zainab Dawood, IJIP Project Officer, at Zainab.dawood@hiil.org.
مبادرة الابتكار من أجل العدالة في العراق – حلول لتمكين الأفراد من حل مشاكلهم القانونية فيما يتعلق بالإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات
واجه شعب العراق تحديات في مجال الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات لعقود من الزمن. تفاقمت هذه المشكلات خلال فترات النزاع، خاصة تلك التي جرت مع تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام (داعش) بين عامي 2014 و2017. واحتدت هذه المشاكل خصوصًا في مناطق مثل سنجار. إن الآثار التي خلفتها النزاعات تركت أثراً واضحاً على تركيبة المجتمع وخصائصه حيث نزح أكثر من 6 ملايين عراقي، بما في ذلك حوالي 250,000 شخص من منطقة سنجار بمحافظة نينوى في العراق وحدها. وبينما تم إحراز بعض التقدم من خلال عودة حوالي 4.8 مليون شخص إلى أراضيهم، فإن العديد من التحديات لا تزال قائمة، خصوصًا في مناطق مثل الموصل، سنجار، والبعاج.
بناءً على ما تقدم، سيقوم « معهد لاهاي للابتكار القانوني »، بدعم من « وكالة المشاريع الهولندية » (RVO) وبالتنسيق مع الجهات المعنية، بتنفيذ « مبادرة الابتكار من أجل العدالة في العراق »، والتي تهدف إلى إيجاد حلول مبتكرة لتمكين الأفراد من حل مشاكلهم القانونية المتعلقة بالإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات في العراق.
تتسم حوكمة الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات في العراق بالتعقيد، وخاصة المشاكل المتعلقة بالتهجير والاستيلاء على الأراضي وانتهاك حقوق الممتلكات، خصوصاً تجاه بعض الفئات الضعيفة. وعلى الرغم من وجود إطار قانوني رسمي في العراق لحوكمة الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات يشمل قوانين التسجيل العقاري والممتلكات، إلا أن التنفيذ يظل ضعيفاً بسبب عدة صعوبات. تتجلى هذه الصعوبات بضعف القدرة التنظيمية للمؤسسات الفاعلة ضمن تحديات أخرى. وعلاوة على ذلك، فإن الأطر القانونية المتداخلة والمتضاربة، بالإضافة إلى المطالبات التنافسية حول ملكية الأراضي واستخدامها، زادت الأمور تعقيداً ، مما يحد من إمكانية وصول الأفراد والمجتمعات التي تسعى إلى حل النزاعات إلى العدالة.
تسعى « مبادرة الابتكار من أجل العدالة في العراق » واستجابة لهذه التحديات الملحة، إلى تحقيق تغيير إيجابي في مجال الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات. يهدف برنامجنا إلى دعم منظمات المجتمع المدني العراقي والمبادرات في معالجة قضايا الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات من خلال إيجاد واستخدام حلول مبتكرة في منطقة سنجار. حيث سيقوم « معهد لاهاي للابتكار القانوني » بتحديد واختيار ثلاثة إلى أربعة مبادرات صغيرة الحجم، يقودها عراقيون، من خلال عملية اختيار واضحة وعادلة، شريطة أن تظهر هذه المبادرات نجاحاً في تقديم نهج مبتكر لمواجهة هذه التحديات لتلقي الدعم.
سيحصل المشاركون في « مبادرة الابتكار من أجل العدالة في العراق » على جلسات تدريب متخصصة من المقرر أن تبدأ في شهر يونيو 2024، بالإضافة إلى جلسات تدريب عبر الإنترنت تستمر من يونيو إلى أكتوبر 2024، وأيضاً دعم من خلال برنامج إرشادي موجه سيكون متاحاً من يونيو إلى أكتوبر 2024. بجانب التدريب والإرشاد، فإن المبادرات المشاركة المختارة ستحصل على دعم مالي قد يصل إلى 10,000 يورو، بهدف إتاحة فرصة نجاح أكبر لتنفيذها.
معايير الأهلية
نحث جميع المتقدمين المحتملين على مراجعة معايير الأهلية بعناية قبل تقديم طلباتهم:
الخبرة التشغيلية : يجب على المتقدمين اظهار خبرة تشغيلية مع خطة واقعية وسجل ناجح في مبادرات شخصية أو جماعية في مجال الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات.
التوافق مع نطاق المشروع: يجب أن تركز المشاريع المقترحة على تعزيز أنظمة العدالة، وتقديم حلول قانونية مبتكرة في مجال الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات، مع التركيز على الفئات الأكثر ضعفاً.
الابتكار في قضايا الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات: يجب على المبادرات تقديم حلول مبتكرة متمحورة حول الإنسان، ومتوافقة مع التحديات المتعلقة بالإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات.
التسجيل القانوني: على الرغم من أنه ليس إلزاميًا للمتقدمين أن يكون لديهم تسجيل وكيان قانوني، إلا أنه يُفضّل ذلك.
الالتزام بمكونات البرنامج: يجب على المتقدمين الالتزام بالمشاركة في جميع مكونات البرنامج الثلاثة: جلسات التدريب الحضوري والتدريب عبر الإنترنت، بالإضافة إلى جلسات الإرشاد. عدم الالتزام في إكمال البرنامج يمكن أن يؤدي إلى إلغاء المشاركة بشكل طبيعي و استبعاد المتقدم من الحصول على دعم مالي عقب انتهاء البرنامج.
معايير الاختيار
بالإضافة إلى معايير الأهلية، ندعو جميع المتقدمين إلى مراجعة معايير الاختيار التالية لضمان توافق أهداف وأولويات « مبادرة الابتكار من أجل العدالة في العراق ».
قدرات الفريق وخبراته: يجب أن يتمتع الفريق بروح قيادية وخبرة في قضايا الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات، وتحديدا في منطقة سنجار.
فهم المشكلة والتأثير المحتمل: يجب على المتقدمين إظهار فهم شامل للمشكلة التي يتم معالجتها والتعبير عن رؤية واضحة لتحقيق تأثير هادف ومستدام.
جدوى المبادرة وقدرتها على التنفيذ: يجب على المتقدمين تقديم خطة عمل واقعية وقابلة للتنفيذ تضمن جدوى المبادرة وتنفيذها بنجاح، بغض النظر عما إذا كانت تستفيد من التكنولوجيا المتطورة.
التوافق مع أهداف البرنامج: يجب أن تعالج الحلول المقترحة قضايا الإسكان والأراضي والممتلكات بفعالية وتوافق مع أهداف وأولويات البرنامج. يجب أن تساهم المبادرات بتعزيز العدالة المتمحورة حول الإنسان .
الابتكار: يجب على المتقدمين تسليط الضوء على الجوانب المبتكرة للحل الخاص بهم وشرح كيف يقدم مزايا أو تحسينات فريدة مقارنة بالمناهج الحالية، مما يدل على إبداع واصالة الحل المقترح.
لقد توقفنا عن استلام الطلبات
الجدول الزمني
فتح باب تقديم الطلبات: 5 نيسان 2024
إغلاق باب تقديم الطلبات: السادس من أيار 2024
المقابلات مع المتقدمين: من المتوقع أن تُجرى بين 17 و24 أيار 2024
تفاصيل البرنامج:
انطلاقة البرنامج في العراق، جلسات التدريب الحضورية :الأسبوع الثاني من تموز 2024
جلسات التدريب والإرشاد عبر الإنترنت :من تموز حتى تشرين الأول 2024
حدث المشاركة النهائي في العراق: سيتم تحديده لاحقاً – من المتوقع في كانون الاول 2024 أو كانون الثاني 2025
سيتم إعلام جميع المتقدمين بالنتائج بحلول نهاية أيار 2024 ** يرجى الانتباه أنه لن يتم قبول أي طلب عبر البريد الإلكتروني أو بعد الموعد النهائي تحت أي ظرف من الظروف. إذا كان لديك أسئلة حول البرنامج، يرجى التواصل مع السيدة سلام النقطة، مسؤولة الابتكار، من خلال salam.alnukta@hiil.org. للاستفسارات حول استمارة التقديم، يرجى الاتصال بالسيدة زينب داوود، مسؤولة مشروع مبادرة الابتكار من أجل العدالة في العراق، من خلال Zainab.dawood@hiil.org
“If 50% of our citizens did not receive health from the health system, we would speak of a state of emergency. With 50% of our citizens having unresolved or only partially resolved justice problems, we should also speak of a state of emergency in our justice systems,” concluded one of the ministers at the 2024 Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting, held early March.
The authors had the privilege of engaging ministers in an exchange on people-centred justice programming to tackle the 50% Justice Challenge. The size of the challenge was not questioned. There was a general sense that the response should be people-centred: justice mechanisms that are close to where people live and work – responsive, simple, and fast. The key challenges are how to scale, how to sustainably fund, and how to deliver quality services. What is now needed is leadership.
Photo credit: Commonwealth Secretariat
Coming together
The Commonwealth Law Ministers have recurrently prioritised addressing the justice gap – it was on the agenda during its meetings in Colombo (2019), Mauritius (2022), and Zanzibar (2024), as well as at the Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali in 2022.
Consistently, there has been unequivocal recognition that a justice gap exists. How wide that gap is, differs from country to country, but ministers coalesced around the people-centred justice approach as a way to close it. The approach is now also captured in an OECD recommendation. A coalition of more than 18 States and partner organisations, called the Justice Action Coalition, has also been formed to support this way of working at the international level.
The theme of the meeting ‘Technology and Innovation: How digitalisation paves the way for the development of people-centred access to justice’ initially had us worried. Digitising the current systems is digitising the status quo, which will not close the 50% gap. However, both the ministers’ analysis of the problem and the direction for change they set are not about more of the same. There is a real opportunity — it now needs to be taken.
Starting with a concrete example
The Judiciary of Kenya is probably the furthest ahead in terms of having a concrete plan for the 50% Justice Challenge. It was presented to the nation in November, last year: the Social Transformation through Access to Justice Blueprint. The Judiciary’s formidable leader, the Honourable Chief Justice Martha Koome, provided law ministers with an overview of the Blueprint during the meeting. Its goal is audacious: “20 million Kenyans excluded from the formal justice sector will have access to an efficient and responsive justice system that is inclusive and utilises people’s justice capabilities by 2033”.
The approach is people-centred and the multi-door justice responses put forward are innovative. The value of an open conversation between a representative from the judiciary and representatives from the executive branch also emerged. One of the ministers present explicitly stated that such conversations don’t happen a lot, even though they are essential for formulating responses to the Justice Challenge.
The gap is not questioned—the real issue is how to close it
The widely available data measuring the justice gap was not questioned. There was an unequivocal recognition of the existence of the 50% Justice Challenge. The urgency and opportunity of tackling it was not questioned, inside and outside the Commonwealth orbit. The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC worded it forcefully when she said that adequate measures were “absolutely critical” and a “powerful new consensus” allows ministers and chief justices to move forward.
Ministries of justice and judiciaries are overstretched and there is not enough budget to support current commitments, let alone for starting something new. Managing the transition to outcomes without disrupting the delivery of justice services will be an important part of securing wider buy-in.
« Digitising the current systems is digitising the status quo, which will not close the 50% gap. »
The separation of powers poses considerable challenges for productive and frank conversations between, for example, the executive and the judiciary. Separation of powers is critically important, but at the same time, the justice gap will not be closed if the participants remain siloed.
There are conflicting power interests to consider. The legal profession is also a powerful actor, which generally puts its full weight behind one way of getting justice to people: lawyers. But, as said before, other delivery models are also needed, and these do not require mainly lawyers to run them. The legal profession can be a huge hindrance to change. How to deal with this?
Changing a justice system also carries considerable political risk. How can that risk be managed, in addition to all the other risks ministers of justice or attorney generals manage? It is not a secure job generally; and with limited budgets, they must choose their battles. Then there is the challenge of corruption. A shift to a new approach requires old habits, mindsets, and ways of working to be left behind. As one minister put it, to earn the trust of people, integrity is needed more than ever. How can this risk be managed and integrity be established in practice?
« Three common challenges emerged when we listened to these different examples of other delivery models.«
Another participant asked: for which things do you need a lawyer and what can you do without them? Indeed, a large part of the 50% Justice Challenge does not require a response from lawyers. More courts and law firms are not the answer. Other justice delivery models have been emerging for a while and are becoming more mainstream. Different forms of community justice. Mediation. ADR. Ward tribunals. Abunzi courts. Small claims courts. Tribal courts. Legal aid and paralegals. The National Legal Services Authority. They have a few things in common.
A minister said it well: they meet people and communities where they are, they help people move on, and they are accessible and easy to use. This means they must be inclusive, embrace diversity and evolve with the complexities of today’s world. Most countries are multi-ethnic and have many traditions, cultures, and languages. The impact and understanding of justice mechanisms is different in each community. Reaching people where they are can be hard. Building inclusive responses is already happening but requires equal attention to removing wider educational, income and social inequalities.
Three common challenges emerged when we listened to these different examples of other delivery models. Firstly, the challenge of scale. The Abunzi courts of Rwanda and the National Legal Services Authority in India are two examples that scaled nationally. But getting there is not a given. These alternative mechanisms could be better connected with the national system.
Secondly, the challenge of providing a quality service; its delivery, and its operation. Setting up and running such mechanisms requires knowledge. How can the various types of legal problems be resolved in a fair and just manner? Specialised knowledge is needed for data collection, shifting to a more evidence-based way of working, developing new delivery models, new regulatory models, new financing models, and more. How to support them with good IT systems and other operational infrastructure? This also includes the need for some measure of quality control: it is important that these mechanisms comply, for example, with basic human rights.
The third big challenge is that of sustainable funding. Most of the initiatives struggle to get by and are largely dependent on the whims of donors and philanthropy.
Rethinking the 50 % justice challenge
What if the 50% Justice Challenge could be met in a way that is doable and manageable, both in terms of political risk and delivery? In a way that does not require millions in new funding but focuses instead on using existing funds in a better way? In a way that also transforms the justice system and strengthens ministries of justice and judiciaries, making them less overburdened? What if the necessary capacity could be sustainably created? Knowledge of what works could be found, integrated and further developed, both within the ministry and with partners?
And doing all this would also be good for the economy and make a significant contribution to stability, social cohesion, inclusion, safety, and better governance.
This, we learned from all the conversations, is possible. Solution thinking is clearly pointing in the direction of better justice responses that meet people and communities where they are, help people move on, and that are accessible and easy to use. It takes visionary, focussed, and shared leadership to make it happen.
Visionary leadership sets an ambitious people-centred target: recognising the 50% Justice Challenge and defining an ambitious response. The Social Transformation through Access to Justice Blueprint gives an inspiring example by making a clear promise to 20 million Kenyans and charting a course to keep that promise.
Focussed leadership starts with data, sets priorities, develops outcome-based goals, and builds a monitoring system to measure progress and outcomes achieved. It works on the basis of evidence-based best practices and constantly improves and innovates where needed. Interventions that work best to resolve the most frequent and pressing problems people have are scaled, one by one. An enabling environment for this is maintained so these interventions can sustainably continue.
Shared leadership thinks about a justice system as an ecosystem. It is inclusive and builds on the strengths of many to thrive. It continuously updates and evolves to a changing environment. It leaves no one behind. This needs ongoing conversations, including across the separation of powers; but more than ever, it needs the contributions of all justice system actors.
The challenge is clear. Elements of the way forward were visible in the room. The approach to take. The investment that is needed in terms of knowledge and capacity—both nationally and internationally. And what leaders like ministers and chief justices can do.
We urge them to do it—and offer our support where deemed useful.
Uganda’s Third Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey Launched by the Principal Judge of Uganda Hon Justice Dr Flavian Zeija
Kampala, Uganda – 21 March 2024 – Today, Uganda marks a milestone in its pursuit of equitable access to justice as it launches the third Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey. Conducted by The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) with key stakeholders from the Ugandan Judiciary, the Governance and Security Secretariat, formerly JLOS, and the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Honorable Norbert Mao, the survey reflects Uganda’s commitment to develop effective responses that address the daily legal problems faced by its citizens.
According to the findings, which were presented today at the launch event in Kampala, a staggering 95% of Ugandan men and women encountered at least one legal problem in the past year. While many did find a satisfactory resolution to their problems, 45% did not, highlighting a need for service delivery models that enable people to prevent and resolve legal problems effectively.
This report, the third of its kind in Uganda, underscores the nation’s pioneering role in data collection. It also aims to serve as a catalyst for change. Collaboration among key stakeholders, including a reference group with representatives from twelve Ugandan justice organisations, has been integral in validating the survey process and its findings. Together, these stakeholders advocate for a data-driven approach to policy-making that prioritises the justice needs of people.
Lilian Keene Mugerwa, Justice Transformation Expert with HiiL in Uganda, emphasises, « The close collaboration among key stakeholders has enhanced an understanding of the crucial role of data in shaping policies that promote people-centred justice. This survey lays the foundation for evidence-based decision-making to address the diverse legal needs of Ugandans. »
More than 6,000 randomly selected Ugandan individuals participated in the survey, providing invaluable insights into the nature and resolution of legal problems across different demographics and regions. The data collected is aimed at driving improvements in access to justice, guiding policymakers and justice service providers so that they can work on interventions that are fair, effective, and responsive to the needs of people.
The launch event on March 21 in Kampala featured prominent speakers from the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, the Judiciary, and the Embassy of the Netherlands.
H.E Karin Boven, the ambassador of the Netherlands to Uganda stressed the significance of the Report. »The Importance of the Justice Survey can’t be understated, it serves as a tool for justice both to the Government and the justice system. It enables decision-makers to make informed decisions. »
Following the launch, a Justice Leaders Forum was held with the launch participants. This forum serves as a platform for in-depth discussions on the study’s implications, emphasising its critical role in guiding decision-making and setting strategic priorities for the future. As a result, the participants propose actionable recommendations from the JNS data.
Theresa Smout, Programme Director of the Uganda programme at HiiL states, « Uganda has set a precedent as a pioneer in collecting people-centred justice data, and now is the time for action. These results can be used towards tangible measures that enhance people-centred justice – meaning access to affordable, user-friendly justice services for all. »
From a young age, Gard Benda witnessed injustice. An orphan from the age of ten growing up in a marginalized community, he saw property being stolen and witnessed violent crimes. He watched as the victims sought justice – travelling to faraway cities, borrowing money for transportation and court fees over and over again–until they eventually gave up. ‘’Only the rich can access justice’’ became a phrase repeated in his, and countless other communities across Uganda.
These memories stayed with him as he embarked on a career as an investigative journalist, winning awards for his exposes of human rights violations and land grabbing. But this was not enough. ‘’Yes, I am reporting injustice in the media – but is this actually making a difference?’’ he asked himself.
With this mind he started World Voices Uganda, an NGO focused on peace-building and access to justice. Their first projects focused on human rights reporting, cultural and sports activities for peace and justice and child protection but overwhelmingly what he and his colleagues were hearing from people was that they wanted somewhere to go where their legal problems could be heard and resolved.
‘’Lawyers in Uganda are expensive, based in urban areas and operate largely in English. Courts are also far away and people simply can’t afford the travel costs. ’’says Gard, ‘’So we decided to come up with a justice model that would work for people.’’
And so in 2012, they created the Bataka Court, a court composed of ordinary citizens, based directly within communities responding to everyday legal problems. The court consists of a panel of seven elders – all well-respected individuals in the community who receive training in dispute resolution methods and national laws and regulations. Hearings are held in the community – usually in the house of one of the elders and other community members can actively participate.
When they first started, Gard participated in a number of hearings to evaluate if the model was working or not. The most memorable was a 57-year-old woman who had already spent two years going to court over a small piece of land a neighbour had grabbed from her. She had run out of money to go to court and was struggling to bring up her children and grandchildren without the extra land to grow food. A neighbour told her about the Bataka Court and within 24 hours her case was resolved and her land restored.
‘’The woman was so happy,’’ says Gard, ‘’and it was at that moment that I realized that our efforts were working. The land grabbers’ intention had been for the woman to fail knowing she did not have the money to continue going to court. But in the Bataka Court, after hearing her case, 99 per cent of the community supported her and he had no choice but to relent. He had to give her land back as well as a goat and jerry cans of porridge. The community also forgave the land grabber. Peace and tranquillity was quickly restored.’’
Since then the Bataka Court model has continued to grow and has improved the lives of both individuals and communities in the districts of Kakadi and Kyegegwa in Western Uganda.
‘’Bataka Court has reduced domestic violence and land disputes arising from changing demarcations’’ says Bira Vanis of Kyaterekera community.
One of the key success factors of the Bataka Court is that it enjoys legitimacy within the community and the decisions are accepted as binding based on social agreement.
They are also very accessible. The hearings are held in local languages and the processes followed are those that people understand so they do not feel intimidated. But most importantly they are also effective and provide quick resolutions to impactful problems. In the case of a boundary dispute, for example, the elders can visit the site on foot and discuss it directly with neighbours. On average, cases are resolved in under 72 hours.
Yusuf Kisembo who faced a similar conflict to the one mentioned by Gard above was amazed at how quickly and efficiently his case was resolved.
‘’We had a conflict over land with my neighbour – he had encroached on my land and shifted the boundary,’’ he says, ‘’I reported him to the local council court but he refused to go so I decided to try the Bataka Court since it is free. In just one day it was resolved and both of us were content. I am so grateful that the case ended well and in such a short time.’’
Another reason the Bataka Courts are extremely effective is that the final decision, reached by the elders, is based on consensus and aims to deliver the best possible outcomes for both parties. The guilty party may be asked to issue a public apology, do community service or compensate the victim in kind. Social pressure to comply is high. This is reiterated by Peace Tukamuhebwa, a female elder of the Kyaterekera Bataka Court.
‘’Bataka Court is unique because it focuses on promoting reconciliation and unity among people,‘’ she says.
Finally if one of the disputing parties is not happy with the decision, it can be passed on to the formal justice system. One of the key ways the Bataka Courts work well is by how they are linked to the formal justice system as well as the government-led community justice programme Local Council Courts. The two institutions not only support the Bataka Courts but also refer cases to it. This in turn has helped increase its legitimacy amongst the people.
At HiiL, we first supported Bataka Courts in 2019 through our Justice Accelerator programme. Then, in 2021, practitioners working to scale the community justice model joined the Business Resilience Programme – a HiiL initiative that was designed to ameliorate risks to justice startups caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can testify that with support from HiiL we have been able to increase our visibility as well as expand to other areas that we were previously not able to reach,” said Gard. “The support we received was very instrumental in defining our niche, strengths, and solution for improving the model but also enhanced our capacity to shape the model and to improve clarity”.
Today, the Bataka Courts model clearly demonstrates people-centred justice in action. It is affordable, accessible, effective and creates social harmony and reconciliation in communities. As Bataka Courts continue scaling operations across Uganda, the need for a sustainable financial model has become more and more apparent.
“HiiL will remain a significant part of our history for uplifting the Bataka Courts as a community justice service delivery mechanism. Now, we need more Bataka Courts in more communities,’’ said Gard.
Justice systems globally fail to address the needs of women, perpetuating injustice and hindering economic progress and peace. People-centred justice offers a practical approach to closing the justice gap for women. In this article, we will lay out five key elements for a national people-centred justice programme to enhance women’s access to justice.
I. More Justice For Women, Better Economies, Societies
Justice providers cannot bridge national justice gaps without addressing the injustices suffered by virtually half their populations. When women have access to timely, effective, and affordable access to justice, they can manage their destinies, participate in the political, economic, and social life of their communities, live free from violence and discrimination, and, ultimately, contribute to the development of their communities. Global measures, like the Women, Peace and Security Index (WPS), show us that countries with higher scores for women’s justice are simply more peaceful, inclusive, prosperous, and even better prepared to adapt to climate change. There is, therefore, no question that justice for women is not just the right thing to do. It is also the best pathway to better economies, peaceful societies, and inclusive communities.
Around 50% of the world’s population, today, is left without any fair or just resolution for the legal problems they face every day. The burden of this justice gap falls disproportionately on women. Justice services are, simply, not designed to address women’s needs and experiences, nor do they aim to deliver the outcomes that women seek from resolution processes. This means that at each step in their journeys to access justice, women are faced with inequality of outcomes, discrimination and exclusion. For example, women, according to data, often turn to community or traditional justice leaders to resolve their problems. Unfortunately, these leaders frequently favour outcomes upholding marriage relationships or community-welfare over the well-being of women in abusive situations. Women are also more likely to be turned away without any solutions by police or other justice providers when seeking help for justice problems.
It is clear that justice providers need to rethink the way they are currently delivering justice to women. Progress made in advancing women’s education and health shows us, however, that with the right approach transformative progress is possible.
II. A People-Centred Justice Approach for Women’s Justice
People-centred justice (PCJ) is emerging as a new paradigm to help us deal with challenges under SDG 16.3 – equal access to justice for all. PCJ puts people and outcomes they want at the centre of justice systems, rather than institutions. It envisages a well-functioning justice system that delivers fast and effective justice services based on the plurality of needs and experiences of all the people it serves.
By moving the needs and justice journeys of women from the fringes to the centre of the design of justice systems, PCJ offers a practical approach to closing the women’s justice gap. It fosters an equal partnership between justice providers and women seeking justice, ensuring that services are responsive to women’s unique circumstances and consistently deliver the outcomes they want.
However, for PCJ to truly serve as a vehicle for delivering justice for women, there needs to be increased and targeted investment in data on women’s needs and experiences, understanding of what works for justice for women, and an enabling environment for the scaling of justice delivery models responsive to women.
In the following section, we lay out what a PCJ approach to enhance women’s access to justice would look like concretely by describing five key elements that would work together in an integrated manner at the national level. These elements would form the building blocks of a national people-centred justice program that can be implemented by justice providers, policy makers, civil society organisations and others to close the national justice gap for women.
A. Measuring The Justice Gap for Women: Data
Achieving justice for all requires a deep understanding of the most common justice problems that women and girls face, in addition to their experiences as they try to resolve them.Justice Needs and Satisfaction Surveys conducted by HiiL already provide us some key insights.
Our data shows that women face legal problems in roughly the same proportion as men. Usually, that is where the similarities end. In many countries, the types of legal problems women face tend to differ from those of men. For example, in Burkina Faso (2021) and Niger (2023) women are more likely to experience family-related problems, domestic violence and neighbour-related problems. Results from Tunisia (2023) show that women report problems with access to public services more often than men. The majority of these relate to accessing healthcare and education.
The most common consequences of legal problems for both men and women are usually loss of time and money. Women, however, are more likely to report facing violence and damage to family relations (Burkina Faso 2021) as a result of the legal problems. Negative emotions (USA 2020), and stress-related illness (Nigeria 2023) are also heavy consequences that women tend to experience more than men.
To resolve their most serious legal problems, whom do women typically turn to? Country data suggests that women rely more on their inner circle (family members, neighbours) while men tend to engage justice providers such as the police, lawyers, or even courts. Qualitative data from Burkina Faso shows that social norms and perceptions pertaining to women’s role in society serve as barriers to their accessing the formal justice sector. These findings suggest that the outcomes of initiatives focusing on formal justice sectors may not reach women.
Justice providers operate in a social context. For women, this is reflected in experiences of exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination when seeking resolution for everyday problems. Data shows that women are provided substandard services and outcomes in comparison to men. These results become more pronounced when considering the overlapping identities that influence women’s experiences of injustice. HiiL’s latest survey of populations affected by displacement in Iraq shows that when taking action to resolve their most serious legal problem, 26% of the women said the justice provider they chose did not help them (as opposed to 15% of the men).
In contexts of insularity and remoteness, the justice journeys of women suffer. According to the JNS Fiji 2019, 1/3rd of victims of domestic violence do not take any action. Victims, often, remain passive because they lack faith in their abilities to find a fair resolution. Shame, social stigma and the uneasy transition from formal to informal institutions are other barriers. This suggests that the integration between traditional justice systems with the formal justice systems should be a priority. A PCJ approach requires designing interventions that focus on empowering community-level justice services that are more accessible for women.
There is more to know. Data gaps still exist. It is imperative to uncover the reality of the justice journeys of women from the beginning until the end. We have to hear their voices and stories. The best moment to do this was decades ago. The second best moment is now.
B. What works for women: Evidence-based Practice
Knowledge about “what works” is a crucial ingredient for a people-centred justice system which aims to provide access to justice for all. Evidence-based practice has been an important driver of effectiveness in the health sector. By focusing research on women’s bodies and building out this evidence base on women’s health, scientists and doctors have seen improvements in health outcomes and overall quality of life for women, all while also seeing higher returns on investment in funding. Developing evidence-based treatments to deliver the outcomes desired by women seeking to resolve their justice problems can lead to bigger gains in bridging the justice gap for all. This can be illustrated by looking at the problem of Domestic Violence.
Domestic Violence legislation, particularly when narrowly focused on punishment, has had limited success in delivering what survivors define as justice. HiiL’s research in the Netherlands, Uganda and Nigeria shows that survivors of Intimate-partner Violence consistently prioritise holistic outcomes such as economic independence and improved physical and mental health. However, most justice providers (such as lawyers) are only equipped to provide support in applying for protection orders or filing for divorce or separation.
A survivor-centred approach to addressing Domestic Violence requires, firstly, defining and standardising outcomes to be measured and monitored based on the experiences of domestic violence survivors. Once outcomes have been defined, knowledge can be translated into guidelines for responding to domestic violence in a way that is agreed (or accepted) between the justice providers and those they are seeking to help. Recommendations on ‘what works’ in which situation can subsequently be applied by the many front-line providers who help people in the same situation.
This approach empowers survivors by making their voices heard throughout the resolution process. It is, thus, in sharp contrast to their reported experiences of secondary victimisation, disempowerment and demoralisation when seeking justice through adverserial justice system.
C. Game-changing Services that deliver for women
People-centred justice requires the delivery of innovative justice solutions that are effective, affordable, and sustainable. These innovative justice services help to bridge the access to justice gap by helping people easily and effectively navigate their justice journeys and find justice outcomes that they deserve. These solutions need to be supported by sustainable financial models and organisational structures to deliver impact.
Justice innovations such as the One-stop shop models create a safe and supportive environment for women and girls to seek immediate protection, medical treatment and legal assistance. In Ogun State (Nigeria), HiiL convened a Justice Innovation Lab to address domestic violence problems. The Lab led to the development of Ibi-Isadi (or a place of refuge) – a one-stop model that empowers communities in Ogun State through increased access to tailored legal information and advice, facilitating better referrals between survivors and providers (both formal and informal), and enhancing the capabilities of justice providers in preventing and resolving domestic violence problems in an evidence-based manner. Community Justice models are accessible, legitimate and provide fast and affordable solutions.
Data shows that women prefer turning to their immediate social environments when seeking actions, but fail to access information that is credible and tailored to their situation. Community justice services, under the right circumstances, can fill this gap. Like all delivery models, community justice services need to be supported with sustainable and innovative delivery models to make an impact.
Women-led startups and entrepreneurs have been at the forefront of providing services addressing women’s justice needs. Through the Justice Accelerator Program, HiiL has supported startups to develop Prevention Services like THR media and Stand to End Rape, that support survivors of gender-based violence to have access to legal information and support.
D. Enabling Environment
Deploying a people-centred justice approach that works for women requires an enabling environment. Currently, regulations in the justice sector act as gatekeepers, keeping people-centred justice service innovations from entering. People are forced to turn to adversarial dispute resolutions that consistently deliver unequal outcomes for women. To enable new, better models for delivering justice services, especially those that have proven to work for women, justice leaders must create an enabling regulatory and legal framework where innovation can thrive. Budgets for Ministries of Justice and Judiciaries need to be made more outcomes-focused based on women’s needs. New financing tools need to be implemented to support R&D and the scaling of the best resolution mechanisms. Allowing national investment and cooperation funding to leverage on each other. And, finally, setting up mechanisms that support cross-sectoral collaboration and shared goal setting.
E. Movement
Bridging the women’s justice gap is an uphill task that cannot be tackled by one ministry, court, or organisation on its own. It must be supported by a cohort of do-ers. The good-news is that a movement is growing. Women’s rights organisations have for a long time raised the alarm on the failure of the justice system to address women’s concerns and needs and have taken steps to bridge the justice gaps, for example, the Federation of Women Lawyers across the world. Over the years, several actors have joined the movement and taken up the call for better access to justice for women. International coalitions such as the Justice Action Coalition (JAC) are advocating for countries to adopt people-centred justice approaches. Multilateral organisations such as UN Women, UNDP, the World Bank and the International Development Law Organisation (IDLO) through their Justice for Women report are building knowledge. What we need is investment in people-centred justice approaches to advance women’s access to justice globally.
III. Investing in PCJ for women
There is currently an annual funding gap of USD 360 Billion for achieving gender equality across SDGs. Strengthening the rule of law has been a major priority for governments for several decades, but only a fraction of funding is being spent on justice for women. Deploying people-centred justice programmes to bridge the justice gap for women does not necessarily require spending more money, it only asks that current funding is used in a smarter way. Governments, in partnership with the private sector and philanthropy, can measure their return on investment in people-centred justice approaches for women as a measurement of positive outcomes for individuals, families, communities, businesses and society as a whole. We already know that gender parity in the workforce could inject an estimated US$12 trillion into the global GDP by 2025. Women’s access to land is also associated with better outcomes on multiple economic and development fronts.
Innovative financing initiatives are one way in which the funding gap for justice for women can be filled. Through mechanisms such as social impact bonds, gender lens investing, and other alternative financing solutions, there is an opportunity to mobilise private capital specifically towards addressing the multifaceted inequalities that hinder women’s access to justice and economic rights. The shift towards innovative financing signifies a departure from traditional financial frameworks that focus on completion of activities towards leveraging the achievement of outcomes furthering women’s access to justice.
The Orange Movement (named for the colour hue of SDG5 – Gender Equality) catalyses innovative financial models to help close the critical funding gap in women’s empowerment for micro, small and medium enterprises that deliver products and services for enhanced Justice endeavours. It aims to mobilise $10 billion by 2030 toward catalysing the empowerment of 100 million women, girls, and gender minorities, thereby taking us nearly halfway toward fast-tracking global gender equality and empowerment. To guide its efforts the movement published The Orange Bond Principles (OBPs) as part of its Orange Bond Initiative with a multi-stakeholder collaboration with input from over 100 ecosystem actors and designed to fit ICMA’s sustainable bond guidelines. The Women’s Livelihood Bond series (WLBs) is a pioneering financial instrument, first in the growing Orange asset class, issued by Impact Investment Exchange, that has mobilised a total of US$228 million, impacting 2.6 million women and girls. Another example is Orange Loan Facilities offering tailored lending products to support enterprises that empower women by providing flexible lending products at rates that adjust based on the borrower’s impact performance, like the example of gender empowerment. With the assistance of an Orange Loan, Champei – a small-hold farmer – was able to access climate-resilient agricultural training and resources, increasing her yield by 60% and her income by 50%.
The momentum towards gender lens investing is expanding, incorporating innovative methods like impact bonds. This global shift is evidenced by diverse initiatives: social impact bonds in sub-Saharan Africa, investment funds in Asia, microfinance in Latin America, and equality bonds in Europe and North America.
IV. Looking ahead
Women’s access to justice is a key enabler for better economies, peaceful societies, and inclusivity. It is no secret that women, especially those from vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, have been left behind in experiencing the benefits of existing justice programs. Too much focus on institutions, has meant the women’s needs and experiences have not found their way into the design of justice services. A new approach – people-centred justice- offers a pathway for redesigning justice systems to deliver just and fair outcomes for women, whilst providing them a voice in prevention and resolution processes.
A growing movement of do’ers are taking action with the new approach. They urgently need the support from knowledge and implementation partners and from funders and they need support to gradually realign systems and incentives, including financial incentives, to ensure that people-centred justice outcomes take centre stage. The time to invest in people-centred justice for women is now.
We would like to extend special thanks to the Orange Movement for their valuable insights and contributions to this article.
The authors are Senior Justice Sector Advisors at The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) ↩︎
Being ambitious about people-centred justice and closing the justice gap is not easy. I would like to share some reflections based on HiiL’s participation in the process of drafting the Social Transformation through Access to Justice (STAJ) Blueprint in Kenya, launched on 24 November 2023. They may be useful for others working on the same goal. Don’t take them as the Tablets of Moses; they may not apply to what is being done in other countries. But they may help us learn.
About STAJ
First, let me briefly set out what STAJ is. I think it is one of the most explicitly people-centred justice strategies I have seen of any Judiciary in the world today.
In September 2021, four months after she was appointed the third chief justice of Kenya under the progressive 2010 Constitution, Chief Justice Hon. Lady Justice Martha Koome shared her Social Transformation through Access to Justice Vision with the people of Kenya. At the launch, she let it be known that she would be developing the Vision into a 10-year strategy document.
At its core, the Blueprint is about utu-centred justice. In Swahili and Kenyan culture, this concept refers to humanity, kindness, and interconnectedness. It emphasises the importance of treating others with respect and compassion, promoting communal harmony and social well-being. What comes closest from Western culture is probably the notion of human dignity. The concept of utu demands that justice resolution and prevention are available for all Kenyans.
Based on that, the Blueprint seeks to open and widen doors of justice for everyone, with explicit reference to a promise made in the Kenyan Constitution. Based on the Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS) HiiL helped conduct in 2017, we know that annually around 7 million Kenyans have a justice problem. Land disputes, family matters, debt issues, crimes, employment disputes, and more all affect livelihoods every day. As in most countries, less than half find a fair resolution. The Blueprint takes ownership of the full 7 million and not, as experienced in other judiciary strategies, only the cases that come to the courts.
A multi-door approach
To achieve this ownership, the Blueprint champions what is called a multi-door approach in which state and non-state justice providers are required to work together to deliver the justice outcomes needed. As the Blueprint beautifully words it:
“Justice, like water, needs to flow freely and uninhibited, permeating the cracks and crevices of societies and touching every life it encounters.”
The Blueprint provides foundations for a constantly learning justice sector that can adapt to change and challenges when needed. It does so in several ways including by further developing the already impressive data capacity of the Kenyan Judiciary; anchoring evidence-based working and the capacity for innovation throughout the process; setting clear parameters for collaboration across institutions in the realisation of the agreed outcomes; and recognizing that the work of measuring, learning and improving, will never be finished.
The Blueprint also indicates it will need Research and Development, innovation and anchoring people-centred justice capacities, like data collection, evidence-based working, innovating, and coordinating across agencies – both formal and informal.
To ensure that the design of the interventions and activities of the strategy are people-centred and to assess their impact and achievement, the Blueprint defines six ‘derivatives’:
Agency and justice capabilities
Human dignity (Utu)
Generating reliable data
Evidence-informed practices
Curating innovative justice approaches
Emboldened justice champions.
The Blueprint very explicitly reorients the role of the Judiciary “to that of a justice enabler, promoter, connector and provider. Activities and interventions must focus on building justice capabilities not just within the Judiciary, but across the spectrum of institutional and noninstitutional justice actors and within and outside the formal justice system, thus ensuring that all become champions for justice.”
This is quite a radical thing to put on paper: the Judiciary is not just a decision machine, but a “justice enabler, promoter, connector and provider”, across institutions and also outside the formal justice sector.
Focusing on outcomes
The Blueprint is focused on five outcomes that are, at first sight, more traditional and institution-focused. As the drafting process unfolded, we came to understand a little better why that is: to be ambitious in people-centred programming, justice leaders also need to be kind to the institution they belong to. For buy-in, you sometimes need to move ‘pole-pole’, as they say in Swahili. ‘Slowly-slowly.‘
Three of the five outcomes in particular stand out:
Outcome 1: “A Strong Institution that is Independent, Accessible, Efficient and Protects the Rights of All, Especially the Vulnerable.” It includes strategic objectives to “Expand the doors of justice”, to “Champion criminal, civil, and commercial justice reforms”, and to “Entrench people-centred justice data and evidence-informed justice services”.
Outcome 2: “An Inspired Team of Judges, Judicial Officers, and Judiciary Staff Committed to Excellence in the Delivery of Justice.” Two Strategic objectives under this outcome support people-centred justice programming: strengthening results-based management and fostering a culture of shared leadership.
Outcome 4: “Deepened Partnerships that Enhance Coordination in the Administration of Justice”, includes a Strategic Objective to strengthen people-centred justice partnerships. Under this heading, the plan sets a goal to “encourage collaboration in data collection and sharing by involving other justice stakeholders in standardising the collection, analysis, and storage of justice data; developing a statistical reference guide for the justice sector; identifying standard indicators for measuring justice outputs, outcomes, and impacts; and establishing a robust monitoring and evaluation framework for the justice sector to track.”
Now, let’s look at the learnings.
1. Take the long view
The STAJ Blueprint explicitly builds on the work of two predecessors, Hon. Chief Justice Willy Mutunga (2011-2016) and Hon. Chief Justice David Maraga (2016-2021). The first launched the Judiciary Transformation Framework (2012-2016), focusing on basic infrastructure. Hon. Chief Justice Maraga furthered that by developing the foundations of the Sustaining Judiciary Transformation Framework (2017-2021). With this foundation, the idea of serving 7 million Kenyans a year can be envisaged with some realism.
So, a lesson may be: ministries of justice and Judiciaries of the world, take the long view, building on each other’s work.
2. Legal documents matter
It helps a lot that Kenya’s Constitution provides solid foundations for the Blueprint. Article 48 states that every person has the right to have any dispute resolved by a court or, if appropriate, an alternative dispute resolution mechanism. The Constitution emphasises the importance of justice being administered promptly and without undue delays. Additionally, Article 159 emphasises principles of justice, including alternative forms of dispute resolution, to enhance access to justice for all Kenyan citizens. These articles are explicitly invoked in the Blueprints of Kenya. That carries a lot of weight.
So, a lesson may be: look for solid (national) legal foundations to invoke as part of the process of building momentum and support for a people-centred strategy: the Constitution, international treaties that have been enacted into law, case law, or whatever.
3. Start at home
As mentioned earlier, the Blueprint is founded on the concept of Utu. The justification for the strategy is not something required by SDG16, some international convention or declaration, or a report from an international Task Force on Justice. Utu is Kenyan. It resonates. It gives pride. It connects.
So, a lesson may be: national cultural concepts are of great value as part of the process of building momentum, support and understanding for a people-centred justice strategy.
4. Political risk strategies
When the Supreme Court of Kenya ruled that the 2017 elections had to be redone, Hon. Chief Justice David Maraga faced years of opposition from the ruling party. Between the Executive and Parliament, the Judiciary was starved of budgets. Confirmation of judicial appointments was delayed. Judgements were not enforced. This is a reality in many countries if a Judiciary exercises the functions entrusted to it by the Constitution.
From the day she was appointed (and with luck that a new President had been elected), Chief Justice Hon. Lady Justice Koome worked hard to repair the relationship with the Executive and with Parliament. She invited key representatives from both to the launch of the STAJ Blueprint, prioritising space for them to contribute including the Governor of Nairobi. At one moment, while introducing the Blueprint, the Chief Justice asked Hon. Chief Justices (retired) Willy Mutunga and David Maraga to the stage, unannounced, and gave each a brief moment to address the invitees. With this, she signalled to the nation: we, the Judiciary, are not alone. I, the current Chief Justice, am not alone.
So, a lesson may be: Have your political risk strategies in order. Involve potential opposition and bring both friends and frenemies to the stage, in plain sight for all to see.
5. Institutional buy-in is key
The Blueprint’s five outcomes set out a clear, institutional framing. Some may disappoint ardent people-centred justice champions who hope to see all Judiciaries in the world adopt outcomes that are entirely people-centred. However, institutions are important and need strengthening too. Judiciaries and ministries of justice in most countries in the world are overburdened and underfunded (see also the next lesson).
Therefore, a chief justice or minister of justice must consider their own colleagues, securing buy-in to help establish a position to move forward.
So, the lesson: be smart in the formulation of strategic goals. If, in Kenya, the Outcomes had been too ‘people heavy’, the people-centred justice baby would have been washed away with the bath water.
6. No money, no motor
The most critical enabler for the implementation of the STAJ Blueprint is money. The Kenyan Judiciary elaborately accounts annually for its performance in the State of the Judiciary Report (SOJAR). The 2022-2023 edition shows that over the past 3 years, the funding gap (requirements versus allocations) has been more or less a constant 50%. The same report sets out that the Judiciary had 10,325 approved positions of which only 6,643 were filled as of 30 June 2023, which means a 36% under-establishment. A deeper look shows that much of that concerns key positions for access to justice (e.g. magistrates). Overall, the budget for the Judiciary is stuck at around 1% of the national budget. The 2010 Kenyan Constitution set up a Judiciary Fund to give the Judiciary more budgetary freedom to allocate funding, but that Fund only became operational in 2022 and is still not operating optimally.
Chapter 6 of the SOJAR Report is essential reading for those wishing the STAJ Blueprint to work; I only highlighted a few core elements here. As part of our advisory work, the HiiL team researched existing or past reform plans within the ecosystem of the Judiciary and found that many initiatives have in the past petered out due to lack of funding. The plans were great but there were no explicit funding allocations, so these had to be fought for afterwards.
We also learned that, when it comes to donor money, Kenya has the challenge that it is seen by many as not being ‘low income’ enough to warrant support for the rule of law and justice. We are openly discussing these challenges with donors, helping make the case to support the STAJ Blueprint.
« I now see that people-centred justice incentives are radically different. Incentives to get the organisation and its people to focus on outcomes are radically different. That is a huge change we need to make. Like rewriting DNA. I had no idea it was that big!”
In my remarks at the Blueprint launch, I called on all funders—the Government of Kenya, development banks, donors, philanthropic organisations, and even private businesses—to embrace the plan, not only for what it seeks to achieve for Kenyan society but because it is the better investment.
The Blueprint details clearly how the funding will be used and the data-driven approach it takes makes investing and managing funds more effective if compared to ‘business as usual’ now. Data will show over time whether particular interventions are working. If not, immediate decisions to adapt or stop can be taken based on learnings that are grounded in data, not on hunches and abstract concepts. The approach also provides a foundation to develop sustainable funding models for justice delivery. All this should give the government and other funders more confidence to invest.
HiiL has also consistently been clear to the Blueprint Team: you must organise sufficient national funding from Kenya itself. A core reality is that funding is essential—focusing on people-centred justice interventions as such is not enough.
So, the lesson is you need to understand the national budget, the Judiciary budget, and the dynamics around them. You also need to understand donors and other funders and to work hard on making good arguments for the funding that is needed. You need to be on this, constantly. No money, no motor.
7. Align your incentives
One moment particularly stood out for me during the drafting process. It illustrated the importance of understanding incentives. While reviewing the draft, we were struggling to get the STAJ team to understand the depth of the people-centred justice programming way of working. We talked about putting outcomes at the centre, focusing on data, evidence-based working, innovation, and creating a real culture change.
I was unsure if our messages were resonating. Then during a break, a member of the Kenya team came to me and asked me again about the depth of the change needed. I tried again and in a lightning moment, he interrupted me and said he felt it.
“For the past 10 years”, he said, “all the incentives we have put on the system were about caseload. Doing more cases. Making that process as efficient as possible. The organisational incentives are about that and the personal incentives of all judicial officers focus on that. I now see that people-centred justice incentives are radically different. Incentives to get the organisation and its people to focus on outcomes are radically different. That is a huge change we need to make. Like rewriting DNA. I had no idea it was that big!”
When the break was over, and based on an intervention by this team member, the table of contents and the core outline of the Blueprint improved.
The lesson for me: be aware of the incentives and the DNA of the organisation and people you are working with. Connect deeply to that. It is only from there that you can become aware of the depth of the change that the people-centred justice approach requires organisations and people to make. This awareness helps you stay realistic, thoughtful, and targeted about the interventions you propose.
8. Talk to the nation
The launch of the Blueprint was accompanied by the presentation of the SOJAR report 2022-2023. In this way, the Judiciary meticulously accounted for its work over the past year and presented an ambitious 10-year plan. Smart move. And equally important, it was presented in full force on stage, on TV, online, and broadcast on the radio for the whole nation to absorb.
So, the lesson is that communication and advocacy are critical: Consulting broadly, messaging widely, marking the moment, and giving the strategy a real public push.
Take it in steps
The implementation of the 10-year STAJ Blueprint has been chopped into 3×3 periods. That is deliberate. The team did not put all its ambitions fully on the table. It went as far as it felt it could push the envelope now, and given the political environment (both within the Judiciary and outside, with actors like the Law Society of Kenya, the Bar Association, Parliament, etc).
The 3×3 year planning cycles will allow the Judiciary to constantly build, improve, and push further—all in line with the political economy that is gradually being developed. An example: the STAJ team knows that the regulatory environment for the legal services sector needs to change to achieve the goal of 7 million. I mentioned that, quite explicitly in my speech. We agreed that they could publicly disagree with me if needed. But it does not get a very explicit place in the Blueprint yet. It is the intention that it will, in the 3 x 3 planning cycle.
So, the lesson may be: know the opposition, gradually overcome that opposition and don’t move too fast too quickly. Pole-pole.
The blueprint of a Blueprint
Kenya is leading. But so are others. I was recently in Nigeria where three states have started implementing people-centred justice responses. And in Ethiopia, a national plan focusing on community justice is being rolled out using the same approach. The Kenya STAJ Blueprint is also a blueprint for others. Let us double down on this learning so justice providers in more countries get better at developing and implementing people-centred justice strategies.
Our CEO Sam Muller reflects on the past year of people-centred justice and the course set for the year ahead.
I took off on a true justice journey in the last weeks of this year. Abuja, Nairobi, and Tunis in three weeks. Engaging with the key stakeholders of our programmes. Hearing them use words like people-centred, justice needs data, outcomes at the centre, community justice services, and sustainable funding models. Having the conversations about overload, pressure, lack of funding and the burden of the huge expectations people have from justice systems. Journalists asking why justice is not working, what is being done about it and having something of an answer. Working with the HiiLers who are facilitating innovation labs, organising national surveys, and engaging with the justice practitioners. As I landed in Schiphol I could think of only one thing: people-centred justice programming is taking off.
The year 2023 saw HiiL focus on working with justice institutions and innovators in Tunisia, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Iraq and Niger. Impressive steps were taken. The governments in three Nigerian States – Ogun, Kaduna, and Imo – alongside the judiciary and a diverse group of stakeholders, developed strategies to actualise innovative, affordable, and responsive justice delivery informed by data about the needs and experiences of people. Implementation of strategies has so far included priorities taken forward by governments with their own resources, and activities taken forward together with HiiL, on evidence-based practice, and Justice Innovation Labs.
Today, we believe that Nigeria has reached a pivotal moment for people-centred justice. Ethiopia is anchoring a conducive environment for innovative ‘game-changing’ solutions to increase resolution rates with a national model law in support of community justice delivery, which will be accompanied by the setting of minimum standards to guide implementation. The national budget has been allocated for three years in support of people-centred justice programming. The Kenyan judiciary launched an ambitious 10-year Social Transformation for Access to Justice Blueprint. In the Netherlands, a system of outcome-based monitoring for the criminal justice chain is being developed. These are systemic and practical steps forward in closing the justice gap. Taking off.
‘Taking off’ means that HiiL will continue to support increasing the prevention and resolution of the most frequently occurring justice problems in Ethiopia, Kenya, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Uganda.
Scaling new initiatives remains challenging, whether they are pilots that involve formal justice institutions or innovations started by social entrepreneurs. One of their challenges includes the budgets of ministries of justice and judiciaries, which leave little or no room to free up funding for constantly working on improvements. A regulatory environment that severely restricts the kinds of legal services that can be offered also remains an impediment. We have only partially been able to come up with effective responses to these challenges and they will continue to have our focus on 2024.
‘Taking off’ means that HiiL will continue to support increasing the prevention and resolution of the most frequently occurring justice problems in Ethiopia, Kenya, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Uganda. It means collecting and publishing more data about the justice needs and experiences of people in Nigeria, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Colombia, Honduras and Niger. It means adapting to fragile environments as we restart operations in Burkina Faso, with a new focus on working with CSOs. A new phase of our EU-funded Syria programme will start, as well as a new innovation project in Iraq.
Across all our programmes we will work more with justice sector institutions, in particular ministries and judiciaries. Community justice services have a lot of traction, and we will work with those ministries and judiciaries to scale them countrywide, focusing on the most frequently occurring justice problems that emerge from our surveys, like family-, employment-, and land problems, and some categories of crime problems.
We also see more commitment from ministries and judiciaries to allocate national budgets to such efforts, which we will continue to develop. The expertise we bring to that includes helping to collect and share evidence-based practices about what it takes to resolve these problems and the advice and expertise we bring on effective outcome monitoring, sustainable financing, a conducive regulatory framework, and effective organisational models. Our talented team, the data collection and research, our communication and advocacy, and our operational support are all geared towards making this happen.
On behalf of all HiiLers, I want to thank all those amazing people who have worked with us in 2023. We are humbled and feel proud that we can work with you. Many thanks as well to our funders in 2023: the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassies of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Niger and Kenya, UNHCR, UNODC, the European Union, Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, the Municipality of the City of the Hague, Open Society Foundations, the Mott Foundation, Fonds Slachtofferhulp, the Center for International Cooperation of New York University, and those funders that wish to remain anonymous. Lastly, I want to thank the amazing HiiL team of friendly rebels, with their unlimited commitment and drive, who are the motor of what we do.
On 29 November, HiiL hosted « Tech the Justice Gap », an event exploring the transformative potential of technology in reshaping the landscape of justice to relieve the burden on justice systems and increase the capacity to resolve people’s everyday justice needs.
Held under the esteemed patronage of the Presidency of the Tunisian Government, the event showcased the startups that concluded our latest Justice Accelerator programme and invited diverse stakeholders to explore how technology could make justice more accessible, affordable, and easy-to understand for all. After panel discussions and startups pitches, the event culminated in the Innovating Justice Award ceremony where the top three startups were announced.
‘Tech the Justice Gap’, held in Tunis and livestreamed, saw a convergence of representatives of government, the private sector, and investors, all united with a shared commitment to resolving citizens justice needs more effectively.
Opening remarks were made by Slim Ben Jrad, Director General of Governance and Corruption Prevention of the Government of Tunisia, Elias Milad, representative of the Tunisian Ministry of Justice, Najla Triki representing the dean of the Bar Association and Erik Petersen, Deputy Ambassador, HiiL’s Ronald Lenz, and CEO Sam Muller who both emphasized the importance of addressing access to justice and advancing people-centered justice for better justice delivery globally.
“This event is about closing the justice gap with the power of difference. Bringing together the government, the private sector, civil society organizations, research organisations, innovators and investors. They are all needed to help resolve the 4,4 million justice problems a year that are now not being resolved fairly and expeditiously in Tunisia.”
How emerging technology can improve access to justice
The first panel discussion on ‘How emerging technology can improve access to justice’ commenced with a video fully scripted and animated by AI setting the stage for discussions on generative AI’s role in legal practice and the potential of mobile technologies to advance SDG16.
"Why is generative AI important for us, lawyers? […] Those codes are large language models. They are important because our weapon, as lawyers, is language, are words." – @DrAbirHaddad, during #TechTheJusticeGap's Panel Discussion on 'How emerging technology can improve #A2J?' pic.twitter.com/MIHMMvejsA
Public Sector, startups & investors together for people-centred justice. From how and when to let’s do it
The second panel discussion: « Public Sector, startups & investors together for people-centred justice. From how and when to let’s do it”, explored the mission-driven approach to product development and navigated potential challenges, including protective regulations, emphasising the positive use of technology for societal good. The discussions at the event have a clear goal: to deliver justice to all levels of society, ensuring customer satisfaction and measuring happiness through invaluable feedback. The overarching message resonates: technology is not the answer to everything but a powerful means to an end, driving the development of solutions that put people in the centre of the design.
Speakers concluded that to truly achieve our big goal, providing access to justice for all, we need to collaborate and work together. From the public sector’s commitment to innovation, startups’ disruptive solutions, to investors’ impact-driven support, the forces are diverse and can come together to bridge the gap of investment, collaboration and regulatory framework.
"Trust is the foundation of meaningful dialogue between startups and public institutions. Witnessing this collaboration at @LexyomLaw is a testament to the power of trust in innovation where diverse stakeholders worked towards a common goal." – Nadine Imad at #TechTheJusticeGappic.twitter.com/wN9ZUf6n60
Highlighting the role of innovation in addressing justice gaps, the event celebrated 17 startups from Nigeria, Kenya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine. These startups, accelerated by HiiL, presented their innovative solutions which were designed in response to the most pressing justice problems in their country. In Nigeria, Tunisia and Kenya these problems were identified through Justice Needs and Satisfaction surveys (JNS) carried out by HiiL which identified some of the most pressing justice challenges including money issues, employment, social welfare, crime, housing, and mSME. The selection of startups showcased the diversity of approaches to creating a positive impact on access to justice.
The jury committee, comprising distinguished judges including Olivia Gao, Senior Investment Associate at Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, Hope Wandera, Investment Analyst at Mercy Corps Venture, and Ghazi Saddem, Organisational Management and Digital Transformation Consultant, evaluated the startups based on impact, sustainability, and the feasibility of their business models.
The event concluded with the announcement of the winners of the Innovating Justice Award. Oqoodi , who joined us via videoconference from Gaza, secured the first-place position and a cash prize of €20,000.
Awabah, claimed the second spot, receiving €10,000. The third place went to NaTakallam, with a cash prize of €5,000.The audience, both in-person and online, actively participated in selecting the People’s Choice Award winner: ToNote
Oqoodi
People in war zones and vulnerable communities face many justice problems including, but not limited to losing access to decent working conditions. Oqoodi addressed this challenge out of Gaza by empowering Arab freelancers document their contracts, manage their projects from the moment of agreement until project completion, including handling financial and accounting complexities.
NaTakallam
NaTakallam is based in Lebanon and offers refugees digital jobs, where they teach their mother tongue to people seeking to learn a new language.
Awabah
Awabah is based in Nigeria and helps gig workers – many of whom have not been able to obain IDs thus making it difficult to access public services. Awabah helps them specifically with to access pension schemes and health insurance.
Social welfare/public benefits-related problems are more common among those who cannot cover their basic needs. HiiL Justice Accelerator programme thus seeks startups that focus on access to health care, education, water, electricity, internet, and infrastructure. Public services such as services provided by the municipality and basic services like obtaining IDs can be very bureaucratic and hard to navigate as was illustrated by Tarek Cheleifa during the first panel disucssion. Obtaining IDs is the bare minimum for an individual to access public services from education to employment to health care, a bank account or even accomodation. Gig workers usually lack access to many benefits such as insurance and pension.
« Tech the Justice Gap » showed the transformative power of technology in reshaping the justice landscape. With a shared commitment from diverse stakeholders, including the public sector, private sector, and investors, the event emphasized the importance of people-centred justice. From insightful panel discussions to innovative startup pitches, the overarching theme resonated: technology serves as a potent means to bridge the justice gap, making legal services more accessible, affordable, and comprehensible for all.
The recognition of startups such as Oqoodi, Awabah, and NaTakallam underscored the impact of innovation in addressing specific justice challenges, placing people and people-centred justice at the forefront of legal solutions.
Rose Wachuka Macharia, Chief of Staff, Office of the Hon. Chief Justice of Kenya Martin Gramatikov, HiiL Program Director
On 24 November, a cutting-edge and visionary plan for people-centred justice was launched in Kenya. Its goal is to widen the doors of justice to all Kenyans. It is ambitious, rigorous, and, as far as we can assess, makes the Kenyan Judiciary one of the first in the world to develop a strategic national document that is people-centred and focused on broader social transformation through access to justice.
Every year in Kenya, over 7 million people encounter legal problems ranging from land disputes and family matters to debt, crime, employment disputes, and administrative grievances. These are not trivial issues. A legal issue has the potential to impact entire families and communities profoundly. Unfortunately, less than half of these 7 million legal problems find a fair resolution, often making it difficult for the affected individuals to move forward with their lives.
Under the leadership of Hon. Chief Justice Martha Koome, the Kenyan Judiciary is determined to turn the tables. Its Blueprint for Social Transformation through Access to Justice vision (STAJ) explicitly states the roadmap to deliver to the Kenyan people an accessible, efficient, expeditious and cost-effective justice system. Among the strategies for achieving this overarching goal is an enhanced focus on people-centred service delivery.
“The Judiciary, once viewed as a sole forum for access to justice, now champions the understanding that justice should not be contained within the rigid perimeters of courtrooms.” STAJ Blueprint
With this, the Blueprint embodies system change. It defines a new scope for justice institutions with new roles that go beyond decisions in courtrooms.
And most importantly, it embodies ‘’Utu’’. A term in Swahili, ‘’Utu’’ symbolises the values of respect, solidarity, self-reliance, communal responsibility and inclusiveness. These values tie together family, community, and nature. Utu is at the heart of Hon. Chief Justice Martha Koome’s vision for people-centred justice in Kenya.
But what does people-centred justice mean in the context of the STAJ Blueprint?
The short and practical answer is that people-centred justice is justice that works for the people. Justice is people-centred when the formal and informal justice journeys are accessible and transform people’s problems into solutions and positive outcomes. The people of Kenya – particularly Wanjiku, the everyday Kenyan village woman – are central. Institutions, professionals, management systems and guild interests are not key in this model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first strategic national document that shifts the priority from the justice institutions to the justice users.
People-centred justice is also envisioned in the Blueprint as a comprehensive long-term programme for transformation. The delivery of people-centred justice in Kenya will take place through programming based on robust data, evidence, innovative delivery models and nurturing an enabling regulatory environment. People-centred justice programming focuses on justice impact and outcomes instead of merely addressing inputs or processes. The Blueprint affirms that justice must achieve well-being benefits for individuals and businesses through resolving legal problems. It recognises that justice in Kenya is more than just processing cases or reducing court backlogs. It is about turning legal problems into fair solutions, leading to better and more fulfilled lives, economic growth and prosperity.
The Blueprint elaborates on numerous facets of people-centred justice, offering detailed explanations.
Over the next few months, we will share a series of blog posts on the rollout of the STAJ Blueprint examining in particular its focus on moving to a data-driven and outcome-focused justice system, making it evidence-based and opening up to innovation and tech as well as ways of working collaboratively across sectors and institutions.
HiiL is honoured to have played an advisory role to the Kenyan Judiciary on drafting the STAJ Blueprint and looks forward to continued collaboration as this transformative vision comes to life.The launch of the STAJ Blueprint is also part of a wider and rapidly growing global movement of governments and international agencies who are adopting the people-centred justice approach.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is hosting the justice-tech forum, « Tech the Justice Gap » in Tunisia on 29 November 2023, at Palais des Congrès in Tunis under the esteemed patronage of the Presidency of the Government.
People urgently need governments to deliver justice more effectively. Each year, 1 billion people have a new justice problem. Shockingly, over 70% of those people do not find a satisfactory resolution. 30% of those don’t even feel empowered enough to take action. This has a high impact on their lives and society: from violence to seriously damaged relationships and business conflicts
Established in 2005, HiiL is an organisation focused on people-centred justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and effective. HiiL works in partnership with governments, entrepreneurs, and investors to realise people-centred justice. It helps justice practitioners to build solutions that allow people to resolve or prevent their justice problems. This means more people can get on with their lives faster, enhancing their well-being and economies.
An integral part of HiiL is the Justice Accelerator, a support program for startups offering innovative solutions to everyday justice problems. With hubs in Tunis, Lagos, and Nairobi, the programme provides seed funding and training to an annual cohort.
Themed « Tech the Justice Gap, » the justice-tech forum underscores the transformative potential of technology in reshaping how individuals access and experience justice. The event will discuss the role played by social entrepreneurs and startups in building justice services that complement the formal justice system that can help make justice fairer, more accessible, and affordable for all.
The event is not just a celebration but a call to action, urging government representatives, investors, startups, thought leaders, and justice stakeholders to unite, learn, collaborate, and create justice systems centred around people.
Ronald Lenz, Director of MENA at HiiL, says, « It’s wonderful to witness the emerging collaboration between the justice sector and justice-tech startups as they join forces to enhance and expand access to improved justice services »
A significant highlight of the forum is the Demo Day featuring pitches from 17 startups representing Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Nigeria, and Kenya. These startups, having completed the 2023 Justice Accelerator programme, are now part of a community of 170+ justice startups supported by HiiL. An esteemed jury from the MENA region, West Africa, and East Africa will select three startups as winners of the Innovating Justice Award, with prizes of €20,000, €15,000, and €5,000 respectively.
With over 200 attendees expected at Palais des Congrès in Tunis, the event will also be live-streamed worldwide, providing a global platform to showcase the transformative impact of justice-tech innovation.
Resolving people’s justice problems is a cornerstone of a peaceful and prosperous society. Yet, organising universal access to justice remains a challenge. The first step requires gathering the right data on people’s ‘justice journeys’ but what comes after?
With a spotlight on Nigeria’s justice sector, our recent policy brief examines the challenges and opportunities for creating the conditions that spur justice innovation. Drawing on experiences from entrepreneurs, public officials, and local decision-makers, the policy brief highlights seven innovators and recommends ways to support creating an ‘enabling environment’ – the conditions that strengthen people-centred justice programming.
In this Q&A, we sat down with Armi Korhonen, Justice Sector Advisor, to discuss the policy brief and its recommendations for justice innovation. What is required to make it possible? Who can (and should) be involved? And how will identifying people’s needs and prioritising ways to help them realise justice for all and lead to greater security and economic prosperity?
You recently published the policy brief, From challenges to successes: Four levers to enhance the enabling environment for people-centred justice innovation in Nigeria. Why is this brief so important at this juncture?
In 2023, HiiL conducted a Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) study that surveyed people’s justice experiences. We can see from the data that 81% of respondents have faced at least one justice problem in the past year. And while many take action to resolve their problems, the data still shows a massive burden. This justice gap is a call to do something different.
The integrated approach of people-centred justice offers a path forward. It starts with data of course, but from there, it suggests justice sector actors 1) support innovation, and 2) create the environment that enables – and strengthens – the greatest impact, based on people’s needs.
In short, we’re looking to complement the justice sector through innovative service delivery models that have the potential to bridge the justice gap. We’re seeing progress in Nigeria – especially in Imo, Ogun, and Kaduna states where we have been glad to facilitate HiiL projects for innovation. Also, our Justice Accelerator in West Africa, based in Lagos, is supporting Nigerian innovators, helping them sustain and scale their people-centred solutions.
This policy brief examined the journey of seven innovative service delivery models that work on delivering people-centred justice solutions to Nigerians. From these seven stories, the policy brief provides recommendations for decision-makers and innovators to keep an eye on, when designing and implementing people-centred justice solutions.
There are four recommendations in the policy brief. What does each one suggest?
First, let’s start by defining the ‘enabling environment. There are widely recognised obstacles that prevent many social innovation initiatives from taking off and achieving their desired impact. These include social pressures but also regulatory burdens and lack of resources such as funding, people, and knowledge, as well as inequitable power structures. Taken together, these components make up the ‘enabling environment.’
Assessing the existing justice services and the development and scaling of innovative approaches, our findings point to four ways that can strengthen efforts to address the outcomes people need.
Initiate networks and task forces
Empower all actors in the ecosystem
Foster capacity sharing
Embrace an evidence-based way of working
HiiL’s 2023 study reveals that 81% of Nigerians faced legal issues, with only 55% resolved in 12 months.
Can you say more about these recommendations as part of the ‘enabling environment’ for justice innovation? How do they impact the success of social innovation initiatives?
We looked at challenges but also successes and victories that the interviewees experienced throughout their journey of justice innovation. It is a learning process but four areas are worth noting.
First, all interviewees indicated that networks play a key role in their success. These networks can vary from expert groups around specific justice questions to networks of other innovators and experts. They also include networks for mentoring and coaching. We all recognise the benefit of these network approaches.
Second is driving leadership – a belief in what is being implemented, its success, and doing it with adjustments as needed along the way. Of course, building any initiative comes with its challenges. That is why we heard interviewees describe the importance of a task force, to support the creation of innovative service models. Apart from having leadership within the initiative, there was an acknowledgement of also receiving support from decision-makers to encourage further development.
Thirdly, the gamechangers indicated how teamwork and the ability to share skills are crucial. Startups and innovators are naturally collaborative people, so this point came as no surprise. It’s important, however, to support collaboration across sectors within the justice ecosystem. Piecing together this puzzle of weaknesses and strengths among different actors will complement each other. This is mutually beneficial to people-centred justice.
Lastly, the innovators highlighted how important it is to work from evidence. This approach creates feedback loops that monitor and evaluate ‘what’s working’, thus ensuring the solutions match intentions.
You highlight the experience of gamechangers (entrepreneurs and startups) involved in creating innovative justice service delivery models in Nigeria. How do their experiences in the justice innovation space contribute to the understanding of people-centred justice?
The seven gamechangers interviewed are all champions of people-centred justice. They are active in their respective communities, observing people’s legal needs and fearlessly pursuing ideas that contribute to solving them. In profiling them, we wanted to explore factors contributing to their success, profile the challenges they’re facing, and spotlight what can help to nudge the needle towards further progress. Sharing experiences is a big part of this entire effort.
Nonetheless, the policy brief is a very humble start, highlighting narratives and experiences. In the future, the field could benefit from more systemic and wider research to further understand what challenges people-centred innovative models are facing. We hope decision-makers remain engaged and see people-centred justice as a way to bridge the justice gap, realising the needs of people reading this policy brief. There’s much good work going on already and we want to spotlight it together.
What do you want people to take away from reading this policy brief?
We want everyone – from local citizens and entrepreneurs to public officials and community leaders – to join the cause and movement of people-centred justice. In simple terms, closing the justice gap means focusing on people and their justice needs, reassessing existing justice services and then developing and scaling the most innovative approaches which have the greatest impact. There are many justice practitioners already working towards this.
I felt humbled by the chance to interview the seven innovative minds and hear from them directly about their experiences in creating real solutions to people’s problems. There are many great ideas, initiatives, and new ways of working out there – all of which come from the principle of being people-centred. It is very inspiring and suggests that in the future, we will be a bit closer to realising access to justice for all.
Let’s continue encouraging people to reach out to each other. HiiL is part of this facilitating effort but the real progress is in strengthening the connections and networks, both existing and ready to be made.
“A stronger and more diverse ecosystem would benefit everyone by strategically leveraging relationships and increasing the options for capacity and knowledge sharing.”
What guidance would you have as a justice advisor for current and future justice practitioners?
I would encourage justice practitioners to continue to listen to each other and to remain curious about people-centred justice programming. Building on what’s said above, I would add that as advisors, HiiL aims to facilitate collaboration and promote best practices towards realising SDG16 – equal access to justice for all. This policy brief hopefully contributes to our knowledge and understanding of doing just that but it’s only a start. Listening and talking to one another is the crucial next step, creating the networks for collaboration and coordination.
HiiL is proud to welcome Ingrid van Engelshoven as Chair and Christof Maetze as Vice Chair of HiiL’s Supervisory Board.
(The Hague, 10 October 2023) – HiiL is delighted to announce the appointment of two exceptional leaders to its Supervisory Board. Ingrid van Engelshoven, a seasoned political leader and advocate for equal rights, has been appointed as Chair, while Christof Maetze, a distinguished governance and financial expert, joins as Vice Chair.
Ingrid van Engelshoven, a prominent figure in Dutch politics, brings a wealth of experience to her role as Chair of HiiL’s Supervisory Board. She has served in various leadership positions in the city of Peace and Justice, The Hague, and in the national government of the Netherlands. She is passionate about arts, culture and science and is dedicated to creating equal opportunities for all. Besides her political achievements, she initiated The Hague Humanity Hub, a cluster of NGOs and social enterprises on humanitarian aid. She also put new legislation in place on the position of women in company boards.
“I am delighted to join HiiL’s Supervisory Board. As a people-centred leader, I aim to bridge differences and build coalitions for real solutions to global challenges. Achieving more just, inclusive and peaceful societies is one of them and I am thrilled to be part of that,” said Ms Van Engelshoven.
Christof Maetze is a seasoned board member with extensive governance experience as he takes on the role of Vice Chair of HiiL’s Supervisory Board, Chair of the Finance and Organisation Committee. With a keen focus on delivering tangible value to stakeholders, Mr Maetze is known for his ability to foster diverse perspectives, facilitate prioritisation and drive focused change within boardroom settings. As a passionate advocate for corporate governance and continuous improvement, he brings over three decades of experience to his role.
“It is an honour to join HiiL’s Supervisory Board. I am keen to bring my expertise in strategy, finance and risk management and drive focused change for more just societies,” said Mr Maetze.
Both new Supervisory Members are welcomed by HiiL’s CEO Sam Muller, who expressed his excitement about their contributions to the organisation: “I am thrilled to have Ingrid van Engelshoven and Christof Maetze join our Supervisory Board. They join HiiL at a challenging time with justice crises in many countries, but also a time when more and more professionals from the justice sector want to redesign their systems around the needs and experiences of people. ”
The transition in leadership at HiiL’s Supervisory Board will take effect on 10 October, as the organisation bids farewell to the outgoing Chair, Haro Schultz van Haegen and outgoing Vice Chair, Edmond Wellenstein, whose terms at HiiL come to an end. “We are immensely thankful for all Haro Schultz van Haegen and Edmond Wellenstein have done for HiiL. Under their leadership HiiL has grown considerably and has professionalised its organisation. They have been true justice champions.“ added Mr Muller.
For media enquiries please contact HiiL’s Communications & PR Manager Emmy Dexel
About HiiL
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a civil society organisation committed to people-centred justice. That means justice that is affordable, accessible and easy to understand and that delivers what people need. We aim that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We help develop people-centred justice programmes: a data-driven, evidence-based, and innovation-focused way of working, focused on system change to ensure better delivery of justice services for more people. HiiL is an equal opportunity, international employer. We are based in the Netherlands, in the City of Peace and Justice, The Hague.
HiiL launched a new tool to make workplaces in Tunisia fairer and more just. The Employment Justice Guideline provides actionable ways to deal with employment justice problems in Tunisia.
What are Guidelines?
Guidelines provide recommendations and step-by-step interventions for resolving problems. They can address family, land, employment and neighbour conflicts. HiiL develops country-specific guidelines per justice problem. Also known as Treatment Guidelines, they detail ‘what works’ based on evidence and combine knowledge from the fields of psychology, communications and conflict resolution.
Lawyers, paralegals, judges, mediators, police, and community leaders who aspire to improve people’s lives can all reference and use Guidelines to prevent or resolve people’s justice problems.
Why this Guideline matters
Let’s start with the problem it’s addressing. Tunisia’s legal system hasn’t been working as well as it should. The numbers are troubling: 4 out of 10 Tunisians have faced serious legal issues. Of those, 78% couldn’t find a good solution. This lack of justice erodes social cohesion and slows down economic development.
The challenge at work
Among these problems, there’s one main issue: problems at work. Employment justice problems aren’t merely statistics; they affect real people, especially youth and women. Every year, more than 250,000 Tunisians find themselves in work-related disputes, with 67% of them suffering as a result.
Taking a Closer Look
To understand these justice issues better, HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction Report (JNS) conducted in Tunisia and launched in March 2023, shows that 18% of all legal issues in Tunisia were about employment. The most common problems they faced included not being treated fairly when they tried to get a job(23%), having jobs that weren’t secure (22%),losing their jobs (12%), not getting the social security money they deserved (11%), and not getting paid (5%). These problems aren’t just numbers; they are the everyday experiences of people in Tunisia.
The development process of the Employment Justice Guideline
Amid these challenges, however, the Employment Justice Guideline offers a bright spot. Created with help from local experts and researchers, including judges, lawyers, and researchers, this Guideline tailored for Tunisia provides best practices and new ways of thinking to help make employment fairer and less complicated. It provides proven approaches for dealing with employment issues. In this way, practitioners don’t have to rely solely on their individual experience or potentially limiting disciplinary knowledge.
The launch of the Employment Justice Guideline is like opening a door, not just a one-time event. It’s an invitation for us all – employees, employers, legal experts, and policymakers – to work together and make the employment justice system better for all.
But the story doesn’t end with the Guideline’s introduction; it’s just the start. The next big challenge is putting the Guidelines into action. We’ll do this by working with partners and offering training to legal practitioners. This way, we can make sure the Employment Justice Guideline makes a real difference in the lives of people working in Tunisia.
Guidelines have immense potential in realising people-centred justice – that is justice which prioritises people’s most pressing legal needs and the outcomes they seek.
Guidelines on the Prevention and Resolution of Disputes Between Employees and Employers in Tunisia
In this Q&A we sat down with Zainab Malik, the Programme Manager for the Justice Innovation Labs (JIL) at HiiL, to understand the purpose of JILs, how they came about, and how they reframe issues when addressing and resolving people’s most pressing justice needs.
What is a Justice Innovation Lab and how did it come to be?
We know that justice problems that people face – be it land, family, crime, or neighbour disputes – are common and have a serious impact on people’s lives. However, more than two-thirds of the world’s population still fail to find any resolution for their problems. It’s obvious that justice systems and the services they provide are simply not meeting the needs of people in their daily lives. This is where people-centred justice comes in, and an aspect of that integrated approach includes Justice Innovation Labs (JILs).
Justice Innovation Labs aim to develop innovative and sustainable solutions that scale people-centred justice services. The JILs convene a diverse group of key justice stakeholders. This includes government leaders, judges, lawyers, community organisers, business owners, and entrepreneurs. Each JIL runs for four to six months and follows a structured design thinking process where the participants scope out the justice problem(s), brainstorm solutions, test ideas, build a sustainable financial model, create a plan of action, and ultimately decide the terms of a pilot programme.
What is people-centred justice?
People-centred justice is an emerging approach that puts people and their justice needs at the centre. This integrated way of working has five components: starting with the collection of data on the needs of people, moving to evidence-based practice by applying what works, combining these best practices into scalable sustainable, game-changing services, creating an enabling environment for that, and forming a movement to make this change happen. Together they keep the focus on system change to ensure justice for better societies.
What’s the unique value of conducting a JIL?
Innovation Labs have existed for some time now in different sectors such as financial services, health and education. However, making this work for justice requires a different approach. Only processes that are truly people-centred lead to people-centred solutions. In that spirit, JILs bring together people from across the justice sector ecosystem. This includes not only formal justice actors such as police, lawyers, and judges but also informal justice providers and users of justice – those facing or who have faced a justice problem.
This gathering of stakeholders, combined with a dedication and shared responsibility to improve people’s lives, creates an environment for designing new approaches to justice delivery. JILs provide a structure for contributing to people-centred justice so ideas can develop and scale into financially sustainable real-world change.
Justice Innovation Lab process
Where is HiiL implementing our Justice Innovation Labs?
We have conducted Justice Innovation Labs around the world. This includes improving access to community justice in Uganda and Nigeria, and JILs focused on improving access to legal services in Djerba, Tunisia. We have also conducted JILs focused on improving the resolution of neighbour disputes in the Netherlands.
Currently, we are running active JILs on domestic violence in Ogun State, Nigeria, employment justice in Tunisia, land justice in Niger, and community justice in Ethiopia.
Can you share any key learnings?
At the end of the day, justice falls under the monopoly of the state. It’s right there in the social contract. Developing apps and legal delivery models will only take us so far. So, if we truly want to deliver people-centred justice, then real innovation begins with creating (and nurturing) what we call an ‘enabling environment’. This includes making sure that the people-centred solution fits into legal and regulatory frameworks, policy planning and budgets.
Additionally, in order to be truly effective people-centred justice innovations cannot exist on the fringes of the justice chain; they must be at the centre of how justice institutions and actors provide justice to people. For example, community-based justice services that link formal and informal processes have shown successful outcomes in many contexts. However, in order to be truly sustainable their decisions must be recognised by courts.
In our modern world, technology is almost considered synonymous with innovation. But I would caution that the “app-ification” of justice is a dangerous trend. As much as technology has the potential to bring about increased access, it is also a marker of inequality, especially in contexts marked with social and economic inequalities.
For example, internet penetration in Uganda stands at 10%. Less than half the population has a mobile phone connection out of which 71% hold a feature phone. During the JIL on community justice in Uganda, stakeholders initially came up with an online information platform providing users with tailored and evidence-based advice on how to resolve their everyday legal problems. However, during prototyping, it was realised that in order for it to become an accessible service the platform would need to be provided in a variety of non-digital delivery models. Doing so resulted in the set up of kiosks where community workers could support users in how to navigate and use the online tool.
For the JIL in Tunisia, the stakeholders designed a network of community workers and apprentice lawyers that used online and offline tools to provide high-quality legal services directly to the doorsteps of people in Djerba Governorate.
“I have been committed to making sure that the law and its mechanisms work to provide redress to the most vulnerable and marginalised groups.”
As a justice advocate yourself, what advice do you have for current and future justice practitioners?
In simple terms, I think we need to rethink, even forget in some instances, what we know about justice. Let’s test and retest our notions, and adapt our approaches to how justice is made accessible and how justice is delivered. At the end of the day, it’s about what people need. So, if we keep people and their needs in mind, then we’re on the right path to delivering outcomes that improve lives. That’s the essence of Justice Innovation Labs specifically and people-centred justice more broadly.
Lack of access to justice is a broad societal problem that touches all of us: Being able to resolve justice problems and receive fair outcomes, irrespective of wealth and status, is a cornerstone of a peaceful and prosperous society. Yet, organising this universal access to justice remains a challenge.
In his report, ‘Our Common Agenda’, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres concludes that “Many justice systems deliver only for the few”. In July 2023, he launched his new Vision on the Rule of Law, with the vision for “a peaceful, prosperous and just world, governed by the rule of law and human rights, with people at its centre”. Similar challenges and opportunities are recognised in the National Policy on Justice of Nigeria, which states that “justice delivery falls short of the expectation of Nigerians” and encourages improvement through improved sectoral coordination that caters to people’s needs.
To achieve the ambitious goals set in the strategies and in SDG 16, a new concept is emerging globally as well as in Nigeria: people-centred justice, a programming approach that builds on data and innovation. Data allows the programming to focus on the right priorities by knowing the needs and experiences of people. The innovation part focuses on creating justice delivery models that can improve the wider justice system so that people can use the system more easily and with greater empowerment. The goal is to co-design legal and justice services that involve providers and (potential) users and improve through feedback, learning, and people’s increased understanding and ability to contribute to the process.
The policy brief ‘From challenges to successes: Four levers to enhance the enabling environment for people-centred justice innovation in Nigeria’ discusses recommendations that can support enhancing an enabling environment for justice innovation. It brings forward the experiences of seven Nigerians from the justice innovation space, from private to public sector innovators and decision-makers, who have pioneered people-centred justice innovation in their respective States. They all agree that people-centred justice is essential to improving current justice delivery models in Nigeria and that an enabling environment for people-centred justice comprises elements from financial, regulatory and legal regimes.
To achieve this favourable enabling environment for innovative people-centred justice, the policy brief proposes the following recommendations:
Initiate networks and task forces
Empower all actors in the ecosystem
Foster capacity-sharing
Embrace an evidence-based way of working
Since 2016, HiiL has supported stakeholders innovating justice in Nigeria. People-centred justice strategies have been developed so far in three states: Ogun, Imo, and Kaduna States. A nationwide data collection effort on legal needs took place twice, first in 2018 and more recently this year. At the same time, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator in West Africa has supported 20 innovators in the region of which nine came from Nigeria. In short, the movement for people-centred justice is growing, with a wide array of stakeholders across the sector joining to think of new ways to achieve the goals of the National Policy on Justice.
This continuous development, however, demands an environment in which innovative ideas can be created, fostered, tested, and scaled up. The widely recognised obstacles that prevent many social innovation initiatives from achieving their desired impact include social pressures, regulatory burdens, lack of resources (funding, people, knowledge), and inequitable power structures. These obstacles can be described as parts of the ‘enabling environment’, regulatory, relational and financial systems that together accommodate scalable models for justice services and effective interventions.
At the centre of our effort to innovate justice in Ogun State was: How can we have a people-driven approach, where people will be the focus and at the centre of the justice initiative programme? How to be less institution-oriented? We need a justice sector system that is people-oriented, even in criminal matters. We need good planning and the follow-up that pushes these initiatives. It is not about reinventing the wheel but having the right stakeholders there to make the change.
We call on and encourage leaders in Nigeria and beyond to continue implementing people-centred justice approaches in justice delivery, and accelerate actions based on these recommendations. Fostering further innovation is key to realising justice for all. The time to act is now.
Today, 5.1 billion people lack adequate access to justice. This justice gap is a pervasive global problem, affecting most nations. For those living in a state of limbo it means a loss of livelihood, dignity, and basic rights that unravel social cohesion and hurt economic growth. Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) studies are a crucial tool in our fight to understand the justice gap. They inform political leaders, civil society organisations, and justice sector professionals on ‘what works’ to build trust and advance access to justice.
In this Q&A we sat down with Dr. Rodrigo Nunez, Justice Sector Advisor at HiiL, to discuss JNS studies, how they work, what can be learned from them, and why anyone who cares about justice should start with data to make a real difference in people’s lives.
What is a Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) study?
The JNS is primarily a research exercise focused on uncovering the legal problems and justice experiences of people. These problems can take form in various ways including through crime, interpersonal disagreements, employee-employer relations, land or family disputes, or reduced access to public services to name only a few.
JNS studies measure the incidence of these legal problems across a community or society and examine the types of actions individuals take to resolve their pressing legal needs. In this way, we learn about the impact of these problems – physical, psychological, social, monetary, etc. – and the costs associated with taking action to resolve the problem. Equally important, every JNS study is customised to each country which means we adapt certain parts of a survey with help from local experts so it blends standardisation with customisation to fit measuring needs in that local context.
The rule of law is not evenly spread between and within countries. We need data to show this gap in access to justice.
An enumerator in Qushtapa refugee camp, Erbil, Iraq
Who is involved in the coordination of each JNS study?
HiiL leads each JNS study along with a local team of stakeholders and sometimes researchers. This includes in-country data collection companies or civil society organisations that help arrange face-to-face interviews with participants. We call these pollsters ‘the artists’ and the cornerstone of research. They visit people where they live and take immense care in communicating our methodology while remaining sensitive and aware of participants’ needs. This human component helps understand people’s justice problems because it’s more than research. It’s also a barometer of people’s social and economic needs. The data we gather helps stakeholders and policymakers to make the right decisions with relevant information applicable to their country’s context.
Why are JNS studies so important to the justice sector and how can they contribute to people-centred justice?
JNS studies are important to the justice sector because they provide relevant insights and data about how to improve access to justice in society. This data goes beyond courts and lawyers because the number of cases resolved or managed by courts is not a reliable indicator of people’s justice needs. The shared goal in all this is realising affordable, easy-to-access justice that based on outcomes.
Why is that important? Well, if you don’t measure, then you cannot improve. JNS surveys are evidence-based research with reliable data that can become the basis for transformation. Policymakers, justice sector professionals, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders across a country or region can use JNS studies to improve people’s lives. The ultimate goal is to resolve people’s most pressing justice problems, give people a fair shake in life, empower them to integrate more fully into economic and social development, help them restore relationships, and contribute overall to social cohesion and economic development.
We understand that the way JNS’s are conducted can change over time. What is the new methodology and why was it important to change the approach?
Indeed, we have been innovating our methodologies. The classic JNS study can be compared to a picture – a snapshot taken at a certain moment and time – which can be repeated every 3-4 years. But we know justice needs are dynamic and may change over time. To assess this, we created (to the best of our knowledge) the very first panel on justice needs. This new approach tracks selected individuals over a period of time (usually three or four years) to understand if and how their problems get resolved. We want to know where there wasn’t a resolution, the sources of help, and to update in real-time how people journey through their problems.
By following people and how they’re addressing their justice issues, this new agile and exploratory methodology has identified shortcomings and gaps in justice systems.
Is this what you’ve been calling e-JNS studies?
Yes, and the “e” in e-JNS stands for electronic or experimental. There have been different iterations in past years. We have tried to conduct these through social media but our partners and stakeholders have also been encouraged to take risks in service of understanding people’s justice needs. One example took place in Burkina Faso during the Covid-19 pandemic. The face-to-face component of the JNS was very difficult to achieve so we used social media and targeted advertising to reach people online. A shorter questionnaire was also helpful. Altogether, we managed to conduct two e-JNS studies in quick succession and without compromising on the quality of the data.
Social media advertisement inviting users to fill out an e-JNS survey
Data is crucial to our understanding of the world, what’s working and what can be improved. But behind the numbers and charts and scientific process are humans like you and me. These are the stories or real people, real families, real relationships and friends and employers.
How can practitioners and policymakers use and apply the data collected from HiiL’s JNS studies? What can practitioners and policymakers do right now?
There are different ways to engage and apply the data. For policymakers who are responsible for processes and improving where attention and resources are directed, the data is very useful for understanding what’s happening now around the country. They can identify the most pressing issues, pinpoint exactly what people are doing to resolve (or not) those issues, prioritise actions to improve outcomes and share and use the evidence to make (new) decisions that lead to positive change.
The general public can use the data too. JNS studies contain facts, figures, statistics, trends, and recommendations that help people rethink shared experiences and deal better with their own justice problems. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power. So JNS studies become a tool for self-improvement too. We believe that if the right people have the right information then they can make the right decisions and influence change in a way that improves people’s everyday lives.
Launch of the Burkina Faso JNS report
As a justice and data expert, what advice do you have for current and future justice practitioners?
Data is crucial to our understanding of the world, what’s working and what can be improved. But behind the numbers and charts and scientific process are humans like you and me. These are the stories of real people, real families, real relationships and friends and employers. The problems unveiled in each Justice Needs and Satisfaction study could affect any one of us. So, I would advise people to look beyond the numbers. Put yourself in the shoes of others – your neighbour, the market seller, the farmer, the hard-working mother, or the young woman looking for work – they each have needs to thrive and have dignity.
Justice is the greatest equaliser among us so let’s make sure we’re serving that cause and living up to that universal value. Each JNS elucidates a shared human experience and is the motivation for all of us to make the world a little bit better.
Heatwaves, hunger, and ongoing wars are some of the pressing challenges that plague our world today. To overcome these interconnected issues, a collaborative approach is needed, which is precisely why the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established. However, with just seven years left to achieve these goals, progress is alarmingly slow, and some are even regressing.
For the upcoming SDG summit, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for a Rescue Plan for the Planet involving real commitments to help drive the SDG transformation. He also noted that Goal 16 on access to justice for all plays a pivotal role in enabling progress across all the SDGs.
It is evident that without equal access to justice for all, we cannot effectively reduce poverty, address inequalities, ensure peace, or tackle the consequences of climate change. But how can we shift from mere discussion to actual implementation? The answer lies in unifying our efforts and prioritising outcomes for people. With 17 SDGs at hand, breaking down silos and recognising the interconnectedness of SDG enablers is crucial if we are to make progress on each goal without leaving one behind.
How can we shift from mere discussion to actual implementation? The answer lies in unifying our efforts and prioritising outcomes for people.
Among various approaches, people-centred justice stands out as the most promising programme for achieving access to justice for all. This method, driven by data, evidence, and innovation, seeks to bring about systemic change to enhance the delivery of justice services. It ensures that justice is available and accessible to all, regardless of their geographical location or identity. As such, it aligns perfectly with the principle of « leave no one behind » and strives to provide fair and just outcomes for all people.
Today, 5.1 billion people lack adequate access to justice. Beyond these numbers lie the stories of individuals whose lives are impacted by unresolved issues related to work, family, or land. Living in a state of limbo, they are unable to contribute to the societies and economies that are fundamental to achieving our collective goals and prosperity.
This justice gap is a pervasive global problem, affecting most nations. Urgent action is needed to provide equal access to justice for all, and people-centred justice offers a clear way forward, yielding both social and economic benefits.
In addressing pressing issues like climate change, fair, inclusive, independent, and accountable justice systems are imperative. Take, for example, the growing disputes between farmers and herders in Sub-Saharan Africa due to increased droughts and diminishing fertile land. Such climate-related conflicts require justice systems that can deliver justice to affected individuals and communities swiftly and effectively, so they can get on with their daily lives.
People-centred justice not only recognises the intersection of climate change with social, economic, and environmental justice, but it also ensures that the differential impacts of climate change on individuals and communities are addressed through equitable solutions. By doing so, people-centred justice contributes to fostering a just and sustainable response to climate change.
Moreover, as climate-induced migration intensifies in the most affected regions, it is crucial to meet the justice needs of refugees. For example in Ethiopia, research has revealed that refugees face more legal problems, which they perceive as more severe than host communities and the general population. When a refugee falls victim to a violent crime in addition to losing all their possessions, their situation becomes even more dire.
People-centred justice plays a transformative role in recognising refugees’ justice problems and providing tailor-made solutions to meet their specific needs. This approach creates a win-win scenario by fostering durable local resolutions for local problems. Social cohesion flourishes, and the quality of life in displacement-affected areas improves for all. As the global refugee population continues to rise, people-centred justice becomes an urgent necessity, more relevant now than ever.
What is people-centred justice?
People-centred justice is an emerging approach that puts people and their justice needs at the centre. This integrated way of working has five components: starting with the collection of data on the needs of people, moving to evidence-based practice by applying what works, combining these best practices into scalable sustainable, game-changing services, creating an enabling environment for that, and forming a movement to make this change happen. Together they keep the focus on system change to ensure justice for better societies.
To truly reduce poverty, inequalities, and the fallouts of climate change, equal access to justice for all is an essential prerequisite. Joining our efforts and embracing the 2030 Agenda in unity will pave the way for more justice, equality, inclusion, sustainability, and peaceful societies.
As we approach the upcoming SDG summit, let us make a genuine commitment to giving justice to people and accelerating progress towards the SDGs. It is time to prioritise people as the unifying element. We may have 17 SDGs, but we only have one chance to make the right choices necessary to make the SDG transformation happen.
Au Niger, de réelles avancées dans le secteur de la justice se dessinent. Grâce aux données, au leadership et à un engagement envers l’innovation, le travail se concentre maintenant sur la création d’une stratégie nationale sur la justice axée sur les personnes.
La justice pour tous fait partie intégrante d’une société plus saine et plus prospère. En améliorant l’accès à la justice, les sociétés investissent dans les fondations d’un avenir plus juste. Cela a également d’immenses avantages sociaux et économiques.
Sous la direction du ministre de la justice du Niger, M. Ikta Abdoulaye Mohamed et avec le soutien d’acteurs du secteur de la justice, y compris des organisations de la société civile ainsi que l’ambassade des Pays-Bas et HiiL, le Niger progresse dans la mise en œuvre d’un programme national de justice axée sur les personnes.
Cet effort a commencé avec des données. Deux récentes études nationales sur les besoins et la satisfaction en matière de justice (version française) ont mis en lumière l’étendue des besoins des personnes en matière de justice, ce qui fonctionne pour répondre à ces besoins et les possibilités d’améliorer l’accès à la justice dans tout le pays.
Une série d’ateliers stratégiques s’appuiera sur ces données recueillies. La première a eu lieu du 12 au 14 juin dans la ville de Dosso, à 125 km de Niamey, la capitale. HiiL a coordonné les sessions qui mettaient en vedette un groupe diversifié de plus de 30 acteurs nigériens du secteur de la justice et de la société civile travaillant à l’élaboration des bases d’une stratégie centrée sur les personnes. Au cours de l’atelier, les parties prenantes ont priorisé les domaines suivants pour la stratégie nationale et sur la base des données sur les besoins de justice de 2022: 1) Criminalité, 2) Problèmes fonciers et 3) Accès aux documents personnels.
Razane Boustany de HiiL a participé à l’atelier. ‘’L’un des moments les plus intenses et les plus touchants pour moi a été une séance intitulée ‘image de justice/ the image of justice’. Assis tous ensemble, chaque acteur a partagé un objet symbolique qui représentait à ses yeux la situation actuelle de la justice au Niger », précise-t-elle.
Ces articles comprenaient de nombreux objets tels que des lunettes « pour nous aider à voir plus clair et plus loin » ; une image d’hôpital « où l’on soigne les problèmes de justice mais où il est aussi difficile de savoir vers quel médecin se tourner » ; une image de cœur « parce que la justice commence et finit avec le cœur qui nous rapproche de l’humanité de la justice » ; une photo d’enfant « parce que la justice doit aussi être pour les plus vulnérables » ; et une boussole pour signifier une direction partagée.
Selon Razane, les parties prenantes, bien que sceptiques au début, se sont engagées à mettre en œuvre l’approche systémique et intégrée de la justice centrée sur les personnes. Atteindre cette réalité, cependant, nécessitera un changement de mentalité, qui donne la priorité aux personnes et à leurs besoins, et non à ceux des processus et des institutions. Le prochain atelier abordera cet aspect de fond en comble.
Trois jours après la première réunion des parties prenantes à Dosso, le ministre de la justice, M. Ikta Abdoulaye Mohamed, a participé, aux côtés de 19 autres représentants du gouvernement, à partager les progrès des initiatives de justice centrée sur les personnes lors de la réunion de la Justice Action Coalition.
« Mon pays s’est engagé à renforcer l’accès à la justice », a déclaré le ministre de la Justice, M. Mohamed Ikta Abdoulaye. « Nous reconnaissons les besoins spécifiques de notre pays et le besoin général d’accès à la justice, et nous travaillons avec la société civile, les institutions judiciaires et d’autres parties prenantes pour y parvenir. » Consultez le blog du PDG de HiiL, Sam Muller, pour plus d’informations sur cette coalition de grande ambition qui s’est réunie pour s’engager à combler le fossé de la justice d’ici 2030.
Representatives of the Tunisian Bar Association joined the first session of our Justice Innovation Lab. The session took place on the 23 June and focused on addressing people’s needs related to employment justice. The Lab reflects strengthening cooperation across Tunisia’s justice sector and builds on a new partnership between HiiL and the Tunisian Bar Association.
In a significant development for the advancement of justice systems and legal innovation, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) and the Tunisian Bar Association recently announced a groundbreaking partnership. The official signing ceremony took place during the highly anticipated JNS Report 2023 launching event. The collaboration marks a crucial step towards fostering legal innovation and empowering the Tunisian justice sector.
The partnership between HiiL and the Tunisian Bar Association is driven by a common goal to promote legal innovation in Tunisia. Recognising the rapidly changing global legal landscape. Both organisations understand that embracing innovation is crucial for the advancement of justice systems. By collaborating, HiiL and the Tunisian Bar Association seek to introduce new technologies, practices, and methodologies.
They aim to foster an environment that encourages creativity, efficiency, and accessibility within the justice system, ultimately empowering legal professionals and improving the overall quality of legal services provided to Tunisian citizens.
This partnership signifies a proactive approach to embracing innovation and ensuring that Tunisia remains at the forefront of legal advancements in the region.
Prominent figures at the signing ceremony:
The event witnessed the presence of distinguished personalities from both organisations. Representing HiiL was its esteemed CEO, Dr. Sam Muller, Mrs. Raja Mazeh, the country manager for Tunisia, Mr. Ronald Lenz, HiiL’s Programme Director for the MENA region.
On behalf of the Tunisian Bar Association, Mr. Hatem Mziou, the Dean of the Bar Association, was present to solidify the partnership. His presence underscored the importance and commitment of the Tunisian legal community in promoting innovation and improving access to justice.
The power of collaboration:
The partnership between HiiL and the Tunisian Bar Association holds immense promise for legal innovation, access to justice, and the overall development of Tunisia’s justice system. By leveraging the expertise and resources of HiiL, renowned for its cutting-edge legal research and innovation, the Tunisian Bar Association aims to drive positive change and address the pressing challenges faced by the justice system.
Areas of focus:
The collaboration will focus on various key areas that are vital to the transformation of Tunisia’s legal landscape. These include:
Capacity Building: The Tunisian Bar Association will benefit from HiiL’s extensive experience in training and capacity-building programs. The collaboration aims to equip legal professionals with the necessary skills and knowledge to adapt to the changing legal landscape and deliver justice effectively.
Future Prospects: The partnership between HiiL and the Tunisian Bar Association marks a significant milestone in the advancement of justice systems and legal innovation. By leveraging their combined expertise and resources, the two organisations are well-positioned to catalyse positive change within Tunisia’s legal ecosystem. The collaborative efforts aim to create a more accessible, efficient, and inclusive justice system that meets the needs of all citizens.
Conclusion:
The official signing ceremony between HiiL and the Tunisian Bar Association represents a significant occasion for legal innovation and access to justice in Tunisia. Both organisations will work together to implement innovative solutions. With a shared vision and commitment to excellence, the partnership sets the stage for transformative change within the Tunisian justice system.
“Translating Ambitions to Actions through people-centred justice.” Under that banner, the Justice Action Coalition – the high ambition stakeholder coalition seeking to close the global justice gap – met virtually on 19 June1. Hosted by The Netherlands, the G7+ Secretariat, and Pathfinders for Justice, the meeting reiterated the Coalition’s strong and unequivocal commitment to close the justice gap and was a reaffirmation of the people-centred justice way of working based on data, evidence-based working and innovation. An effective implementation architecture to support this critical effort is emerging. It now needs more investment.
“We are failing to deliver access to justice”, Asako Okai, the UN Assistant Administrator and Director of the Crisis Bureau said in her opening remarks. It could not have been more clear.
A solid people-centred justice architecture is starting to take shape. Firstly, a high-ambition coalition of 19 states and 16 partner organisations2, all committed to closing the justice gap through the people-centred justice way of working. At the SDG Summit, the member countries of the JAC will present an agile, more permanent support structure for this effort. Second, a set of five principles, first set out in the Hague Declaration on Access to Justice, and subsequently further developed. Briefly set out, they include:
Put people at the centre.
Focus on resolution, using data, evidence-based working, and innovation.
Improve the quality of justice journeys, both in terms of process and outcomes.
Use justice for prevention.
Break down legal, administrative and practical barriers that people face to obtain documents, access public services, and participate fully in society and the economy.
We also see action. These five principles are being developed in periodic meetings and reports of member countries and partner organisations. In line with the Justice Appeal 2023, adopted at the ministerial meeting of 30 May 2022, States and partner organisations are also practising them and they periodically share those practices. At the meeting, all member countries and partners shared efforts they are making themselves3. This shared way of working also takes the discussion beyond the more traditional development fora in which countries in the Global North talk about helping others. The Netherlands, for example, spoke of the justice challenges that it was facing to provide justice and compensate people who suffered damages because of gas mining in the North of the country.
Below are some of the themes I picked up from what was shared.
Data and Digitalisation
Niger, one of the world’s least developed countries, shared an impressive data collection effort; two national justice needs surveys in two years, both of which are being used for a national strategy. Canada just completed a national justice needs survey. Colombia’s Ministry of Justice and Law, the Department of Statistics and the Department of National Planning have together conducted two large-scale surveys, the most recent one in 20204. Chile’s Supreme Court, through its Directorate of Research, published in 2021 a justice needs survey following the Ministry of Justice’s pioneer study of 2015.
Portugal shared some fascinating examples of digitalisation in the justice field: a justice practical guide for legal information, easy ways for digital authentication of legal documents, portals to make a request for justice support online and a platform for Alternative Dispute Resolution with consultation and exchange of information functions.
Germany referred to two initiatives that give people easier access to informal resolution mechanisms and simple procedures for small claims. Indonesia is also giving priority to community justice centres and other informal mechanisms. Luxembourg emphasised the need for justice mechanisms to also focus on reconciliation, healing and the ability to continue with disrupted lives. Many countries shared efforts to increase access to legal aid and other forms of support. For Kosovo and Colombia, efforts were connected with violence from the past and the need for reconciliation. Vulnerable groups were a cross-cutting theme. In Canada, for example, work is being done to draft two new justice strategies for indigenous peoples and black communities to address systemic discrimination. Sao Tome and Principe is focusing on improving legal aid. In the US, Attorney General Merrick Garland has re-established an office especially dedicated to increasing access to justice.
Funding it
What is critical now is that member states, development organisations, philanthropists and other private actors get behind this growing movement and its new way of working.
“We need more investment,” said UN Assistant Administrator Okai.
That, in my view, does not necessarily mean that a lot of additional funds are needed. Spending existing funding in a better way would already be a good step. Because it is more data-driven and evidence-based, the people-centred justice way of working can be planned, budgeted and measured more effectively than current approaches. The degree to which outcomes are being achieved can be monitored closely. Pivots can be made when needed, making this way of working much more adaptable and agile. Sweden, Germany, the US and The Netherlands have pledged to focus funding on this way of working, an important step, but more is needed.
What next
The permanent structure of the Justice Action Coalition will be presented at the SDG Summit in September. The June meeting was a very significant step. We know what the problem is. We know how to work on both system change and concrete results for people. What the movement now needs is funding. Let’s have some first serious commitments on the table at the SDG Summit in September. Improving for the future and improving for now.
1 The meeting brought together 14 representatives at the ministerial level from the 19 member countries: Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Indonesia, Kosovo, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Niger, Portugal, Sao Tome & Principe, Sweden, and the United States of America. From the partner organisations the following participated: the G7+ Secretariat, UNDP, OECD, UN Women, Pathfinders, OGP, ICTJ, IDLO, WJP, Strathclyde Institute for Childens’ Futures, and HiiL.
2 These include, besides the organisations referred to above: World Bank, ABA, Helsinki University Rule of Law Center, and Terre de Hommes.
The Hague Justice Week took place from 5 to 9 June. Rule of Law experts from around the world gathered online and in-person to exchange ideas and learnings on ‘How increasing access to justice is making an impact at local, national, and international levels.’
Global peace and justice require global attention and collaboration. During The Hague Justice Week (5-8 June) rule of law experts, entrepreneurs, and public officials gathered online and in The Hague to exchange learnings and innovations in access to justice. For HiiL and our partners, the second annual conference brought more attention to the important shift towards people-centred justice, and going from ‘how to do it, to let’s do it!’
This new push focuses on building more support for the people-centred justice programming approach. That involves: 1) bringing together data; 2) working from evidence-based practices; 3) scaling innovating solutions; 4) creating an enabling environment to sustain change; and 5) strengthening a movement to ensure people-centred justice sticks.
At The Hague Justice Week, we saw an increasing number of justice leaders and practitioners embracing this programming approach. The key now is to fund new and ongoing initiatives.
To this end, the main events for HiiL together with our partners at Pathfinders, The Justice Leadership Group, Hague Talks, and The Hague Humanity Hub focused concretely on implementing people-centred justice and realising SDG16.
The morning session, How can people-centred justice help achieve SDG 16?, featured representatives from the Justice Leadership Group.
An afternoon dialogue examined lessons from the recently submitted National Growth Fund proposal. Participants discussed three key points: first, recognising the data that shows people want to move past conflict. Second, mapping out effective and professional ways the justice system can reach the outcomes people need. And third, emphasising the incredible social and economic value when justice systems collaborate across different actors to become more responsive to people’s justice needs.
A peace&justice cafe on ‘Achieving people-centred justice impact at scale’ wrapped up the day. The event featured 10 roundabout sessions which explored various ways on how people-centred justice can be implemented in unresolved conflict contexts and within overburdened systems. For example: innovating the legal system, social financing, making the economic case for improving justice, protecting whistleblowers, and improving mediation between parties.
In the roundabout session led by HiiL, we furthered the earlier discussion on the National Growth Fund proposal. Participants in the roundabout brainstormed ideas for scaling a project on neighbourhood conflicts, taking it from successful pilot to a nationally implemented programme. Read about all the roundabout sessions here.
Other panel discussions from Hague Justice Week covered equally wide-ranging topics such as journalistic challenges when reporting about the ICC, strengthening the role of women as change agents for justice, and achieving environmental justice, among many more.
Peace and justice are increasingly being challenged, in our own European backyard and beyond. As the legal capital of the world, we were proud to host global experts during #HagueJusticeWeek, discussing joint solutions to strengthening the international rule of law. #HJW23pic.twitter.com/28A9Gf0TGs
The results of these conversations will be used to inform policy-making within The Hague and beyond, including at the upcoming Agenda 2030 SDG Summit in September 2023 in New York, organised as part of the UN General Assembly.
Scaling Gamechangers is one of the core components of people-centred justice, a systemic and integrated programming approach to increasing access to justice. HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme is key to achieving this outcome. It is the only startup accelerator programme dedicated to scaling innovative startup ideas in the justice sector.
“To close the justice gap, we need to seek out-of-the-box solutions that address people’s problems in the fastest, most affordable and easiest way,” said Iran Huffels, Programme Manager of HiiL’s Justice Accelerator. “And although justice practitioners around the world are working to address this gap, an innovative, financially sustainable and scalable business model is also essential to successfully transforming how justice gets delivered. The point is to help people move forward with their daily lives.”
To that end, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme identifies entrepreneurs working to transform the justice sector. Following 500+ applicants and a rigorous selection process, we are proud to introduce the next generation of impact startups transforming access to justice.
This year, the diverse Justice Accelerator startup portfolio consists of 17 startups, answering different justice issues in Tunisia, Nigeria, Kenya, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt.
Over the next four months, the startups will participate in an intense programme of workshops, masterclasses, and mentorship sessions. They will also be guided on their journey by a dedicated coach who supports them on an ongoing basis. By the end of the programme, the startups will receive a €10,000 grant to help level-up their innovative ideas.
Here are the startups of the Justice Accelerator programme 2023:
HPass is an intelligent solution for identity, security, and access management, designed for widespread deployment in homes, offices, and smart cities. Their services encompass digital identity verification, authentication, and robust security measures. According to the JNS findings in Kenya, 21% of individuals reporting legal problems had to confront crime-related issues. By harnessing advanced technologies, Hpass Global aims to facilitate secure and seamless access to diverse online platforms and services, thereby safeguarding users’ personal information and contributing to the prevention of various crime incidents.
Tulix | Money
Tulix introduces a novel and intelligent approach for Kenyans, regardless of their location, to collaboratively share money, budget effectively, and jointly manage their finances with their trusted connections. With Tulix, users can maintain full visibility and control over how and where their money is utilised. In sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is the third-largest recipient of remittances, estimated at 3.2 billion USD in 2022. Among the primary reasons for sending money back home is to support families. However, many migrants encounter challenges in tracking the funds once they are sent, leading to a loss of visibility. By providing a solution that enables individuals to trace their money, Tulix enhances transparency, which empowers users to send more funds confidently.
Chamasure | Insurance
Chamasure is a user-friendly digital platform designed to empower users in underserved communities. It enables them to form localised groups and gain access to health insurance collectively. The platform incorporates a self-vetting membership process, self-regulation, and allows the group members to be the initial point of claim assessment. In Kenya, issues related to social benefits and public services are amongst the legal problems found by the JNS. Chamasure addresses this by providing convenient access to social benefits and safeguarding vulnerable groups against insurance fraud.
Kiotapay | Housing
Kiotapay is an end-to-end real estate platform for automating billing, collections, payments, expense management, sales and other real estate records. It enhances contractual relationships between property businesses, tenants and buyers by automating lease management, payments and other business processes to guarantee seamless engagement. Housing is one of the most common legal problem categories according to the 2023 JNS in Nigeria. By automating the process, Kiotapay prevents problems with landlord harassment, rent collections, negotiating the rent and determining the value of the property, which are amongst the prevailing Housing issues in Nigeria.
Malipo Circles Limited | Money
MALIPO is a platform designed to streamline governance, as well as conflict resolution by ensuring compliance with rules and regulations when managing funds within groups. It also facilitates social commerce and fosters meaningful interactions among group members, empowering their economic endeavours. With Malipo, users gain access to money management tools, accounting capabilities, streamlined processes, and conflict resolution mechanisms. This versatile tool caters to both individuals and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), enabling them to engage in activities such as lending or borrowing money, making investments, fundraising, and conducting payments with merchants.
Nigeria
XChange Box Solutions LTD | Money, SMEs
XCHANGE BOX is a payments collections company that focuses on empowering SMEs in local communities by providing them with basic technology for sales records. This, in turn, helps them establish a credit rating, making them eligible for short-term micro loans. Since their launch, XCHANGEBOX has been at the forefront of delivering cutting-edge services, including Agent Points collections, bill payments, and other related services. It’s worth noting that Nigeria currently has approximately 41.89 million active debit cards, with a significant number of users residing in rural areas that have limited access to ATM points. This is precisely why the feature of Agent Cash Out locations for transactions is gaining popularity, as it addresses this accessibility challenge.
Awabah | Money, insurance
Awabah is a financial wellness platform for gig workers which converts tips from employers to pension savings, health insurance, life insurance and accident coverage. By offering financial wellness to gig workers, a significant portion of the Nigerian population, who have traditionally been excluded from such services and advantages, can now benefit greatly.
Cotruste | Money
Cotruste Equity is a last-mile micro-lending company which uses a digital pairing system that enables over 44 million underbanked micro-traders living in rural semi-urban communities in Nigeria and Africa with smart /USSD phones, to get paired in clusters within their business location and funded within minutes. The financial situation in Nigeria makes the need for credit financing and micro-lending necessary for small businesses to start and accelerate their operations.
ToNote | KYC, Fraud
ToNote is a digital documentation and verification infrastructure. In Nigeria, there is a lack of trust in the legal system and there is very limited legal awareness. ToNote is building a digital trust infrastructure for Africa. They help people sign, notarise and verify essential documents fully online. Through ToNote businesses are able to verify documents, verify consumers, and connect with a certified notary online. ToNote supports the prevention of consumer fraud and trust problems.
Reeple | Fraud, SMEs
Reeple is an artificial-intelligence-enabled SaaS platform that helps financial institutions analyse credit worthiness and detect fraud, while also helping borrowers determine their credit score and access credit facilities. It helps financial institutions reduce credit default rates by improving the underwriting process and eliminating errors associated with bias and manual underwriting. It’s worth noting that money problems in Nigeria are amongst the legal problem categories with the lowest resolution rate according to the latest JNS survey conducted in Nigeria.
Tunisia
Konnect | Money
Konnect aims to simplify complex financial flows for businesses and individuals by offering a comprehensive payment ecosystem. Findings of the JNS survey shows that 20% of legal problems in Tunisia are Money related problems. Surprisingly, people who struggle financially are not more likely than others to face financial disputes. By enabling seamless and efficient cross-border transactions, facilitating secure and swift cross-border payments, currency exchange services and providing users with visibility Konnect aims to prevent money related disputes and time lost on financial transactions.
Salaire.TN | Employment
Salaire.tn is a platform where individuals and job seekers gain knowledge about salary levels, wage trends, and compensation packages across different industries and job roles in Tunisia. Amongst the most common problem categories in Tunisia according to the JNS survey conducted in 2023 are employment problems. The findings showed that employment problems are very serious, yet have a low resolution rate. Innov’Edition SARL offers tools and resources to assist users in making informed decisions regarding their careers, negotiations, and salary expectations.
Arsela | Access to public services
« E-citoyen.tn » is a product owned by Aresela. It is an online platform in Tunisia that aims to promote citizen engagement and facilitate government-citizen interaction. It serves as a digital gateway for citizens to access various municipal services. The JNS Survey in 2023 reports public service disputes or challenges as the number one legal problem faced by Tunisians. E-citoyen.tn allows citizens to provide feedback, suggestions, or file complaints about public services they have received. This will enhance accountability and improve the quality of public services through citizen participation.
Lebanon
NaTakallam | Employment
NaTakallam is a social enterprise that connects language learners with displaced individuals, particularly refugees, for language practice and cultural exchange through online video chat. It offers language learning services while providing economic opportunities to displaced individuals who serve as language tutors. Refugees are barred from a right to work, which is fundamentally a legal issue. The digital economy falls outside of the judicial limitations of local work. By providing income-generating opportunities to displaced individuals as language tutors in the digital space, Natakallam helps them regain agency and financial stability.
Palestine
Oqoodi | Employment
Oqoodi is a platform that provides a secure online work environment that pushes the boundaries of freelance work in the MENA region by providing tools that help both freelancers and employers to manage their work efficiently. Oqoodi provides contract management, escrow & payment protection, task Management as well as payments and money Transfer facilitation. Managing projects, tracking negotiations, and receiving payments is challenging for freelancers. Many rely on freelance platforms, which deduct 13% to 23% from project budgets.
Jordan
Syrgo | Access to public services
Syrgo is an online marketplace that connects Syrians worldwide with trusted lawyers for affordable, efficient retrieval of legal documents and services. Their services include features such as document automation, contract management, legal research, compliance management, and collaboration tools. The Syrian conflict has left approximately 5.5 million people without access to their personal papers and legal documents, including birth certificates, IDs, and marriage certificates. This situation has resulted in severe limitations on their ability to receive humanitarian and development assistance, as well as restrictions on their movements.
Egypt
Hekouky | SME issues
Hekouky aims to address the challenges of complexity and inaccessibility often associated with legal and tax services, particularly for startups and SMEs in the Arabic-speaking world. Addressing the legal and justice-related problems faced by SMEs has a significant impact on their ability to succeed, contribute to the economy, create jobs, and drive positive social change. By offering clear guidance, templates, and resources, Hekouky streamlines complex legal and tax processes, making them more understandable and manageable for startups and SMEs.
Driven by our commitment to people-centred justice at HiiL, we are proud to accelerate the next generation of impact-driven startups that have built break-through solutions to help people with their everyday justice needs that we gather from the justice research we conduct in our focus countries.
Every week, we will share insights about each startup and their journey through the Accelerator programme on our social media channels. Follow us on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram to stay up-to-date.
About the Justice Accelerator
The Justice Accelerator is HiiL’s flagship innovation programme that funds, trains and coaches a global cohort of justice startups. It is the only startup programme and innovation ecosystem builder in the world entirely dedicated to access to justice. We seek startups that solve people’s justice problems and aspire for them to have access to justice at work, at home, in their neighbourhoods and in business.To support scale-ups further advanced in their growth and impact process, we have designed the Scaling Programme together with Growth Africa, a tailored programme to unblock growth challenges and ensure investment-readiness.
2022 was the year in which people-centred justice programming went from ‘How To Do It?’ to ‘Let’s Do It!’.
We saw this shift as we worked together with justice practitioners on improving access to justice. In close partnership with the ministries of justice of Niger and Burkina Faso, we completed two new national Justice Needs and Satisfaction surveys. In Nigeria, we worked with Kaduna State’s justice leaders to develop and share their commitments to realise innovative, affordable and responsive justice delivery, while in Ogun State, we collaborated with experts to draft Best Practice Guidelines for land and family justice problems. In Tunisia, similar Best Practice Guidelines were drafted to help with employment justice. And together with the City of The Hague, we developed a process to solve neighbour problems. Finally, we supported justice innovation through our Justice Accelerator programme which, in 2022, helped 12 startups scale up towards becoming game-changing initiatives to better prevent or resolve justice problems.
In 2022, HiiL helped drive the international agenda to build more support for the people-centred justice programming approach, bringing together data, evidence-based working, and innovation, as well as building an enabling environment and a movement to support that. We saw (and continue to see) that an increasing number of justice leaders and practitioners were embracing people-centred justice programming and wanted to start developing such programmes. At the same time, we experienced that finding the necessary funding, either from national budgets, development funding, or philanthropy, remains challenging. It is urgent that funders adapt to the huge opportunities that are now on the table to make concrete progress on SDG 16. In 2023, we will continue to focus on building the necessary funding partnerships required.
From food to music and business to entrepreneurship, Nigeria is one of the most ethnically diverse and dynamic countries in the world. In recent years, this energy has moved into the justice sector, especially in Lagos, Imo, Ogun, and Kaduna states, where HiiL, our Justice Accelerator, and partners have spurred globally-recognised justice innovations and prioritised people-centred justice. On 25 April, Nigeria took another step in this ambition with the launch of the 2023 Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) report.
“With this JNS report, we have an essential tool for understanding more comprehensively the needs of the population,” said Ijeoma Nwafor, HiiL’s Country Representative in Nigeria. “We can identify areas that require improvement and monitor the progress of various justice initiatives.”
Based on a survey of more than 6,500 adults, the 2023 JNS is the second study conducted in Nigeria and builds on data first collected in 2018. It was coordinated in partnership with CMRG Ltd, a marketing and research agency, and covers rural and urban areas in all six geopolitical zones across Nigeria.
“Justice systems play a central role in resolving and preventing disputes and daily legal problems that people experience,” said Theresa Smout, HiiL’s Programme Director of Nigeria. “However, justice systems alone can no longer deliver the outcomes people need in their most difficult moments that enable them to move on with their lives as quickly as possible. The data and findings contained in this report encourage meaningful action to drive transformation and to help actualise people-centred justice programming.”
Walking through the data, Patrick Kimararungu, Justice Sector Advisor at HiiL, highlighted important findings and details but also emphasised the human element in the report.
“The report has many data points,” said Patrick. “However, all this data, percentages, and graphs are also people’s stories. Think about the people you know or your own stories. We are gathering their data and we are following their stories.”
Compared to previous JNS surveys, this study will follow selected adults over the next four years to further understand their legal problems. The approach enables researchers to track the development and resolution of legal problems over time and to explore new questions following the first year of interviews from participants. Based on the research collected to date, we see that people in Nigeria perceive their legal problems as very serious.
Key data from the study
At least 81% of Nigerians experience at least one legal problem in the past year, with many facing multiple problems.
55% of all legal problems were resolved either partially or completely, with about 82% of those resolutions deemed fair or very fair.
The most common legal problem categories experienced by Nigerians include disputes with neighbours, domestic violence, land disputes, crime, and housing problems.
Approximately 86% of Nigerians with a legal problem take some form of action to address their most serious problem.
When addressing their most pressing legal problems, people often rely on their inner circle, frequently seeking help from family and friends.
Beyond one’s social network, the most frequent sources of help include the police (11%), community/traditional leaders (8%), religious authorities (6%), landlords (6%), local public authorities (5%), and lawyers (5%).
The report contains good news as well. For example, at least nine in 10 Nigerians take action to solve their legal problems. This encouraging fact affirms the importance of continuing to collect people-centred justice data and prioritise resources that address the most burdensome justice problems.
Stressing the implications further, Professor Nnamdi Obiaraeri from the Faculty of Law at Imo State University reminded the audience, “How fair is justice if it is not accessible, or attainable, or if it is delayed? A new normal is possible in Nigeria.”
Making people-centred justice real
“Today, Nigeria took another step as a global leader in applying the people-centred justice programming approach,” said Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL. “This approach was developed over the past years as the most promising way to make progress in tackling the huge justice crisis that the world is facing.”
People-centred justice is a systemic and integrated approach. It focuses on redesigning justice systems around the needs and experiences of people and the outcomes they require to move forward in their daily lives.
The programmatic approach is comprised of five pillars: Gathering data on people’s justice needs and experiences; Promoting evidence-based practice; Scaling innovations and service delivery models; Creating an enabling environment to sustain the results; and Strengthening the movement.
Taken together, they work to keep the focus on getting justice systems to holistically fulfill their potential for society and the economy.
In Nigeria, data is already used to develop evidence-based best practices, to innovate justice delivery models, and to work on creating the right enabling environment. Partners across the country are starting to do something cutting edge, something transformational, and something that will improve delivery of justice both in terms of quality and scale.
Development in Nigeria depends greatly on a justice sector that prioritises its people. “In the heart of every nation is justice,” said Y. C Maikyau, President of the Nigerian Bar Association. “That is why it is important for everyone to show interest in justice. That is how we ensure economic growth, and peace and harmony in our country. »
Through its partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, HiiL will continue implementing a people-centred justice programme in Nigeria that meets the vision articulated by Mr. Maikyau – a vision that integrates data collection, research, innovation and stakeholder engagement.
Make no mistake, however. HiiL is primarily here to create the space and support the stakeholders in country who must carry people-centred justice forward.
As Ijeoma said, “It is the stakeholder who will need to make decisions, design policies, and most importantly act! The valuable data in this report is not enough. Taking action will create impact in the daily lives of people in Nigeria. This is a collective effort.”
HiiL CEO Sam Muller added, “We are proud to work with you and we will continue with our commitment to advance people-centred justice in Nigeria and around the world. Let’s do this together!”
The Innovating Justice Fund makes its first investment in Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Pvt Ltd (HESPL), an India-based platform that delivers people-centred justice by making access to government welfare schemes easy and transparent.
The Hague and Delhi — The Innovating Justice Fund, a strategic partnership between HiiL and FOUNT, announces its first investment in Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions, taking part in a pre-series A round led by Acumen and joined by other investors such as Village Capital.
Haqdarshak bridges the gap between citizens and social welfare schemes. They do this by using tech and a network of agents called ‘haqdarshaks’ – most of them women, who assist beneficiaries with the application process. The company has digitised more than 7,500 welfare schemes in 11 vernacular languages. Haqdarshak is present in 24 states in India and has trained over 30,000 agents, providing benefits worth over INR 4200 crore (466 million euros) to over 2.7 million families.
Ronald Lenz, who represents HiiL on the Investment Committee of the Innovating Justice Fund shares: “We are thrilled to support Haqdarshak and their unique approach to deliver people-centred justice to low-income rural and urban communities.”
According to Bernadette Blom, managing partner at FOUNT, this investment “.. will enable Haqdarshak to expand its consumer focussed model significantly, particularly with the Yoyana card enabling clients to continue to discover and access welfare schemes they are eligible for”.
In December 2022, the CEO of Haqdarshak, Aniket Doegar, was awarded the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award-India, a recognition established by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Haqdarshak is also an alumnus of HiiL’s Justice Accelerator.
“Our vision is to improve socio-economic conditions and elevate the standard of living of communities,” said Aniket. “Ensuring ‘last-mile’ service delivery of government welfare and financial services is crucial to this.”
Impact investing in justice innovation
As a first-of-its-kind impact fund with a unique focus on SDG 16, the Innovating Justice Fund is a crucial component in people-centred justice programming. People-centred justice is a data and evidence driven approach aimed to resolve legal problems and prevent them from occurring with innovative solutions, tailored to people’s needs and creates opportunities for people to fully participate in their societies and economy.
All around the world, many people cannot get justice: 1.5 billion have a problem today they simply cannot solve. Investing in justice delivers reduced risk of conflict and instability, increased capacity to prevent and solve everyday justice problems, and greater opportunities for growth and prosperity. When people do not have access to property, labour or business rights, it is impossible for them to work their way out of poverty.
Like with Haqdarshak, game-changing innovation requires investments to enable the reach of scale. For 10 years, HiiL has been supporting justice startups around the world. Crowding in investment capital is essential to realise their growth and impact. That is why HiiL launched the Innovating Justice Fund in partnership with impact advisory and investment management firm FOUNT. This first investment is made with funds made available by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Innovating Justice Fund is currently raising additional funds to further increase its impact and improve people-centred justice by supporting high-potential, scalable justice entrepreneurs across the globe.
We are proud to have Haqdarshak as our first investment and look forward to supporting many more startups delivering impact on the ground.
For more information about the Innovating Justice Fund: ronald.lenz@hiil.org For media inquiries: emmy.dexel@hiil.org
Democracy and rule of law are under threat at a time when the world faces unprecedented challenges. This week a large group of states and organisations are coming together at the Summit of Democracy to face this challenge and to formulate responses. They build on their first meeting held in 2021. Access to justice must now be solidly added to the democracy agenda. It is as important to democracy as is the right to vote. Citizens are expected to and hopefully want to fully participate in their society and economy. A corollary of this is knowing that your voice will be heard if rights given to you are infringed upon. We know, more than ever, what needs to be done. Focus must now turn to action. We need more action. Now.
The challenge cannot be overstated. A shocking 5.1 billion people do not have adequate access to justice. Between half and two-thirds of the population over 18 years in most countries experienced one or more justice problems every 4 years. Capacity to deal with justice problems comes nowhere near what is needed. Research shows that courts or similar bodies only deal with around 5 to 10% of the justice problems. Lack of access most acutely impacts those most vulnerable. More than half of the respondents indicate that justice system failures lead to extreme stress and mental health issues, slightly less than half report losing a lot of time, and around a third report loss of income and serious damage to relationships. And again: the vulnerable and poor are far more adversely affected than others.
The UN Secretary-General concludes in his “Our Common Agenda” report: “many justice systems deliver only for the few”. Those that do get access experience justice systems as slow, complex, expensive, inaccessible and not all that effective. Slightly less than half of those that find a justice provider get a resolution. The societal and economic consequences of this are immense. They include political instability and serious challenges to democracy.
The good news is: we now know what is needed to deal with this challenge. The new approach is called people-centred justice programming: an integrated approach that puts the outcomes that people need at the centre and redesigns justice systems around people-centred outcomes. This people outcomes approach is similar to the approach taken by the public health sector in the 1970s. Importantly, this new approach to justice delivery is built on data (knowing the needs and experiences of people), evidence-based practice (developing and sharing the interventions that work best to resolve the most frequent and pressing problems people have), innovation (developing scalable and sustainable organisational models to get those interventions to where they are needed); and building an enabling financial, regulatory, and political environment for success. It is an approach that can be programmed, put into strategies and, because it is data-driven, managed much better than what is/was being done.
We increasingly encounter practitioners from the justice sector who want to start working in this way, from ministers and chief justices, to court administrators, lawyers and civil society leaders. There is an incredible opportunity for the Summit of Democracy to seize the moment to take steps to scale the people-centred justice programming. Now.
As well said by Ambassador Samantha Power, “democratic donor countries and private businesses must increase their investments in projects that elevate economic and social inclusion and strengthen democratic norms—decisions that ultimately yield not only more equitable results but also stronger development performance.” People-centred justice elevates economic and social inclusion, strengthens democratic norms and promotes political stability. We acknowledge that change is starting. USAID used the Summit to launch a new strategy that adopts this way of working. A group of states, some present at the Summit, are uniting in a Justice Action Coalition to provide a coordination hub. With its Global Roundtables on Access to Justice, the OECD is supporting research. The 2022 Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting put its weight behind this way of working. Further, the people-centred approach has a growing group of academic institutions, think tanks, and civil society organisations supporting it. In countries as wide apart as Kenya, the Netherlands and Niger programmes are starting to be developed.
In short: a growing army of do’ers is waiting to action the new approach. They urgently need the support from knowledge and implementation partners and from funders and they need support to gradually realign systems and incentives, including financial incentives, to ensure that people centred justice outcomes take centre stage. Continual research and development is needed to refine methods and to standardise data.
The data driven people-centred justice approach enables governments to measure ROI as when cast as a measurement of positive outcomes for individuals, families, communities, businesses and society as a whole. Philanthropists have a huge opportunity to contribute to this effort for justice, social inclusion, and equity. Businesses can contribute to this thrust with its innovation power. This people-centred paradigm requires new metrics for measuring success and it requires innovation and creativity. It does not necessarily require new funding. Rather, the new metrics can lead to better use of current funding.
The time for talking is over. So let’s take action to build a foundation for better societies.
1 The Hon. Allyson Maynard Gibson KC is a member of the Justice Leaders, former Attorney-General and Minister for Legal Affairs and Minister of Financial Services and Investment of The Bahamas. Dr. Sam Muller is the Founder and CEO of The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) and recipient of the 2022 SNS-Tällberg Global Leadership Award for his work on access to justice.
HiiL operates globally in half a dozen countries and counting. We’re also committed to people-centred justice at home in the Netherlands. Together with a consortium of partners, we are investing in research and evidence-based practice to reform and strengthen conflict resolution capabilities in the Netherlands.
Data shows that only 32% of pressing conflicts in the Netherlands are resolved by agreement or adjudication in a way that is experienced as fair. This number is down from 45% in 2009. Our mission is to reverse this trend and ensure by 2030 that at least 80% of conflicts get resolved or adjudicated in a fair way within a year.
This mission is underway thanks to a consortium of partners investing in research and development (R&D) and using evidence-based practices to employ a people-centred approach to delivering justice.
The justice sector in the Netherlands and elsewhere lacks the well-organised and sufficiently funded research and development we see in health care or tech. As a result, existing institutional justice services are overburdened and of little use for resolving everyday conflicts. Rigorous R&D can reveal fair, effective and responsive pathways to conflict resolution.
« Our analysis shows that effective conflict resolution is not yet part of the current mission of justice institutions in the Netherlands, » said Maurits Barendrecht, Director of the Netherlands programme at HiiL.
« People, businesses and governments urgently need better conflict resolution pathways, » added Tim van den Bergh, Justice Transformation Programme Officer.
Change is underway but happening slowly. Now, however, there is power in collective action. A consortium of 34 research units, including alternative dispute resolution providers, international experts, as well as the World Justice Project and the Municipality of The Hague, have come together to help address the inadequate conflict-solving capacity in the Netherlands. A Justice Sector Regulation Centre will address the ‘creation of an enabling environment’, a key pillar of people-centred justice programming. The R&D work will focus on seven conflict areas: sustainable use of scarce land, cooperation in SMEs, family conflicts, debt restructuring, neighbourhood disputes, effective criminal justice interventions, and recovery in the event of injury or large-scale injustices.
Applying methods from the health sector to support ‘evidence-based practice’, the consortium will iteratively develop pathways and guidelines to address each conflict area. They will also co-create and promote implementation plans together with practitioners and institutions. Rethinking the status quo and investing in ‘what works’ will put the Netherlands on a leading path to delivering people-centred justice and realising SDG16 – equal access to justice for all.
« Strengthening conflict resolution capacity is a manageable challenge, with limited costs, few risks and enormous economic and social potential, » said Maurits. « This is a wonderful challenge to do the right thing together. »
The coalition partners of the new programme include: HiiL, STAB, University of Groningen, Delft University of Technology, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Leiden University, Verwey-Jonker Institute, Utrecht University, Municipality of The Hague, VU University, Radboud University, SKGZ, stg. Finding Justice Together, Arizona State University, World Justice Project, The Hague Humanity Hub, Dutch Legal Tech, CILC, The Hague & Partners, stg. Museon-Omniverse.
The Justice Action Coalition, a pioneering group with the objective of ensuring equal access to justice for all, has recognised the potential of new innovations in transforming the justice system. Comprised of several countries and thought-leading organisations, the coalition champions the role of people-centred justice in bridging the access to justice gap. HiiL’s Justice Dashboard has launched an important pillar of people-centred justice, one that fuels innovations in the justice sector — the enabling environment.
Currently, regulations in the justice sector act as gatekeepers, keeping innovations from entering. Unlike innovations that offer a wide range of user-friendly and effective services, they force people into adversarial dispute resolutions that don’t consistently deliver good outcomes. These regulations are difficult to change owing to habit, and professional and organisational culture.
We need to open the justice system to innovation and change, or in other words, there needs to be an enabling environment for innovations to thrive. This enabling environment can be created by ‘forming a committed coalition of justice leaders at the national level’ and ‘establishing an enabling regulatory and financial framework’. On the Justice Dashboard’s new page ‘Enabling Environment’, we unpack this pillar of the people-centred justice movement.
A coalition of justice leaders from government, civil society organisations, religious groups, local communities, and academia can devise a shared vision which prioritises the outcomes that people need. They can materialise this vision by reallocating budgetary resources and reviewing existing policies and procedures. Such coalitions are beginning to take shape in Nigeria, the Netherlands and Uganda.
We unpack the ‘regulatory and financial framework’ in 3 sections: innovating rules of procedure, public-private partnerships or procurement and funding of courts and innovations.
In the recent past, innovating rules of procedure has become a topic of interest in the justice sector. The Insitute of the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) is undertaking a big project on unlocking legal regulation. Our section ‘Innovating rules of procedure’ showcases examples from around the world of innovations that have reimagined the way disputes are resolved in courts. It also outlines factors that justice leaders should take into account when innovating a procedure.
One way to change the financial framework is by adopting alternative funding arrangements like involving private players via public-private partnerships, procurement, or via complete privatisation. Promoting competition and avoiding monopolies in service provision, and deregulation can also help in this effort. To illustrate, Utah, Arizona and a few other states in the USA are trying to create a new tier of legal service providers who will provide certain services in particular legal areas for those who cannot afford a lawyer. We provide an overview of these arrangements and discuss their merits and demerits on the ‘Make or buy? Enabling environment for public-private partnerships and creative sourcing of people-centred justice services’ section. For justice innovations that struggle to raise funds when scaling and improving, we share insights on revenue and investment models of successful innovations based on our experience of supporting innovations via HiiL’s Justice Accelerator. Meanwhile, institutions in the formal justice system also struggle to raise funds due to budgetary constraints. We propose alternative sources of revenue for such courts including user fees, a pay-as-you-go system, targeted subsidies to users and many others. A more detailed explanation of these can be found in the section ‘Financing courts and innovations’.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) launches a detailed report on the justice needs and journeys of people in Tunisia
TUNIS – On 21 March 2023, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) launched a report detailing the extent of legal problems that impact the lives of Tunisians. The Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) study was released at the Laico Hotel in Tunis where several high-level officials attended, including Mr. Kamel Eddine Ben Hsan, Head of Cabinet at the Tunisian Ministry of Justice and representative of Mrs. Leila Jaffel, Minister of Justice; Dean of the Bar Association, Mr. Hatem Mziou; Her Excellency the Dutch Ambassador to Tunisia, Mrs. Josephine Frantzen; and Dr. Sam Muller, the founder and CEO of The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law.
The JNS study is based on interviews conducted by HiiL with more than 5,000 randomly selected Tunisian adults. It provides ample evidence of people’s experiences including the types of legal problems facing Tunisians, what actions they took to solve those problems, and if they felt they managed to reach a fair resolution. The JNS also shed light on how people in Tunisia view the quality of procedures, including the fairness of outcomes and the cost of accessing justice.
« We see that more than ever, people and businesses are asking justice systems to be better, » said Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL. « If our societies are to reduce violence, protect the environment, address inequality and repair broken social contracts, then they will need revamped justice systems that respond effectively – and cost-effectively – to people’s needs. »
The JNS report provides accurate data that can be used by decision-makers, justice service providers, and innovators in Tunisia to enhance access to justice. This can be achieved by focusing on the most burdensome legal problems affecting people, as well as strengthening the most effective justice services and supporting legal innovations that enhance the right to access justice.
Key findings from the study:
One in three people in Tunisia experienced at least one legal problem in the past year.
Roughly 23% of all legal problems are completely or partially resolved but only half of those resolutions are assessed as being fair.
The four most common categories of legal problems affecting Tunisians are related to neighbour relations, money disputes, issues around public services, and employment problems.
The majority of legal problems never reach the formal justice system. When seeking help, 25% of Tunisians turn to family while 15% seek help from friends or neighbours. Only 7% of Tunisians engage a lawyer and 4% go to court.
In total, people in Tunisia experience 5 million legal problems every year. This has a significant impact on social and economic development throughout the country.
Addressing these challenges in access to justice is part of people-centred justice programming, a systemic and integrated approach taking shape globally and emerging in Tunisia. It enables justice institutions, practitioners, implementers, and donors to put people at the centre of their work, thus focusing on outcomes for people.
The people-centred justice approach has five components: 1) Gathering data on people’s justice needs and experiences; 2) Using evidence-based practice and promoting ‘what works’; 3) Supporting scalable and sustainable justice innovations and service delivery models; 4) Creating an enabling environment to sustain the results; and 5) Strengthening the movement towards SDG16.3 – equal access to justice for all. Together, they keep the focus on getting justice systems to fulfil their potential to society and the economy.
“The JNS report is the first of these components,” said Ronald Lenz, Director of the Tunisia programme at HiiL. “The data it contains can help create impact at scale which can only be achieved through more collaboration. We welcome the government and other organisations to explore this data and to work with us so the data can be impactful in their own work.”
A presentation on Tunisia’s people-centred justice programme took place during the JNS launch event. Implemented in partnership with local stakeholders, the programme supports existing efforts underway by the Tunisian Ministry of Justice. These efforts are aimed at increasing access to justice.
The launch also provided a space for interaction and networking between key actors in the justice sector. This included justice practitioners, service providers, and innovators in Tunisia with a view to promoting legal innovation and enhancing people’s access to justice.
“These relationships are key to realising long-awaited progress in how Tunisia’s justice system helps people,” said Roger El Khoury, HiiL’s Senior Justice Sector Advisor and Representative in the MENA Region.
“Such progress towards people-centred justice has a crucial role in preventing and resolving conflicts,” added Raja Mazeh, HiiL’s country manager in Tunisia. “It also brings immense social and economic benefits because investments in responsive justice systems create strong economies too.”
Taken altogether, the findings and implications outlined in the report are based on the need to improve people’s lives in Tunisia. The recommendations support policymakers and providers of justice services as they work to improve how legal problems get prevented or resolved in a fair and effective way.
At HiiL, we strive to ensure that justice sector professionals spend time in ways that people expect and direct services towards those priorities. HiiL’s CEO, Sam Muller, added that collaborating with Tunisia stems from this shared commitment.
“In 2019 at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Tunisia was among the first countries in the world to highlight the new people-centred justice approach and committed to applying it by signing on to The Hague Declaration on Access to Justice. Today, Tunisia has taken another step towards the implementation of people-centred justice.”
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator announces winners of the 2023 Innovating Justice Award
Each year, HiiL welcomes selected startups to join its annual Justice Accelerator programme. This year, the programme culminated in the Demo Day on 15 February 2023. The event under the theme “investing in a new vision of justice startups”, emphasised data-driven solutions, technology and social entrepreneurship, all in service of closing the justice gap.
The 2023 top prize went to Mama Fua App, which vets and trains domestic workers and connects them to clients. In Kenya, women domestic workers are vulnerable to poor employment conditions and different forms of (sexual) exploitation and abuse by their employers.
To address these issues, Mama Fua App conducts a background check on domestic workers, and verifies their identity, age and criminal record. Lack of verification leads to various issues, such as hiring underage workers and an increased risk of petty theft or violence. Besides providing technical training, Mama Fua App trains women on their rights when it comes to decent working conditions and gender-based violence. When an issue arises, women get a wide range of support from legal to psychological.
“Any domestic worker, such as a cleaning lady, outside the Mama Fua App structure is a possible victim of sexual assault, unjust pay and minimal access to jobs,” said Stephine Ngutah, CEO of the Mama Fua App. “Domestic work is the largest employment industry of African women in Kenya. That’s why Mama Fua seeks to professionalise the work through education and training. To date, 4,000 women in Nairobi and Eldoret have already benefited from Mama Fua, earning between 10 and 20 dollars a day […] this is the reason why Mama Fua perfectly mends the justice gap, creating mutually beneficial outcomes for both employers and workers.”
According to the latest survey on the number of domestic workers in Kenya from the International Labour Organisation in 2011, there are 2 million domestic workers in the country. Mama Fua App has so far served over 3 thousand of them. This is against the backdrop of employment justice being amongst one of the top 3 most serious justice problems in Kenya (HiiL Justice and Satisfaction Survey, 2017).
Second and third place went to Willminds, founded by Pascale Dahrouj and E-Arbitrator, founded by Angelo Kweli. Based in Lebanon, Willminds provides alternative dispute resolution methods as a way to settle disputes without the need to proceed to litigation. According to the HiiL Justice and Satisfaction Survey in 2017, 68% of people in Lebanon experience justice problems, whereas only 40% partially or completely resolve them. Alternative dispute resolutions are a relatively new method to resolve justice issues in Lebanon. E-Arbitrator, from Rwanda, is a digital platform that helps SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) resolve disputes through a qualified arbitrator. In this way, the cases are resolved faster and at a lower cost. E-Arbitrator largely focuses on cross-border traders in the East African Community (EAC). According to the 2020 EAC Trade and Investment Report, the value of cross border trade in EAC is estimated at 6 Billion USD and growing. Willminds and E-Arbitrator were awarded €10,000 and €5,000, respectively.
In addition to the three winners above, the other nine startups from this year’s accelerator programme included:
Legal Point Services (Kenya): A virtual workspace for legal services where individuals or businesses get access to verified lawyers.
Sidebrief (Nigeria): A digital platform that provides a wide range of legal and regulatory services to startups and SMEs from registration to compliance in multiple
XanaHealth (Rwanda): An online portal working with health facilities to digitise patient records, invoices and insurance claims in order to detect and prevent insurance fraud.
Nyumbani Online (Kenya): An online platform that digitises rent payments and prevents disputes between tenants and property owners by eliminating payment fraud and unjustifiable rent increments.
Silqu (Kenya): An online platform that allows property owners/managers and tenants to track all related transactions with transparency and ease.
Crediometer (Nigeria): It’s a digital tool that provides safe, secure and transparent transactions to micro SMEs, also including the unbanked
Atarapay (Nigeria): Using its escrow function, it verifies transactions between sellers and buyers and protects against fraud.
ElBaladiya (Tunisia): With its online platform, it connects people to their municipalities to access their services.
Idaraty (Tunisia): Through its digital platform, it helps public institutions optimise their internal processes in providing information, administrative procedures and more.
Demo Day 2023 was live-streamed for the third consecutive year, where hundreds tuned in from around the world to watch the pitches of each startup. “Beyond the pitches, HiiL Justice Accelerator’s Demo Day is a knowledge-sharing event where entrepreneurs from across the globe can gain insights, make connections, and learn about the trends reshaping the justice sector,” said Iran Huffels, the Accelerator’s Programme Manager.
You can watch and re-watch the full event recording on our YouTube channel:
Scaling Gamechangers is one of the core components of people-centred justice, a systemic and integrated programming approach to increasing access to justice. HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme is key to achieving this outcome. It is the only startup accelerator programme dedicated to scaling innovative startup ideas in the justice sector.
“To close the justice gap, we need to seek out-of-the-box solutions that address people’s problems in the fastest, most affordable and easiest way,” said Iran Huffels, Programme Manager of HiiL’s Justice Accelerator. “And although justice practitioners around the world are working to address this gap, an innovative, financially sustainable and scalable business model is also essential to successfully transforming how justice gets delivered. The point is to help people move forward with their daily lives.”
To that end, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme identifies entrepreneurs working to transform the justice sector. Of the dozens of innovations around the world, a hand-picked group each year meets our rigorous criteria to participate in our flagship accelerator programme.
Looking to 2023 and beyond
With Demo Day marking the end of the 2022 cycle, the call for applications for the 2023 accelerator programme is now open. Until March 31, 2023, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator will accept applications from the next generation of justice innovators who come up with innovative, financially sustainable and scalable solutions that help people prevent or resolve their most pressing needs.
Once selected, the startups will go through a 5-month long programme, which includes workshops, coaching and mentorship. There will be plenty of opportunities to make connections with other founders and stakeholders throughout the programme. The programme will culminate in the next Demo Day in February 2024. We look forward to seeing you then!
What kind of future do you envision for justice? How can justice work for people? What role do innovators and entrepreneurs play in making people-centred justice a reality?
On February 15, 2023, 12 justice innovators from Lebanon, Tunisia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Kenya will showcase their innovative solutions for increasing access to justice. Demo Day is the capstone event of our annual Innovating Justice Challenge.
The event takes place 16:00 – 17:30 EAT, and is open to everyone
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme is the only startup incubator dedicated to improving access to justice. “An innovative and scalable business model is essential to successfully making an impact,” said Iran Huffels, Accelerator Programme Manager. “These startups go beyond SDG 16 in promoting inclusive societies and providing access to justice for all. Their impact is far greater. For example, in making people-centred justice possible, they reduce inequality (SDG 10), contribute to fair employment and economic growth (SDG 8), and facilitate people’s access to services and safety toward building sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11),” said Iran.
These startups go beyond SDG 16 in promoting inclusive societies and providing access to justice for all. Their impact is far greater.
Demo Day will also highlight our ideation and incubation programmes delivered by our hubs in Tunis, Nairobi and Lagos. It will also feature the bespoke scaling programme for ready-to-scale startups, as well as the recently launched Innovating Justice Fund.
HiiL’s mission is to help 150 million people prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems by 2030. We believe that people-centred justice solutions and programming are the only way forward.
Driven by data and evidence, we identify and support best practices and champion getting what works to the hands of the people. To make this happen, we collaborate with a variety of stakeholders, including justice practitioners, regulatory bodies, funders and innovators to build an environment where scalable and game-changing interventions can thrive. It is our commitment to the financial sustainability potential of these interventions that drives our support to justice startups in the Justice Accelerator programme. Startups are a key driver in closing the justice gap. They come up with breakthrough ideas and implement them in ways that large businesses or institutions often can’t.
We believe in a new vision of justice and we invite you to join us!
To close the justice gap, we need to do more than improve the current justice system. We need to innovate and bring new services to scale that can prevent or resolve justice problems for everybody. Startups are a key driver in this transformation of the justice sector. They can devise breakthrough ideas that large businesses or institutions often can’t.
That’s why we run our annual global Justice Accelerator, the only startup programme and innovation ecosystem builder in the world dedicated entirely to access to justice. The programme funds, trains and coaches a cohort of justice startups. During the 5-month long programme, we provide:
€10,000 non-equity funding
Workshops delivered by industry specialists on a variety of topics from impact measurement to marketing, commercial strategy and financial modelling
A dedicated coach and a network of expert mentors
Access to a HiiL’s global network of justice stakeholders and practitioners, as well as top-notch research and development
International exposure and potential investment opportunities
Chance to win up to €20,000 at Demo Day
To date, we have supported over 150 startups so far!
2023 could be filled with economic and social disruption and that’s no less true for the rule of law sector. Justice practitioners around the world are now engaged in a new way of thinking towards access to justice. The Tallberg Foundation recently interviewed HiiL’s CEO Sam Muller where he discussed the emergence of building ‘people-centred justice’ that works for everyone.
Today, justice practitioners are working towards positive change. They are shifting focus on how people attain their justice needs. Success is no longer measured in the number of cases processed but rather assessed in the outcomes based on people’s needs. In other words, helping people resolve their justice issues in a way so they can move forward in their daily lives.
We see this ‘people-centred justice’ approach taking root around the world. From Nigeria to Kenya and from Tunisia to Colombia, the systemic and integrated approach to justice involves five components: gathering and working from data, promoting evidence-based practice, creating an enabling environment, scaling innovations in the justice sector, and strengthening a movement to sustain change. Now, people-centred justice programming is receiving more attention and 2023 could be its breakout year.
Maintaining this momentum towards people-centred justice will create immense social and economic benefits which leads to fairer and more prosperous futures.
Together with partners, we at HiiL believe in working towards more peaceful, just and inclusive societies. That is the essence of SDG16.3 – equal access to justice for all.
The latest in a series of HiiL policy briefs exploring outcomes-based working in the justice sector, “Measuring the justice outcomes that survivors of intimate partner violence seek: An updated prototype” offers a practical tool designed to help practitioners deliver justice services that are truly people-centred in terms of the outcomes they deliver. The relationship between these three reports is explained here.
In a HiiL policy brief published last month, “How to figure out ‘What Works’ in people-centred justice,” Dr. Martin Gramatikov discusses the challenge of evidence-based working in the justice sector and calls for greater action on the part of researchers, policy-makers, and funders to address it.
HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) surveys consistently show that a small percentage of the legal problems people experience are resolved fairly. Yet our tools for understanding why so many justice interventions fail – and what makes those that do not fail successful – are limited. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – often considered the golden standard for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions – are costly, require large sample sizes, and can be difficult to organise ethically in a justice environment. As a result, they are few and far between. And although the body of empirical legal research is growing, experimental research that makes possible reliable attribution of positive outcomes to particular interventions remains rare.
Dr. Gramatikov defines “what works” as interventions that alter the outcomes of justice journeys positively. At the same, he points out that there is little agreement about what is meant by justice “outcomes.” Because the vast majority of justice data available is administrative rather than people-centred, outcomes are often understood as case outcomes, such as case processing time or the number of convictions or settlements reached. Case outcomes reflect the processes and priorities of legal institutions but tell us little about the needs and goals of people seeking justice. Clarifying what we mean when we talk about justice outcomes is at the top of the research agenda Dr. Gramatikov sets out for identifying “what works” to prevent and resolve people’s most pressing legal problems.
In a policy brief published last year, “Focusing on outcomes for people,” Manon Huchet-Bodet and I took up this challenge and made a case for a new kind of outcomes-based working in the justice sector. We defined a people-centred justice outcome as “a positive result or change in well-being that a person with a legal problem achieves through the resolution process.” Beginning with a focus on a particularly intractable legal problem – intimate partner violence (IPV) – we carried out qualitative research that identified 21 outcomes that survivors of IPV across three different counties typically seek.
Our next challenge was to understand how progress towards these 21 survivor-centred outcomes could be measured. We consulted eight experts in empirical legal research, restorative justice, and outcomes measurement to find out. In a follow-up study published today, “Measuring the outcomes that survivors of intimate partner violence seek: An updated prototype,” we integrated their advice to develop a survivor-centred outcomes measurement tool.
This tool provides an example of what outcomes-based working in the justice sector can look like. It can be used by practitioners to more holistically understand the kind of help that IPV survivors need, and assess to what extent the help they provide (whether in the form of an intervention or a referral) “works” in the sense of delivering the outcomes that a given client has identified as most important. It also empowers IPV survivors to make their voices heard in the resolution process, and provides new insight into the justice outcomes that IPV survivors seek and achieve.
If over time, justice practitioners begin working across disciplines to achieve a shared set of outcomes for IPV survivors in their community, we believe that a more responsive, holistic, and effective justice system will begin to emerge. Shifting our focus from what the current justice system can provide to the kind of help people really need can eventually make way for legal and regulatory changes that more fundamentally transform and integrate the way we deliver justice services.
In an otherwise challenging atmosphere with climate change disasters, rising inflation, economic recession, rising authoritarianism, polarisation, plummeting trust levels, and the war in Ukraine, the past months have also had a bright spot. People-centred justice programming is going from ‘How To Do It?’ to ‘Let’s Do It!’. That’s good for the promise of SDG 16 to provide access to justice for all. It is not a reason for complacency. To the contrary, efforts must be doubled to now make it happen.
“If an executive had fallen asleep in 2019 and just woke up, she wouldn’t recognise the business world of November 2022.” says a recent McKinsey blog.
That also applies to justice. In 2019, the Task Force on Justice worked out the size of the justice gap and launched the people-centred justice approach as the best shot to close it, an approach that is as simple and logical as it is difficult: redesign justice systems around the needs and experiences of people and the outcomes they need.
Since then most of the work has focussed on ‘How To Do It’.
Five components emerged that must be integrated into a programme or strategy. These are data on justice needs, evidence-based working, innovation, an enabling environment, and building a movement to keep it going.
Data is the crucial starting point. Knowing what the most prevalent and serious justice problems are, who has them, what their journey to justice looks like, the rate at which problems are prevented or resolved and outcomes achieved, and the impact all this has on people, communities and the economy. Work was done on how to strengthen national statistical offices to collect justice data. The OECD and the Open Society Foundation published a guide to doing legal needs surveys. The World Justice Project continues to update the WJP Rule of Index and is sharing legal needs data through its Atlas of Legal Needs Surveys. HiiL shared its growing Justice Dashboard. The Open Government Partnership set up a justice practice group.
Evidence-based practice is the second element. What works best to resolve land problems, and employment disputes, or to ensure that a forced court decision is only used when there are no other options? Simply put: if best practices are developed and widely shared, justice delivery will improve. It is, however, not that simple: weaving evidence-based working into the whole system requires skills, systems, and budgets that are not present in most ministries of judiciaries.
The third element is innovation. Getting the interventions that work best for as many people as possible, when they need it, based on sustainable funding models. Traditional courts and law firms continue to be important as delivery models but are not sufficient. The bigger trend here is finding ways to connect the formal and informal justice mechanisms in a more effective way. A sub-report of the Task Force on Justice on innovation sets out what is needed to make innovation happen and signals some trends. HiiL shared research on seven gamechangers: generic delivery models that can be adapted to specific environments and that can run on the basis of sustainable funding models.
Fourth: we need an enabling environment. Without this, change will be limited, not attract enough funding, and certainly not scale. This is perhaps the most underestimated element of the people-centred justice approach. Those investing political or real capital need to know that a game-changing innovation they back will not stay a small pilot forever because of rigid procurement rules, the inability to conclude public-private partnerships or the risk of a violation of the rules that govern courts and legal services. That environment will also have what Chief Justice Koome of Kenya calls “shared leadership” – a way of leading that reaches across silos, even outside the justice sector. It operates on the basis of outcome-based targets in all its strategies and budgets.
Finally, we need to build a movementto sustain the change.
So now, Let’s Do It!
At the beginning of 2022, USAID published its new draft rule of law policy, which has the people-centred justice approach at the core. It highlights a renewed focus on delivery, outcomes, and a data-driven and evidence-based way of working. It is expected to get final and full approval early next year.
In February, the UN General Assembly held a consultation session on people-centred justice, as part of the follow-up to the report of the UN Secretary-General Our Common Agenda and his work on a new rule of law vision for the UN. In response to the Secretary-General’s assessment that institutions – justice institutions included – are not delivering enough for people, I expressed the hope that his new vision will put delivery for people at the centre. We understand that this is being picked up. The new vision will, it is said, be published early next year.
In March, policy briefs on three gamechangers were published: community justice services, user-friendly contracts and one-stop-shop dispute resolution. These briefs were developed with a working group of experts and set out critical success factors to make them work. HiiL also facilitated a process for the City of The Hague to develop a process to solve neighbour problems – working from outcomes and best practices (only available in Dutch).
In April, a dialogue on making people-centred justice programming happen was held, involving 12 justice practitioners from countries where we work: Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, the Netherlands and the USA. The business case for moving in this direction was clear for them: it is good for the economy. Coming together as justice leaders is a critical step, they concluded: “[at] its core, delivering justice involves interactions between people who commit themselves to making people-first choices”.
People-centred justice programming seeks to focus on outcomes. What does that mean? HiiL published a policy brief to better understand this. The outcomes that people look for when they seek justice and support have not been that well defined. The policy brief identifies a list of eight general justice outcomes that people seek when they are faced with a legal problem and aims to support justice leaders and practitioners in the challenging task of doing this.
In May, the Justice Action Coalition launched its 2023 Justice Appeal, challenging themselves and other countries “to come to the SDG Summit in September 2023 with data and evidence to demonstrate their contribution to closing the global justice gap” and appealing to “regional bodies, international organisations, foundations, philanthropists, other donors, data collection and research institutions and relevant private sector actors to provide coherent support to national and local actors.” This is a call to action: stop talking and showcase examples of doing the people-centred justice approach. The Coalition is also working to set up a more permanent secretariat to support that.
In June, the World Justice Forum brought the SDG16 community together, for the first time since Covid. The Final Statement on Building More Just Communities emphasised the importance of data and collaboration between governments, justice sector regulators, entrepreneurs, and legal professionals to stimulate innovation and the scaling up interventions that work best.
Justice innovation continued to become concrete. The World Justice Project introduced and supported five innovations, all people-centred and including access, transparency, equality, and data. In July, HiiL shared the next generation of justice startups in the 2022 cohort. Tackling justice issues of Crime, Land, Family, Neighbours and SMEs the 15 startups come from Nigeria, Tunisia, Rwanda, Kenya and Lebanon. They joined an intense programme of workshops, masterclasses, and mentorship. The Innovation Hub East Africa worked on innovations in Somalia, Rwanda and Kenya, the latter with a focus on family justice.
In September, governments from 37 OECD countries met with leading researchers at the 2022 OECD Global Access to Justice Roundtable. The meeting reiterated the focus on people and outcomes. What became clear is that people-centred justice programming is happening, but also that most initiatives are relatively small and isolated. A more systemic and focused programming approach is needed. At that meeting, HiiL launched its Guide to People-Centred Justice Programming, bridging together what is now known about making the transformation to this way of working.
In the latter half of the year, two new national Justice Needs and Satisfaction surveys were completed in close partnership between the ministries of justice of Niger and Burkina Faso and HiiL. These countries follow around 20 countries who have done the same: establishing a baseline and building the capacity to keep collecting and sharing such data.
Notable progress has been made in Nigeria. Work on people-centred justice is happening in three states: Imo, Ogun, and Kaduna. In November, Kaduna’s justice and judiciary leaders publicly shared their commitments to realise innovative, affordable and responsive justice delivery. The need for solutions around three justice needs – crime, police and money – is prioritised and outcome-based goals and pathways to solutions are provided. These commitments represent meaningful, realistic first steps.
Action continued. The Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting in late November adopted an Outcome document that reiterated the people-centred justice approach, the importance of working on the basis of data and opening up to innovation. The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat, Rt. Hon. Baroness Scotland made it simple: we need justice transformation.
Towards the end of the year, people-centred justice received some prizes. Aniket Doegar of Haqdarshak, a tech platform that connects citizens with their eligible government welfare schemes, was awarded the 13th Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award – India, established by Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Haqdarshak helps many people in India get access to public services, in this case, welfare schemes in a people-centred way. HiiL’s Justice Accelerator has been able to contribute to Haqdarshak’s growth and success since its inception in 2016, and HiiL hopes to continue to do so in the future. In addition, the cause and people-centred justice approach we are all working towards received recognition when, in December, I was awarded the Tällberg-SNS-Eliasson Leadership Award in December.
It is clear from 2022. We are at a turning point moment. Three things then come together. A deep crisis. An acute sense for action. And a promise: a credible, hopeful, way forward. All three are in play now. Turning point moments are rare, and they cannot be missed.
There is a hard push ahead of us in the remaining seven years of the 2030 Agenda to achieve SDG16 and the target of access to justice for all. Our conversations with justice practitioners at the national level and with international actors who have funding, networks, and knowledge to contribute to scaling like the EU, UNDP, and World Bank lead me to believe that there is both a genuine yearning for a better approach and an embracing of the people-centred justice programming way of working.
In 2023 we must make this happen. We hope to work with more justice leaders and practitioners at the national level. We hope that the Justice Action Coalition and other international actors will now fully embrace the data-driven, evidence-based, innovation-focused, and participatory approach of people-centred justice programming and support scaling this way of working. This is not just an ask for more funding; spending the available resources well, on the right things, will come a long way.
Our 2022 Policy Briefs offer insights and recommendations for justice practitioners working to make SDG16.3 a reality.
In 2022, HiiL introduced policy briefs to advance people-centred justice programming. Focused on particular challenges related to innovating the justice sector, these resources offer practical insights, evidence, and research-based solutions and recommendations on how to implement people-centred justice.
Concerns remain over how justice systems inadequately respond to people’s needs, “delivering only for the few.” People-centred justice puts people and the outcomes they need at the centre, not institutions and procedures. Our first policy brief details the five main investments for realising this paradigm-shifting approach. Learn more
An outcomes-based approach will increase access to high-quality justice. Our latest policy brief advises justice sector leaders on eight general justice outcomes and how to shift the focus from institutions to people when defining and monitoring outcomes. An accompanying case study focused on intimate partner violence helps demonstrate how additional problem-specific outcomes can be defined. Learn more
“What works” is a crucial yet still unanswered question in the justice field. The policy brief aims to provide evidence-based insights on effective interventions in the field of justice and to encourage further research in this area. It calls for urgent policy, research, and funding actions to address four distinct aspects of the problem. Learn more
What game-changing factors can help reimagine how justice gets delivered? Over the years, HiiL has identified characteristics and service delivery models that contribute to justice innovation. This series of three policy briefs examine Community Justice Services, User-friendly Contracts, and One-Stop-Shop Dispute Resolution systems. Learn more
If our societies are to reduce violence, tackle corruption, protect the environment, address inequality and repair broken social contracts, they will need to revamp justice systems so they respond effectively – and cost-efficiently – to people’s needs.
We hope these policy briefs will assist justice sector leaders as they work tirelessly towards making SDG16.3 a reality.
Every day hundreds of millions of people need the law to resolve land disputes, debt issues, family disagreements, disputes with neighbours and many other legal issues. The parties, the issues at stake, and the contexts are always unique, but it is common wisdom that some pathways to solutions are more effective than others. Knowledge about what “generally” works is a crucial ingredient for an effective and people-centred justice system which aims to provide access to justice for all.
In this policy brief, we explore the question of « what works » in justice. The policy brief aims to provide evidence-based insights on effective interventions in the field of justice and to encourage further research in this area. Not surprisingly, there are no quick fixes.
Challenges to understanding « what works » in justice include a lack of robust data, disagreements on the meaning of justice outcomes, and a lack of understanding of the full range of interventions needed to resolve legal problems fairly. To address these challenges and improve access to justice, it is necessary to adopt an evidence-based approach, including gathering more people-centred data, defining justice outcomes more broadly, and viewing interventions as packages of activities rather than individual components.
Our recommendations target the infrastructural layer of access to justice knowledge. Intended audiences are the justice systems designers who seek to realise people-centred justice. We also address the national planners who wish to understand how evidence can be applied in the planning process. The policy brief calls for action in four distinct areas:
Shift the focus towards the outcomes of justice
Clarify the concept of justice outcomes
Define the justice interventions rigorously
Delve deeper into the modalities of “What works”
We encourage justice leaders and practitioners to engage actively in the effort to deliver justice effectively and at scale. This requires embracing evidence-based approaches and the systematic pursuit of knowledge about “what works” in justice. Without such knowledge, the justice gap will only continue to widen.
The policy brief and the accompanying background paper are available below:
The Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat, Rt. Hon. Baroness Scotland, made it simple in her opening words: we need justice transformation. Her words were heeded by the Commonwealth Law Ministers who met in Mauritius on 23, 24 and 25 November. The Outcome Document of the meeting reiterates the importance of access to justice, people-centred justice, the importance of working on the basis of data and opening up to innovation.
A foundation of six
The Commonwealth has a good track record on access to justice. In 2019 the Law Ministers Meeting adopted the Colombo Declaration on Equal Access to Justice. In it, they commit to six things:
Putting outcomes at the centre: access to justice is not just about “access to dispute resolution mechanisms” but more about “equality of outcomes”.
Facilitate data collection on legal needs and the experience of people on their justice journeys.
Use “people-friendly approaches”, including technology.
Use the leverage of the Commonwealth governance structures at the both political and technical level to promote access to justice and rule of law.
Use the Commonwealth to share experiences and best practice.
Continue to provide “collective leadership” to ensure that the access to justice and rule of law goals of SDG16 are delivered.
Taking people-centred justice seriously
The Outcome Document adopted in Mauritius flows directly from this. The Ministers, supported by the Secretariat, are taking the shift to people-centred justice programming seriously. Some of the key elements of the action plan include the development of an access to justice toolkit and a small claims court app, a Commonwealth legal knowledge exchange portal, the implementation of people-centred justice projects, the development of the toolkit for justice ministers who have just been appointed to help them through the first 100 days, an integrated family court project and model contracts in investment, energy and extractives.
What we see is that people-centred programming is given concrete hands and feet. The Ministers recognise the need for a shift to a more evidence-based, data-driven way of working. One practical example was the request to the Secretariat to work on best practices to deal with the challenge of Child, Early and Forced Marriage. They also recognise that improvement strategies should encompass both formal and informal modes of prevention and dispute resolution. Some of the gamechangers to more and better justice delivery that HiiL’s research has also found are referenced as examples to follow: community justice centres, user-friendly contracts, one-stop shop tribunals, and online legal information services and advice.
Inspired by a presentation by Richard Susskind the Ministers embraced the value that innovation and technology can bring to justice resolution processes. The 100 Day Toolkit can be used to include what is being learned about people-centred justice programming in this toolkit, this way of working can spread and develop. The Justice Leaders will be able to offer their experience to this.
Keeping it going
To keep the pace going, the Ministers also set up an advisory Law Ministers Action Group (LMAG) “to provide guidance and advice to the Secretary-General (…) on strategies to strengthen the rule of law and equal access to justice” as outlined in SDG16 and the Colombo Declaration on Equal Access to Justice. This aligns the working level senior advisers, the ministers and the Secretariat.
This was a significant meeting, which has clearly taken the commitment of the Commonwealth to SDG16 and the target of justice for all a step further. It went beyond proclaiming principles only. We were honoured to have been asked to address the meeting and look forward to the next meeting, which Tanzania will host.
We should have started yesterday! There is an urgency to help the people of Syria that cannot wait until there is peace in Syria…
This is the story of the Syria Justice Innovation Process. The story of a diverse group of Syrians from all walks of life who decided to put their differences aside to achieve one goal: help the people of Syria solve their daily most pressing justice problems in simple, innovative, and impactful ways. Hand in hand they managed to reach more than 200,000 Syrians. They helped women, children, refugees, and families attain a brighter future.
What is their story and how did they manage to make an impact?
Since 2018, the Syria Justice Innovation Process (SJIP) has identified the legal problems facing the people of Syria. With support and expertise from committed justice practitioners, SJIP has produced practical and innovative tools to help address Syrians’ most pressing daily legal problems. This effort has involved forging new partnerships, coordinating knowledge platforms, and financing innovative models to scale justice innovations in Syria.
✓ Six justice innovation goals
The first step of the SJIP journey revolved around a series of four dialogues. Based on research and technical sessions, the team assessed the everyday legal problems of Syrians and developed a set of six Justice Innovation Goals:
Women’s protection
Access to personal documentation
Housing, land, and property rights
Child protection
Access to public services such as healthcare and education
Safety and protection
At the end of the fourth dialogue, the participants prioritised two of these six goals: reducing violence against women and providing safe access to personal documentation. Both goals were judged as the ones the stakeholders could influence the most in the coming three years considering their knowledge and expertise.
The innovation process
The second step of these Syrians’ journey was the innovation process. The purpose of the innovation process was to help Syrians solve their daily legal problems in the two topics of violence against women and personal documentation and make a positive impact on their lives through innovation. The innovation process consisted of two components:
Two Justice innovation Labs: Some Syrian experts took part in Justice Innovation Labs that emphasised a systemic, collaborative, and experimental approach to justice. The sessions combined evidence-based approaches to understand actual needs on the ground. This, in turn, led the group to devise innovative solutions that could empower women subject to violence or help Syrians access their personal documents.
Small-scale initiatives: Additionally, HiiL scouted, selected, and supported 17 small-scale innovations focusing on both violence against women and personal documentation.
The result
Hand in hand, through complementarity of knowledge and expertise, challenging but constructive sessions, and with respect and appreciation, this united network of Syrians has contributed to reducing violence against women and facilitated access to personal documents for 200,000 Syrians including women, families, children, and refugees. The group proved that innovation is possible in Syria and that putting differences aside to achieve one common goal is possible.
The next chapter of their journey
This group will continue its journey to help solve the justice issues most affecting Syrians. And with a commitment to finding the right solutions for the right contexts, the group and SJIP will continue to support and develop scalable, people-centred solutions that can help tackle the most pressing legal problems facing Syrians.
Scaling Innovations
Personal documentation
Mobile legal clinics: Establish mobile legal clinics in Northern Syria and in Lebanon to provide free legal consultation and representation to Syrians in an effort to prevent statelessness and legalise the status of Syrians. This innovation helped register marriages and birth certificates and ensured entire families have a better future.
Personal documentation app: an application offering easy access to personal documents and guidance on how to access these documents. Through this innovation the process of getting personal documents is made easier on the user.
SyrGo: an online service that mediates between the client and the lawyers in order to obtain personal documents in an easier and more efficient way.
Violence against women
Yasmina: A chatbot, providing adaptive legal advice to Syrian women survivors of domestic violence and other forms of human rights violations. This application provides such women with the capacity to remain completely anonymous while also listing specialised entities able to offer in person support.
Survivors: empower economically Syrian women in Jordan, who have been subject to violence so they become financially independent by helping them sell their products.
“Warm home”: A board game distributed for free with Syrian bread to raise awareness on early child marriage.
UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers reflects on achievements and challenges of realising the Sustainable Development Goals.
Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL
On 13 October, HiiL, together with the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung and the Netherlands Permanent Mission to the United Nations New York, organised a panel discussion of the final report presented to the 77th UNGA by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Mr. Diego García-Sayán.
Event speakers included:
Ms. Andrea E. Ostheimer, Representative of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung to the United Nations, New York Office
This special event was held in honour of, and farewell to, the Special Rapporteur who completed his mandate at the end of October. In his remarks, Special Rapporteur García-Sayán examined the contributions of his previous reports to the achievement of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 and identified the outstanding challenges and tasks for States in the area of justice.
The Special Rapporteur focused on justice for all, a fundamental guiding concept running through his various reports. He further clearly demonstrated the importance of achieving SDG 16, in order to make all of the Sustainable Development Goals a reality by 2030. Access to justice clearly underpins the entirety of the SDGs, both throughout the Special Rapporteurs final report and in his remarks.
Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur grouped the main threats to achieving SDG 16 into three areas: the influence of authoritarianism; the effects of corruption on the justice system; and the lack of access to justice for all. All of which are interlinked and connected to people-centred justice (PCJ) programming.
Through the Special Rapporteur’s final report we learned more about the connection between the independence of judges and lawyers and people-centred justice. Sometimes, there is confusion around the term “people-centred justice” and its programming; it can be seen as working outside of the formal justice systems. However, the emphasis by the Special Rapporteur and subsequent speakers on access to justice as key to judicial independence helps us to better understand the all-encompassing nature of people-centred justice.
This event was pivotal in broadening all of our understandings of people-centred justice programming. In a key moment, Ms. Swati Mehta, Justice for All Program Director, explained:
“Often when we talk about access to justice, we assume that everything is right with the justice system but there are some barriers that people face in accessing them – money, complex processes, distance, language – and if we removed these, everything would be fine. But that is not entirely correct!”
When we think of improvements needed to close the justice gap we often think about improving resolution rates, making courtrooms more accessible, ending case backlogs, and bringing courts and legal aid closer to the people. Indeed, all of these are needed, but as Ms. Mehta reflects, they will not solve all of the justice needs of people.
This is where the juncture between justice institutions, judges, lawyers, and people-centred justice programming lies. Both Ms. Mehta and HiiL’s CEO, Mr. Sam Muller, stressed that institutions are critical, however, even perfectly working institutions cannot entirely fill the justice gap. Accessing justice is not equivalent to accessing courts. Instead, accessing justice is about people being able to prevent and resolve their justice problems by achieving the outcomes they need and desire.
Getting there requires more innovation in the sector. Ms. Sara Offermans emphasised three ways to achieve this, “we need increased funding, inclusive partnerships, and leadership at all levels,” she said. “This is how we can realise tangible results.”
People-centred justice programming calls on justice institutions, practitioners, implementers, and donors to put people at the centre of their work, focusing on outcomes for people, rather than outcomes for institutions.
In this way, people-centred justice programming is itself the bridge between institutions and access to justice. Bringing institutions and their leaders towards the needs of people, while simultaneously opening up the space for evidenced based ways of working, innovations, and game-changing service delivery models. All rooted in an enabling environment – nationally and internationally — which supports these innovative, people-centred ways of working.
Listening to all of the speaker’s remarks, it became clear to those of us in the audience that people-centred justice programming is not an advocate for abolishing justice institutions, judges or lawyers – it is an advocate for a systematic shift – for access to justice for all by reshaping and opening institutions to be responsive to the needs of people. The upcoming 2023 SDG Summit and the following 2024 Summit of the Future will be key moments to create momentum for the shift towards people-centred justice programming. HiiL, together with our partners, will be working to ensure people-centred justice is integral to these events.
Nigeria’s ‘Centre of Learning’ has launched a statewide strategy which outlines innovative approaches towards addressing people’s justice needs.
In Nigeria, government and community leaders have continued to grapple with how best to promote and sustain a vibrant and functional justice system that ensures the security, development, and well-being of Nigerians. Progress is underway in Imo and Ogun states, and now Kaduna State joins the movement. In November, Kaduna released a new strategy document outlining ways to realise innovative, affordable and responsive justice delivery.
“This strategy and the Justice Transformation Lab which kick-started it has created opportunities for improving the justice ecosystem in a paradigm-shifting way,” said Chris Umar, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative and Legal Matters in the Office of the Governor of Kaduna State. « The whole concept behind the document is to improve people-centred justice in the state. We are optimistic that with this document now, we can begin to add activities and see how we can implement this.”
The document articulates a systemic and integrated approach to realising people-centred justice. It is the culmination of a collaborative process known as a Justice Transformation Lab (JTL), a series of topically-focused dialogues. The JTL involved 35 high-level stakeholders representing the formal and informal justice sectors as well as government, private sector and civil society.
“People and businesses are asking justice systems to be better and to deliver justice more effectively,” said Sam Muller, the CEO of HiiL. “If our societies are to reduce violence, tackle corruption, protect the environment, address inequality, and repair broken social contracts, then they will need to revamp justice systems so they respond effectively – and cost-effectively – to people’s needs.”
The strategy offers a roadmap to help resolve people’s justice problems, prevent the recurrence of injustices large and small, and create (new) opportunities for people to participate fully in their societies and economies.
“It is an ambitious starting point but by no means comprehensive given the complexity of challenges,” said Ijeoma Nwafor, HiiL’s Transformation Country Representative in Nigeria. “Even so, it is a clear reflection of the stakeholders’ unequivocal commitment to the people of Kaduna State.”
Said one participant: “It doesn’t matter whether you are a man, woman, a Christian, Muslim, or anything else. We all feel the same when encountering justice problems.”
Stakeholders tailored the strategy to focus on the three most urgent justice needs in Kaduna State: crime, police reform, and money disputes. Each priority area was accompanied by target goals, indicators, and pathways to achievement over the next three years. Gamechangers, the unique services or tools that can have the greatest impact towards realising justice transformation goals are also key features of the strategy.
Financing and implementing game-changing services help make the justice sector affordable, accessible, and easy to understand. Learn more in chapter 6 of our recent Trend Report: Delivering Justice Rigorously
A Justice Needs & Satisfaction (JNS) survey conducted by HiiL in 2018 helped inform the stakeholder dialogues and eventual strategy. The JNS study involved 6,130 Nigerians across 18 states including Kaduna. It revealed that 83% of people in Kaduna State have experienced at least one legal problem in the past four years. Furthermore, 50% of Nigerians and 71% of Kaduna State people rely on the police as an initial focal point for both preventing and resolving crime-related justice needs.
Nigeria is undergoing a second justice needs study at the moment. This instalment is engaging over 4,500 participants through an electronic online survey (eJNS). The people of Kaduna State will be included in the representative sample thus building on the data gathered in 2018.
The 2022 eJNS provides justice leaders in Kaduna State another opportunity to learn about the current justice needs in the State. It offers a viable opportunity to be responsive to the outcomes that people need most and to ensure sector processes and systems fulfil those outcomes in a user-friendly way.
A nationwide Justice Needs & Satisfaction survey conducted by HiiL in 2018 revealed that 83% of people in Kaduna State have experienced at least one legal problem in the past four years.
As Kaduna State strives for peace, innovative ways towards access to justice can benefit the people and ultimately support improved security. Achieving this requires looking at the justice sector as a whole, creating synergies between justice actors, meeting the expectations of the Kaduna State residents, and introducing more innovation to deliver accessible, timely, affordable and effective justice strategies for the people.
“A good justice system prevents and resolves legal problems,” said Ijeoma. “What really matters is whether people in Kaduna State, and Nigeria more broadly, have access to affordable mechanisms that resolve their problems fairly and allow them to go on with their lives.”
A concrete next step will be the operationalisation of this strategy and implementation of a Justice Innovation Lab (JIL), where a game-changing service or tool will enter a pilot phase to become a potentially sustainable financing model.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) invites relevant companies and /or individuals to submit a quotation to support us in developing sustainable finance models on access to justice at the community level for 4 months (November 2022 to February 2023) in Imo State, Nigeria.
As part of this programme, HiiL will execute a Justice Innovation Lab (the Lab) to develop a bankable project proposal for increasing access to justice at the community level in Imo State, Nigeria. The Lab will bring together partners from the public and private sectors with the aim of getting a commitment from at least 50% of the stakeholders to implement this community justice pilot at scale.
HiiL is currently implementing a multi-year programme in the 6 main regions of Nigeria, focused on developing the different elements of a people-centred justice programme, in close collaboration with the Ministries of Justice, and other stakeholders. HiiL is looking for companies/individuals having Financial expertise who can support us in developing sustainable finance models for this community justice initiative.
HiiL in Nigeria
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a civil society organisation committed to user-friendly justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand and effective. Our goal: by 2030, 150 million people are able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. Our mission is aligned with SDG 16.3.
HiiL is currently implementing a multi-year programme in the 6 main regions of Nigeria, focused on developing the different elements of a people-centred justice programme, in close collaboration with the Ministries of Justice, and other stakeholders
71% Imo people experienced one or more legal problems;
64% of Imo people find their legal problem completely resolved, which leaves 37% without a complete resolution or even anything;
The most pressing legal problems people face are related to money, neighbour disputes, employment problems, crime, and housing;
87% of Imo people seek information and advice for their problems, mainly through their personal network, and less than 20% of the people seeking help go to the formal justice system.
These findings were the foundation of realising a real change ‘on the ground’. Based on these findings, a Justice Transformation Lab was conducted in Imo state, Nigeria where a coalition of justice leaders worked on driving innovations that contribute to making justice accessible to all people facing legal problems in their daily lives.
Service requested
The finance expert (individual/company) will:
Work in close coordination with the HiiL team in Nigeria and the Hague, as well as external experts on the following deliverables:
Be responsible for the development of an impact investment plan for a community justice innovation that will be designed as an outcome of the Justice Innovation Lab in Imo State. The investment plan should adhere to the standards of relevant financing partners;
Prepare an analysis of the existing and potential financing models for community justice structures and present it before relevant stakeholders;
Lead the design and delivery of the components of the Justice Innovation Lab pertaining to the development of the business case and financial model;
Lead the development of a financing template for the business case, to be discussed and updated during the lab phase;
Lead the design and analysis of the financial model to be put forward in a final investment proposal;
Lead the design of outcome metrics, outcome valuation, and potential structure of an outcomes contract;
Engagement of other relevant financial partners in the innovation lab process and support for the investment proposal (e.g. outcome payers);
Once the innovation lab has been completed, support the implementation of the community justice innovation and fundraising activities.
Profile of the contractor
The contractor is an experienced finance specialist with knowledge of existing and potential financing models in Nigeria, and Imo state. The contractor also has extensive experience in writing impact investment plans and speaks and writes English at a fluent level.
The professional background of the contractor is finance, accounting or business administration.
Contractor Requirements:
An advanced degree in Finance, accounting, Business administration or similar
Experience in impact investment plan writing is desirable;
In-depth understanding and knowledge of existing and potential financing models in Nigeria, and Imo state.
Proven experience working with government authorities as well as civil society organisations and academic institutions.
Considerable proficiency in Google Workspace Office.
Result-oriented, analytical focus, and socially strong and adaptable.
Problem-solving skills and critical-thinking skills
Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English
Timeline
We ask for a commitment of 24 hours per week. A weekly check-in on progress with Zainab Malik Program Manager, JIL is included.
The proposed time period for the engagement is for four months (November 2022 to Feb 2023). Note that the timing may shift due to the pandemic or political developments.
The proposal
We kindly request you to submit your CV, portfolio with examples of similar positions/experience assignments and a quotation for providing the services outlined above.
Quotations may be submitted on or before 7 November 2022 at 17:00 hrs (CET) only through email to the following email addresses: zainab.malik@hiil.org. Quotations shall be submitted in English, signed by the individual/company, and with the subject line: “JIL/Quotation/Finance expert/name of individual”.
The maximum budget available for this opportunity is up to 3600 Euros per month (including all relevant taxes and fees)
For more information, please refer to the Request for Quotation document.
Crime, environmental rights, land conflicts, family issues, disputes between workers and businesses: justice systems must contend with these issues everyday. And although judges, lawyers and other justice sector practitioners can effectively address such disputes in individual cases, resolving issues at scale remains a struggle.
Now more than ever we need to rethink this challenge. Addressing how justice systems can deliver fair, acceptable outcomes at scale so people can move forward with their lives, their work, and their business is our task. Unfortunately, conventional approaches are no longer sufficient.
Meeting people’s demand for justice will strengthen trust and social cohesion and help mitigate the contributing factors of conflict. It will make the world a more inclusive and more peaceful place. It also brings immense social and economic benefits. Ecorys, an economic research firm, found that every one dollar invested in the justice system in the Netherlands adds an estimated $18 to GDP. In short, investments in responsive justice systems create strong economies too. So how do we get there?
To investigate a way forward, governments from 37 OECD countries met with leading researchers at the 2022 OECD Global Access to Justice Roundtable which took place from 21-23 September in Riga, Latvia. Discussions made it clear that justice systems must adopt the research and development (R&D) and innovation methods of other sectors.
Moving current legal procedures online or adding more lawyers and courts will not be enough to address this gap in justice. While this is a good step forward, it ignores the fact that most disputes never make it to court to begin with. It also ignores that having a court ruling is often not the outcome people seek or need; not to mention the costs or need for a certain amount of (expert) knowledge and digital literacy skills.
Instead, a people-centred approach to justice – one based on data and evidence, and focused on ‘what works’ – ensures justice systems can scale and deliver effective outcomes that people need most. This is a huge change away from current systems designed with institutions in mind, especially those applying an ever-increasing avalanche of general rules and procedures to one case at a time.
The OECD roundtable emphasised this re-prioritisation of people and outcomes. Now more than ever, implementing people-centred justice programming (PCJP) is the path forward. This approach anchors inclusive and thoughtful policies that realise sustained change.
Several countries are taking PCJP seriously. One innovative initiative shared during the OECD roundtable came from Spain. The country recently introduced a General Directorate for Digital Transformation which focuses on transforming the process and organisation through data-driven justice management. Setting up “help stations” in all municipalities with online access to the courts has helped create more affordable and more accessible justice solutions. For its part, Turkey introduced an app which allows its citizens to solicit legal advice. Other examples from the United States, Thailand, Canada, and parts of Latin America have focused on domestic violence, gender-based violence, and support for indigenous people and vulnerable groups such as children or people with disabilities.
Change is indeed happening. However, we also see that people-centred justice efforts underway in different contexts are also mostly single initiatives and small projects. A systemic, concerted programming approach, as discussed during the OECD forum, has yet to materialise. Nonetheless, the OECD has raised awareness. Solidifying PCJP and scaling the ‘game-changing’ tools and services should be the next step.
HiiL’s Trend Report: Delivering Justice Rigorously articulates this PCJP approach and, using case studies, recognises the innovations transforming the sector. In short, it advocates for the systemic and integrated approach to address the justice gap.
As described in the Trend Report, PCJP consists of five core components: Gathering data on people’s justice needs and experiences; Promoting evidence-based practice; Scaling innovations and service delivery models; Creating an enabling environment to sustain the results; and Strengthening the movement.
Larger-scale transformation requires a willingness to embrace innovation. Now justice systems are slowly opening up to R&D. Following the tracks of the healthcare sector, where investment in research, evidence-based practice, and sustainable financing led to rapid gains, the justice sector is witnessing an increase in quality and almost universal coverage of basic services.
The OECD forum proved there is growing alignment on people-centred justice and its components. It also showed that governments are looking for ways to develop PCJP. Maintaining this momentum can lead to long-awaited progress in how societies organise their justice systems. This has a crucial role in preventing and resolving conflicts.
For HiiL, the shift to people-centred justice will continue in the six (and counting) countries where we have core programmes; with partners, including Pathfinders for Justice, who wish to change the justice sector for the better; and at various international forums including at the UN, OECD, and the International Association for Court Administration conference in Helsinki, Finland.
A greater number of governments recognise that people-centred justice programming leads to millions of improved relationships, healthier lives, economic benefits, and relief from administrative burdens. PCJP is the new normal offering a stronger foundation and a better enabler for achieving SDG16 – equal access to justice for all – and all other SDGs.
Maurits Barendrecht is the Programme Director of the Netherlands at HiiL.
HiiL expresses concern regarding the second coup d’etat that has taken place on 30 September 2022. This comes at a time when Burkinabe are seeking a more responsive justice system.
HiiL has worked closely with partners in Burkina Faso and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to conduct two independent Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) studies. The data collected in these surveys reflect an urgent demand to address concerns of access to justice for the people of Burkina Faso, both those living in the country and those who have fled to other countries.
We express the hope that there will be a swift transition to a democratically elected government and that the authorities will continue to be guided by the urgency that emerges from the JNS study.
Le Burkina Faso connaît une réévaluation à l’échelle nationale des besoins de la population en matière de justice, alors que les autorités de transition entament un parcours de 36 mois vers la tenue d’élections démocratiques. Les données révèlent que la population et les entreprises réclament instamment une meilleure réactivité et une efficacité accrue des systèmes de justice. La dernière enquête de HiiL sur les besoins et la satisfaction en matière de justice (JNS) précise les défis et les opportunités relatifs au développement de l’accès à la justice au Burkina Faso.
Points clés de l’enquête sur les besoins et la satisfaction en matière de justice :
Plus de 6000 personnes représentant les 13 régions du Burkina Faso ont participé à l’enquête nationale.
63 % des adultes burkinabè ont expérimenté au moins un problème juridique au cours des quatre dernières années.
Environ 52 % des problèmes juridiques sont résolus et la grande majorité de ces résolutions sont jugées équitables.
Toutefois, 15 % des problèmes demeurent en suspens, tandis que dans 32 % des cas, les personnes ont définitivement renoncé à trouver une solution.
Les hommes et les femmes au Burkina Faso tendent à affronter différents types de problèmes de justice. Les femmes dénoncent un nombre considérablement supérieur de problèmes familiaux, de violence domestique et de problèmes de voisinage. En revanche, les hommes signalent des problèmes significativement plus nombreux dans les domaines foncier et professionnel.
Les données indiquent que les femmes disposent d’un accès moindre à des personnes tierces neutres susceptibles de les aider à résoudre leurs problèmes juridiques. Ce désavantage implique que les femmes sont moins susceptibles de résoudre leurs problèmes juridiques par rapport aux hommes.
Lorsqu’ils tâchent de résoudre leurs problèmes juridiques, les Burkinabè recourent massivement à leur réseau personnel pour obtenir de l’aide plutôt qu’aux institutions modernes et aux professionnels du droit communément associés au système judiciaire.
La présente enquête 2022 sur les besoins et la satisfaction en matière de justice auprès de la population générale a été réalisée en face à face et s’inscrit dans le cadre du programme de recherche plus global de HiiL au Burkina Faso. Elle intervient à la suite d’une enquête à faible échelle réalisée en ligne en 2021. Elle accompagne également une enquête parallèle sur les besoins en matière de justice des personnes déplacées à l’intérieur de leur propre pays, réalisée en partenariat avec le HCR. La présente étude a bénéficié de l’assistance technique du Centre pour la gouvernance démocratique du Burkina Faso.
Investir dans une justice axée sur les personnes
Les personnes et les entreprises exigent un renforcement du système judiciaire et une exécution plus efficace de la justice. Pour y parvenir, il convient d’adopter une approche réfléchie avec des investissements stratégiques. Cela suppose de focaliser l’attention sur les personnes et les résultats qu’elles espèrent, et non sur les institutions et les procédures existantes. Telle est l’essence de la justice axée sur les personnes. HiiL est à l’avant-garde de cette approche novatrice qui se compose de cinq piliers : (1) Travailler à partir de données ; (2) Utiliser des preuves pour promouvoir « ce qui fonctionne » ; (3) Transposer à grande échelle des innovations qui changent les règles du jeu ; (4) Créer un environnement favorable ; et (5) renforcer le mouvement pour réaliser l’ODD 16.3 – l’égalité d’accès à la justice pour tous. Dans l’ensemble, la justice axée sur les personnes stimule les systèmes judiciaires pour leur permettre de réaliser leur potentiel pour la société et l’économie.
« Nous pouvons renforcer les systèmes de justice en accordant la priorité aux personnes et aux résultats dont elles ont besoin. Cette approche conduit à des solutions durables, mais aussi à des avantages sociaux et économiques impressionnants. »
À propos de HiiLL’Institut de La Haye pour l’innovation du droit (HiiL) est une organisation de la société civile engagée dans la réalisation d’une justice axée sur les personnes. Notre mission est de garantir que d’ici 2030, 150 millions de personnes parviennent à prévenir ou à résoudre leurs problèmes de justice les plus urgents. En résumé, nous estimons que la justice doit être abordable, accessible et simple à comprendre. Pour y parvenir, nous œuvrons en partenariat avec des fonctionnaires, des professionnels du secteur de la justice, des entrepreneurs et des investisseurs dans des contextes nationaux stratégiques afin de mettre en œuvre des programmes de justice axés sur les personnes.
As we mark the International Day of Peace, we see that more than ever, people and businesses are asking justice systems to be better. They see that they are not delivering enough and that not enough is being invested in systematically improving them. Polarisation is on the rise. Social cohesion is under pressure. There is more political violence, protest, and upheaval. In short: they want more peace.
We also see an increasing number of judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police officers and social workers who feel that many of the existing procedures are inadequate, ineffective and costly. These professionals often resort to informal processes that are neither clearly defined nor effectively monitored.
The whole of society will benefit if formal and informal conflict resolution procedures in the justice system become more responsive to people’s needs. Outcomes will be fairer and decisions taken by judges will more likely be accepted. Greater respect for the law will improve responses to criminal activities. Lawyers will be more effective in helping entrepreneurs to establish and manage businesses. The economic case to invest in better and more sustainable conflict resolution processes is also very robust. Increases in conflict resolution rates lead to impressive macroeconomic gains.
Doing nothing, on the other hand, is a high-risk gamble that could jeopardise our way of life. In 2021, only two of the world’s 25 most populous countries saw improvements in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index. In an increasingly polarised world where trust in institutions is weakening across the board, justice systems that allow conflicts to fester and intensify are a liability. If our societies are to reduce violence, tackle corruption, protect the environment, address inequality and repair broken social contracts, they will need revamped justice systems that respond effectively – and cost-effectively – to people’s needs.
While it is encouraging to see that a small but growing group of justice practitioners are working on change, we see that what they are doing is not enough, by far. They are not waiting for new laws and want to unleash the potential of guided self-help, the mediating skills of fellow citizens, and informal justice, while safeguarding procedural values and fundamental rights. But, they are not scaling. They lack funding. Pilots peter out. These brave changemakers do not have the business models and structures that generate the necessary resources for the needed innovation. Initiatives may benefit small groups, but equal access to justice for all – the objective of Sustainable Development Goal 16 – remains a distant goal. Demand for effective conflict resolution and just outcomes is much greater than what current systems can incrementally deliver.
In order to achieve the goal of peaceful inclusive societies, with equal access to justice for all (SDG 16), what is needed is people-centred justice programming. Outcomes for people and businesses are regularly measured. Is the system delivering what people need? Justice practitioners collect, share and are guided in the work by evidence about what works to prevent and solve many more conflicts in time. Existing justice services are improved and new ones developed which can reach far more people, anchoring public support and accountability. Incentive structures are improved and better aligned with shared values. In this way, conflict resolution becomes more effective, and we are more likely to achieve almost everything that really matters.
HiiL’s 2022 Trend Report, Delivering Justice, Rigorously, launched today at the OECD RIGA Global Access to Justice Round Table, explains how people-centred justice works. Our leading experts in the field articulate the research, describe the forms of evidence, and tell the stories of effective justice systems working for all. The report shows how people-centred justice can become reality. On this International Day of Peace, the time to act is now. We have to spread the word about making the world a more peaceful place.
Request for Proposal: political-economy analysis in Nigeria (re-advertised)
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) invites relevant companies and /or individuals to submit a proposal for conducting a political economy analysis (PEA) on access to justice at the community level in Imo State, Nigeria.
HiiL is currently implementing a multi-year programme in the 6 main regions of Nigeria, focused on developing the different elements of a people-centred justice programme, in close collaboration with the Ministries of Justice, and other stakeholders.
As part of this programme, HiiL will execute a Justice Innovation Lab (“the Lab”) to develop a bankable project proposal for increasing access to justice at the community level in Imo State, Nigeria.
HiiL is looking for a researcher to support the preparatory phases of the Lab through the implementation of a political economy analysis with a view of gaining a better understanding of the drivers and barriers to access to justice at the community level in Imo State, Nigeria.
For more information about this opportunity, please refer to the Request for Proposal:
Proposals may be submitted on or before 25 October 2022 at 17:00 hrs (CET) only through email to the following email address: zainab.malik@hiil.org and with the subject line: “JIL/proposal/name of company”.Requests for clarifications can be addressed to zainab.malik@hiil.org before the 20th of October.
The maximum budget for this opportunity is up to 5000 EUR (incl taxes).
Request for quotation for guidelines in Ogun State:
Developing evidence-based practices on preventing and resolving land problems
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) invites relevant companies and/or individuals to submit a quote for developing 15 evidence-based best practices on preventing and resolving land problems.
HiiL and local researchers together develop guidelines for practitioners in the justice sector such as lawyers, mediators and paralegals. Justice guidelines are meant to support justice practitioners in their daily work. These practitioners could be lawyers, paralegals, judges, mediators, police and other professionals who directly engage with people.
Guidelines are inspired by the medical sector and consist of clear and actionable best practices, on how to deal with justice issues. They help practitioners with communication techniques, tools for de-escalation, mediation methods and other useful ‘soft skills that are essential in dispute resolution.
Guidelines combine practice-based evidence (experiences from practitioners across Nigeria) and evidence-based practice (recommended interventions from internationally conducted studies). It is a living document. That means with new information, responses from practitioners and users should continually improve.
To effectively conduct this guideline research, HiiL invites relevant professionals to submit a quote for targeting adult respondents residing in Ogun State. HiiL will select the partnering professional on the following criteria, among others:
Experience and proven track record in the research field.
Sound understanding of research methodologies.
Interest and knowledge of the Nigerian socio-political scenes and context.
Considerable proficiency in Google Workspace Office.
Problem-solving skills and critical thinking skills.
Practical experience in database management.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
For more information about this opportunity, please refer to the Request for Proposal:
As the world continues to face a huge justice gap, we made good progress in advancing people-centred justice in 2021.
We had conversations about what justice systems could be: a place where conflicts are resolved, where rights can be invoked, frustrations channelled, and violence prevented. Our discussions and work focused on strengthening trust in state institutions and examining new ways of working, of using data to understand the needs of people and the outcomes they need. We discussed justice interventions that really work and how to share best practices. We came together to work on gamechanging delivery models that scale effective justice innovations to as many people as possible. And we met more often with partners and stakeholders committed to creating the enabling environment for the change that is needed.
Altogether, it has been a year of innovation and growth of people-centred justice across HiiL’s programmes. Furthermore, we developed an integrated approach with five core elements for realising people-centred justice. These are 1) the collection of data on the needs and experiences of people, 2) moving to evidence-based practice, 3) supporting gamechanging justice services, 4) creating an enabling environment, and 5) ensuring engagement to strengthen the network. This comprehensive approach serves as the foundation for our work in 2022 thus solidifying people-centred justice in our six programme countries and helping to realise SDG 16.3 – equal access to justice for all!
As part of HiiL’s organisational growth, we realigned our way of working from one that was organised around areas of expertise, to one organised around programmes in countries. In this way, we are able to bring together the different components of people-centred justice working in the places where the difference must be made: at the country level. Various projects have shown that anchoring these in a country framework is the best way to make change happen. The interaction between the five core elements of our people-centred justice programmes in countries makes a difference on the ground.
Following a rigorous process of selection, HiiL is proud to present the next generation of Justice startups in its 2022 cohort. Tackling justice issues of Crime, Land, Family, Neighbors and SMEs the 15 startups come from Nigeria, Tunisia, Rwanda, Kenya and Lebanon. In the next six months, they will participate in an intense programme of 25 workshops and masterclasses as well as receive mentorship from top experts. They have a dedicated coach who supports them on an ongoing basis. The startups will also receive a grant funding of 10,000 EUR.
Throughout the programme, there are plenty of opportunities to learn from each other. The innovators bring their challenges to the group, and collaborate in identifying solutions. Motivated by their strong commitment to delivering justice, these innovators will challenge each other toward maximising impact. It’s a fun journey of getting to know each other better and building long-term friendships.
Equipped with its expertise in understanding justice needs, relationship and collaboration with stakeholders, know-how in innovation and business, The HiiL Justice Accelerator scouts and accelerates startups with sustainable and scalable business models that address people’s everyday justice needs.
On February 15, 2023, at Demo Day, the startups in the 2022 accelerator cohort will take the (virtual) stage to showcase their achievements. A jury of investors and justice experts will also select the three most promising startups as the winners of the Innovating Justice Award. These startups will receive additional funding of up to 20,000 EUR.
At HiiL, we are deeply inspired by the fierce commitment of innovators to closing the justice gap. Using innovative solutions, startups aim to address the problems of large numbers of people as fast and effectively as possible.
Join us in congratulating the 2022 cohort and the start of this exciting new journey.
Country/ Region: Kenya | Justice problem addressed: Multiple
Legal Point Services is a virtual workspace for legal services. Using a rich catalogue of lawyers, individuals and businesses access legal services from verified lawyers and advocates from the comfort of their homes.
The interactive online environment allows clients to be more involved in their legal matters. It also provides legal work tools that in turn reduce the price of legal services for their clients.
Country/ Region: Kenya | Justice problem addressed: Theft and crime, employment, gender-based violence
Mama Fua vets and trains domestic workers and connects them to clients. In Kenya, domestic workers often have poor employment conditions, where they are paid insufficiently and are vulnerable to different forms of exploitation and (sexual) abuse by their employers. On the other hand, sometimes the identity of domestic workers is not verified, they are underage, and without background checks, they engage in petty theft. What they steal is often food and clothes, and as such, employers find it too costly to pursue them legally. In turn, they engage in illegal activities, such as installing hidden cameras in order to keep an eye on the workers.
In vetting the domestic workers, Mama Fua ensures better working conditions as well as prevention of theft and gender-based violence. Domestic workers report abuse and receive legal and psychological support, when needed.
Country/ Region: Kenya| Justice problem addressed: Housing and tenancy disputes
Nyumbani Online digitises rent payments and prevents disputes between tenants and property owners to ensure the rights of both tenants and property owners. In Kenya, disputes over rent payments is the biggest issue in the tribunals. Last year, the government set up two tribunals to specifically address this issue. The Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey in Kenya also highlights the justice issues associated with housing and tenancy amongst the justice issues in Kenya. Some tenants provide fake proof of payment in order to skip rent.
Property owners do not abide by the rental agreement, increase rent unjustifiably, abuse tenants with threats of eviction, cut off utilities or refuse to refund the security deposit. By digitising rental payments, Nyumbani Online prevents housing disputes and ensures tenancy and property owner agreements are respected.
Country/ Region: Kenya| Justice problem addressed: Housing and tenancy disputes
Silqu addresses the same issue as described above. Through the cloud-based Silqu platform, property owners, developers, managers and tenants are all connected seamlessly with 100% visibility of all related transactions. Silqu ensures transparent and cost-effective communication between the tenant and property owners and managers, and in doing so, in addition to the prevention of disputes between the two parties, ensures smooth resolution of them, if applicable.
Country/ Region: Rwanda| Justice problem addressed: Fraud
XanaHealth digitises patient medical records and insurance claims and invoices. Insurance fraud (particularly regarding auto and health claims) and concern about the fraud lead to increased insurance premiums, preventing access to insurance, and slowing down the delivery of services to clients. HiiL’s justice scan on Rwanda also highlights the issue of fraud among the most serious justice issues in the country.
XanaHealth is a transparent claiming platform for patients, it prevents and detects insurance fraud and ensures that the conditions of insurance contracts are respected in a timely and effective manner.
Country/ Region: Rwanda| Justice problem addressed: SME disputes
E-arbitrator allows SMEs to resolve their disputes with each other using their easily accessible and fast platform. In case of a dispute, either party submits their claim and relevant documents on the platform, and in turn qualified arbitrators, mediators or alternative dispute resolution specialists step in to resolve it. The platform also stores case documents and communication in a secure central repository that is accessible to all relevant stakeholders. Currently, E-arbitrator is focused on disputes between cross-border traders in the East African Community.
Country/ Region: Nigeria| Justice problem addressed: Gender-based violence
Gender Mobile Initative and its product Campus Pal provides an easy-to-use and anonymous platform to report sexual harassment and assault on university campuses. The Initiative gives women access to legal, psychological and health support as well.
Country/ Region: Nigeria| Justice problem addressed: SME issues
The Sidebrief platform automates business compliance to make it simple, fast and accessible to SMEs. Currently, Sidebrief is focused on startups. In Nigeria, many SMEs and startups find themselves in legal challenges where they are found non-compliant and are heavily fined. Sometimes, the business is forced to close down due to the hefty fines.
Country/ Region: Nigeria| Justice problem addressed: SME issues
Crediometer targets the unbanked and disconnected people who struggle to open bank accounts because of identification issues. The startup allows for safe, secure and transparent saving of funds for MSMEs, artisans and unregistered traders. HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey in Nigeria highlights money issues, such as theft or fraud associated with lending and borrowing money as one of the most serious justice issues in the country.
Country/ Region: Nigeria| Justice problem addressed: Consumer issues
AtaraPay is a web and mobile tool used by sellers and buyers for protection during any online or offline commercial transaction through funds held in escrow by a trusted third party. Atarapay provides a real-time acceptance or rejection option at point of delivery. It prevents fraud in online purchases. In doing so, it ensures consumer rights are protected and trust between online sellers and their customers is instilled.
The Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey in Nigeria highlights consumer issues, such as purchasing defective goods or substandard services, as one of the justice issues in the country.
Country/ Region: Tunisia| Justice problem addressed: Access to public services
Idaraty provides access to administrative public services. In doing so, the platform helps people obtain ID documents, social insurances and even postal services. In Tunisia, complex administrative processes make it easy for people to resort to bribes. By simplifying the process, Idaraty prevents corruption as well. The Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey in Tunisia highlights the severity of this justice issue as well.
Country/ Region: Tunisia| Justice problem addressed: Access to public services
El Baladyia simplifies access to municipality services. It is similar to Idaraty, mentioned above, but focuses on the local community. It allows people to stay up to date with any changes in their municipality. It also offers them the chance to report any issues within the municipality’s jurisdiction.
Country/ Region: Tunisia| Justice problem addressed: Multiple issues
Simarl provides access to legal services, including different alternative dispute resolution methods which allow for a faster resolution than a trial. While remaining affordable, Simarl supports their clients throughout the mediation and arbitration process in order to obtain an amicable agreement or arbitration award. Simarl’s mission is to replace the culture of trial with a culture of agreement.
Country/ Region: Lebanon| Justice problem addressed: Multiple issues
Willminds provides alternative dispute resolution methods as a way to settle disputes without the need to proceed to litigation. Willminds acts as a neutral and impartial third party. It provides dispute resolution options for every stage and in all contexts where parties want to protect their rights and interests and at the same time preserve valuable long-term cooperation.
People-centred justice (PCJ) is emerging as a concrete approach to (national) justice programming. Justice practitioners and sector innovators alike have identified the ‘enablers and impediments’ that support the successful implementation of PCJ. The key goal is to ensure that justice sector professionals spend time in ways that people expect and direct services towards those priorities.
Two recent articles highlight this trend and the work HiiL and our partners are engaged in:
“Most justice problems do not involve the formal legal system at all. The best way to improve access to justice is to devote more resources to grass-roots activists working with those who would never dream of going to court. That’s justice for all.”
« It’s very important to be in touch with the real stories and the lives that injustice affects. At the same time, you can’t get stuck in that. You’ve got to make it something that somebody who works on policy or strategy can actually work with. »
HiiL’s work in Uganda began in 2015. Since then, we have remained true to our global goal: by 2030, HiiL will have empowered 150 million people to prevent and resolve their most pressing justice problems. Seven years on, and half-way to our audacious goal, we look back at what we have accomplished so far in Uganda. Have we contributed to user-friendly justice in Africa’s 8th most populous country? Has our work helped people resolve their justice issues fairly? Let’s find out.
Uganda is the only country where we applied HiiL’s approach to people-centred justice. This strategy implements the core aspects of HiiL’s expertise. It involves measuring justice, researching solutions, advising and partnering with justice workers to transform the sector, and supporting justice innovations known as Gamechangers. Our approach is based on five distinct pillars focused on achieving long-lasting impact. What follows is an overview of how each pillar steers our efforts to realise people-centred justice in Uganda.
WORKING FROM THE DATA
Letting the data do the talking
Data about people’s needs encourages justice sector providers to adapt their approaches and adjust how justice gets delivered. With this knowledge, leaders can anticipate and respond to justice concerns that ultimately improve access to justice.
In 2015, we decided to examine the scope of the problem using data. With support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), HiiL interviewed 6,000 Ugandans to better understand how people experience justice. The first Justice Needs & Satisfaction survey (JNS) in Uganda revealed that 88% of the respondents had experienced justice problems affecting their daily lives. However, only 7% turned to lawyers and the courts for help. We call that the justice gap.
Four years after the initial survey, HiiL conducted in 2019-2020 a second nationwide Justice Needs & Satisfaction (JNS) study. The survey showed that nearly 13 million legal problems occur each year in Uganda. Strikingly, roughly 70% of all legal problems result in a resolution perceived as unfair or receive no resolution at all. The most common problems in Uganda relate to crime (40%), domestic violence (35%), land (31%) and neighbour-related disputes (29%).
The reports establish the scope of the issues facing Uganda, and also reveals their prevalence and where people turn for help in resolving their problems. With this information, HiiL as well as Ugandan justice leaders and justice practitioners now have relevant information and insights to improve delivery and access to justice in Uganda.
Following the pandemic, HiiL conducted in 2022 an online JNS study to update our understanding of the country’s justice landscape. This latest survey engaged respondents using social media. It was conducted in partnership with a legal aid startup BarefootLaw.
Data deepens our understanding of people’s justice needs and helps steer policy change to ‘what works’, said Rachael Ampaire, HiiL’s programme manager in Uganda. “The results from this eJNS provide new insights into how Uganda’s justice landscape is shifting and developing in this post-Covid-19 environment.”
Sneak peek into the data findings:
The prevalence of legal problems in Uganda is quite high: 83% of the respondents had to deal with one or more legal problems in the past year. This finding is consistent with our two previous studies conducted in Uganda.
Furthermore, many legal problems, even if not directly caused by the pandemic, are perceived as worsened by the health consequences, and lockdown measures and restrictions stemming from Covid-19.
The pandemic has had a much larger impact on the legal problems of the young people from the social media sample who participated in the survey. Many of their problems are perceived as directly caused or at least worsened by the pandemic.
Transforming justice with the Family Justice Catalogue
It is important for justice workers to be recognised as professionals and deliver the best quality of services to the users of the justice system. Professionals look for ways to communicate in a shared language so choices about appropriate interventions can be made efficiently.
This is also true for lawyers, social workers, and providers of informal justice in communities, such as Local Councils Court (LCCs) and religious leaders. They want to ensure that their services are grounded in ‘what works’. It became clear that professionals and volunteers in Uganda’s justice sector felt the need to share knowledge on what works and apply international best practices. In partnership with JLOS (Justice, Law and Order Sector), HiiL tried to facilitate this with The Family Justice Catalogue.
The Family Justice Catalogue is a justice Treatment Guideline which is a supporting tool that advises justice practitioners on how to offer better care. Treatment Guidelines are inspired by the medical sector and articulate a set of recommendations based on evidence and what delivers results. The Uganda Family Justice Catalogue contains 21 best practices and 112 recommendations written in partnership with a group of diverse and experienced Ugandan professionals.
There are two versions of the Family Justice Catalogue: a practical user version developed for people directly experiencing these justice issues, and a justice worker version designed for legal professionals as well as social workers and family therapists.
The justice sector is ready to work more evidence-based. Justice workers want to offer solutions that really work for people. People want good outcomes. Only then family justice can play an instrumental role in people’s lives, especially those of children.
The catalogue combines practice-based evidence (experiences from practitioners across Uganda) and evidence-based practice (recommended interventions from internationally conducted studies). It is a living document meaning it will continually improve as new information and responses from practitioners and users become available. Following a Case Study on LCCs and the development of the Family Justice Catalogue in 2021, HiiL held training sessions with LCCs from March to April 2021 in order to help guide the implementation of the Catalogue.
SCALING GAMECHANGERS
Innovative ideas for a justice that works
Ugandans often try to resolve their problems mostly by engaging third parties, such as relying on family members, talking to the police, or going to Local Council Courts (LCCs).
An innovation that aligns with this rationale is the Bataka Court Model, which entered HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme in 2019. The project aims at empowering “Bataka Courts”, literally meaning ‘Ordinary Citizens Courts’ which is a community-based informal justice system for civil cases. It is facilitated by seven elders selected by the community, including women and youth representatives, to promote justice and help resolve conflict. Based in Western Uganda, the informal court system has increased access to justice for the poor by putting people’s needs first and eliminating legal costs that are usually borne by justice seekers.
The findings of the JNS strongly suggested it would be advisable to support the Local Council Courts system, and in general, third parties that are neutral in practice.
In addition to supporting community justice mechanisms, there was a clear need to simplify the justice journeys of people with justice problems. For that, brilliant innovators raised the stake with innovative solutions to help close the justice gap. These innovators include:
The Evidence and Methods Lab, which joined the Justice Accelerator programme in 2018. Evidence and Methods Lab is a civic technology initiative working in the areas of access to information, accountability and collecting what works in generating evidence. It creates smart infographics of complex justice problems in Uganda. These simplified formats with a visual appeal are able to reach diverse audiences.
Barefoot Law, a non-profit organisation that provides free legal information through technology and innovation. Barefoot Law empowers thousands of individuals and small businesses who would otherwise remain underserved in their hope for solutions to pressing justice needs. The lawyers at Barefoot law each have backgrounds in public prosecutorial work, private law practice, or politics. They have chosen to harness their talents and love for technology to expand access to justice to 50 million people across Africa by 2030.
THE BUSINESS RESILIENCE PROGRAMME
We hope to achieve our goal in Uganda and around the world by 2030. Nonetheless, our mission is a long-term one and we seek to help with building lasting change. Justice startups are vital for this lasting change as they spur new innovations in Uganda’s justice sector ecosystem. However, Covid-19 took a toll on these organisations and their growth plans. In response, we launched the Business Resilience Programme in March 2021 which continued into October 2021.
The 2021 Business Resilience Programme was an eight-month initiative for the HiiL Uganda Justice Accelerator alumni. The programme followed the 2020 Covid Resilience Programme. In this new iteration, the BRP was customised based on the needs of the startups. It provided hands-on support with the goal of generating revenue to help the startups sufficiently and sustainably scale their innovation.
The Business Resilience Programme sought to support seven justice startups that completed the Justice Accelerator programme in previous years. Bataka Courts and the Evidence and Method Lab were involved as well as Yunga, Legal Hub, Zzimba Games, Justice Bot, and Legit.
‘The programme was a good fit for us. We really needed it, and it has positioned us back into the hands of users after being hit by the Covid-19 lockdown. The coaching aspect was very instrumental in enforcing our plan regarding improving our inventory and onboarding new households in communities. The mentorship activities revealed a lot about the need for partnerships and a good PR strategy for achieving growth.’ -Anatoli Kirigwajjo, founder of Yunga Technologies.
Launch of the Innovating Justice Fund
Closing the ‘Justice Gap’ by helping to scale new services and innovations remains a top priority for HiiL. Therefore, in June 2022, during World Justice Forum, HiiL and fund manager FOUNT launched the Innovating Justice Fund to financially support early-stage companies that deliver innovative justice solutions. The Fund is not specific to innovations in Uganda but undoubtedly expects Gamechangers from Uganda’s rich justice ecosystem to apply for investor support. “And they’ll get it,” said Ronald Lenz, HiiL’s Director of the Justice Accelerator, “so long as they have or can prove a sustainable business model towards people-centred justice.”
STRENGHTENING THE MOVEMENT
The podcast: listen to the story
We developed a podcast hosted by one of the Innovators, Legal Hub Uganda, in which you can listen to the achievements of the innovators and how they have impacted the communities in Uganda. Sharing their stories can serve as inspiration to others working to improve access to justice.
In 2016, HiiL brought together eight justice leaders from all over the world to the Peace Palace: they formed The Justice Leadership Group. Each was leading or had led transformative justice programmes in their countries. In a closed room, we asked them the question: what is justice leadership?
The idea for the film started with the question of what kind of leaders are needed to transform the justice system and deliver justice to all citizens? And also, what of the personal stakes when you choose to be a justice leader?
The Justice Leaders is a documentary that portrays the struggle of two justice leaders in their fight for a justice system that cares for its people. The Honorable Chief Justice Katureebe of Uganda is part of the leadership of his country, at the pinnacle of the justice system. His story is like that of many justice leaders: lonely. Eager to improve it, he negotiates to bring change from within. Daphine Arinda leads differently. Through her work as an informal justice worker, she is immersed in the fight against lack of access to justice in the daily lives of most Ugandans.
You can watch the full movie on Youtube:
CREATING AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
Has our work helped people resolve their justice issues fairly? Did we help create an enabling environment for user-friendly justice?
We think so. Looking back at all the different aspects of the projects, we, in collaboration with our partners, innovators, and justice practitioners, worked hard to provide top-down as well as bottom-up solutions to people’s justice problems. As our work continues, we will continue to focus on implementation, strengthening national capacity, and scaling community justice services.
However, we pride ourselves in providing evidence-based answers. This is why HiiL will continue to survey the everyday justice needs of Ugandans and support the justice transformation efforts in this small but trailblazing country in Africa.
Stay tuned to our channels to stay up-to-date with our journey towards achieving SDG16.3: equal access to justice for all in Uganda.
An outcomes-based approach will increase access to high-quality justice. Our latest policy brief advises justice sector leaders on 8 general justice outcomes and how to shift the focus from institutions to people when defining and monitoring outcomes.
Outcomes are a familiar concept in the justice sector, yet they are rarely defined in collaboration with those seeking justice. Instead, the outcomes that are defined and monitored tend to reflect the needs or objectives of legal institutions. These may include efficiency, cost-effectiveness, or outcomes related to public safety goals such as reduced reoffending. This focus on procedural and institutional results, as opposed to the concrete improvements they produce in people’s lives, has created a gap between the supply and the demand for justice.
It is time for new thinking. A core principle of the people-centred justice movement is that justice services resolve the problems that people experience in a fair way and deliver the outcomes they seek. A shift towards outcomes for people can support innovation in the justice system and help close the justice gap in the following ways:
It can help people who are faced with a legal problem identify what is most important to them and make progress towards their goals.
It can reveal the extent to which justice services are tailored to the needs of the people they are intended to help – providing practitioners with information about the quality of services they deliver.
It can make entrepreneurs aware of gaps in existing justice services that represent opportunities for innovation.
It can demonstrate the effectiveness of new or re-designed justice services and enable ministers of justice to distribute funds on the basis of performance.
It can enable policymakers to track the impact of people-centred justice reforms and generate the additional investment needed to make SDG 16.3 a reality.
This policy brief explores how people-centred justice outcomes can be identified and operationalised. The authors ask: What general justice outcomes do people seek when faced with a legal problem? Based on insights from academic literature, and building on HiiL’s Justice Needs & Satisfaction (JNS) survey research, the authors propose eight general justice outcomes that can be used to measure and monitor the quality of justice services or processes.
The 8 general justice outcomes
Understanding what happened Understanding what happened is an important first step in restoration (restorative justice) and resolution, and one of the seven general justice outcomes measured in the JNS survey.
Acknowledgement of role or responsibility Acknowledging who was involved in or responsible for what happened and the harm caused is central to restoration and reintegration (restorative justice). This outcome combines two justice outcomes measured in the JNS survey: “knowledge of who was responsible” and “an apology.”
Fair distribution of resources or responsibilities Distributing resources or responsibilities in a fair way – for example, according to the equity, equality, or need criteria – is the defining feature of distributive justice. “Fair distribution” is one of the four dimensions the JNS survey uses to assess the quality of a justice outcome.
Damage restoration Restoring what was lost, damaged, or violated is necessary for compensation (distributive justice) as well as reparation (restorative justice). “Damage restoration” is one of the four dimensions the JNS survey uses to assess the quality of a justice outcome, and “compensation for loss of income or property” is one of the specific outcomes it measures.
Relational restoration Repairing the relational harm caused by a legal problem is important to restoration and reintegration (restorative justice) as well as transformation (transformative justice). “Repaired relationships between people” is one of the justice outcomes measured in the JNS survey.
Harmony within the community Achieving harmony within the community is closely related to, but not that same as, repairing relational harm. This outcome was added to reflect the reality that it is possible for the relationships between parties to a conflict to be repaired without those people being accepted by the wider community. This is necessary for their reintegration (restorative justice).
Security Safety and security – whether physical, psychological, or financial – is necessary for people to feel at peace and move on with their lives in the aftermath of a legal problem. “Physical or financial security” is one of the justice outcomes measured in the JNS survey.
Prevention People who have been burdened by a legal problem want to resolve it and also prevent it from happening again. “Problem resolution” – which relates to enforcement and prevention – is one of the four dimensions the JNS survey uses to assess the quality of a justice outcome, and “prevention” is also one of the justice outcomes measured in the JNS survey.
To help demonstrate how additional problem-specific outcomes can be defined, the authors have included an accompanying case study focused on a particularly prevalent and impactful legal problem — intimate partner violence (IPV). The case study identifies 21 outcomes that survivors of IPV consistently seek and describes in detail the myriad justice and support mechanisms that survivors of IPV in Uganda, Nigeria, and the Netherlands used or looked for to achieve them.
Amidst a backdrop of deepening inequalities, a cost of living crisis, critical food and energy shortages, endemic corruption, and a fraying social contract, professionals from the rule of law and justice sectors gathered in The Hague, Netherlands for the annual World Justice Forum.
Covering four days, the Forum sought to exchange and solidify the ideas crucial to building fairer and healthier communities. Among them was the paradigm-shifting concept of people-centred justice.
The timing was impeccable. Today, more than 5.1 billion people suffer from an unresolved or inadequately resolved justice problem. The urgency to address this crisis has never been greater. It should propel us to act.
Here are six key takeaways from the 2022 World Justice Forum.
1. Harness Data
Data lies at the centre of realising people-centred justice. So far, the data collected on people’s needs, experiences and outcomes reveal a massive “justice blind spot”, as Martin Gramatikov, Director of Measuring Justice at HiiL stated. Approximately 80-85% of the justice problems never reach institutions in the formal justice system. Addressing this inefficiency requires innovating the broader justice sector. Harnessing data will deepen the sector’s understanding of people’s justice needs and experiences as well as their perceptions to elucidate the causes of people’s legal problems.
In the end, data and evidence help steer reform and thus, provide a rich information infrastructure that will open the door for services and policies that work for the people. That in turn will spur changes towards « what works ».
Change can’t happen without trust. Trust and cooperation between justice sector organisations and stakeholders are especially important for enabling people-centred justice. Establishing this trust helps develop lasting interventions and can nurture holistic solutions that address people’s most pressing justice problems at scale. “We must continuously check the pulse of the people and to what extent we’re reliably addressing people’s needs and measuring their trust in the public institutions,” said Rachel Odoi-Musoke, the Senior Technical Advisor to the Governance and Security Programme in Uganda.
It takes time to create systems built on trust between different actors and players in the sector. Doing this effectively requires bringing together leaders from institutions which will work towards common results. This has to be factored in at all levels.
We emerge from the World Justice Forum with a fortified determination to breathe more life into SDG16+ and with a renewed commitment to tackle ‘our common agenda’ collaboratively across diverse sectors for change.
— Sam Muller, CEO at HiiL
3. Value Informal Justice Systems
Strengthening trust extends also to Customary and Informal Justice (CIJ) systems. These have existed for hundreds of years in countless countries and are the first point of contact for millions of people seeking to address their justice issues. However, many justice systems around the world continue to focus on the formal justice system as the only solution available. We need to shift that focus. In the words of one speaker, “The concept of people-centred justice is much wider than the formal justice sector can ever be expected to match.”
Indeed, it’s important to recognize that customary and informal solutions—those that address numerous justice problems including family disputes, land conflicts, and problems between neighbours—are crucial to delivering justice. So let’s value CIJ systems for being more affordable, accessible and user-friendly.
4. Expand Partnerships and Collaboration
Partnerships and collaborations encourage inclusive thinking that reinforces ‘our common agenda’ and promotes a common language that will support engagement and knowledge exchange. The UN, World Bank, and OECD among others must prove to justice practitioners that they are not alone in this fight for expanding access to justice. The Justice Action Coalition, operationalised during the Forum, aims to serve this purpose. It will develop and promote effective justice action based on data, shared learnings, and international assistance and funding.
As Brittany Kauffman, the Interim CEO at IAALS stated, “Bridging the capacity gap with partnerships means looking outside the justice system to get people onboard and help them understand the social, political, and economic benefits to addressing the problem.”
5. Advocate for Funding and Investing
Start-ups with game-changing business models are a key driver in the transformation of the justice sector. Supporting these ‘Gamechangers’ will be pivotal to expanding access to justice. To do so means applying ‘smarter financing strategies that redirect resources away from ineffective approaches towards what works.’ Ministers of Justice must be at the forefront and must turn rhetoric into action. They can do this by allocating budgets and human capital towards (bold) people-centred initiatives.
Building investor confidence is also a priority. The Innovating Justice Fund developed by HiiL in partnership with FOUNT is the first-of-its-kind fund with a unique focus on SDG16. It will financially support early-stage startups to scale their promising innovations and thus expand access to justice in places that need it most.
6. Urge Courageous Leadership
Inspiring action requires building coalitions and involving stakeholders from the outset. This means finding the right people to do the right job. It also means having difficult conversations about priorities, budget allocation, reforming regulatory environments, and being honest and frank about what is not working. As echoed throughout the Forum, strong leadership requires effective integration of systems and using the three C’s – Communication, Coordination and Collaboration – to identify and agree on shared results and shared priorities. Governments and experts can see SDG16 as a driver of people-centred justice and implement ideas that also tackle SDG 5, SDG 8, and SDG 10.
In the words of the former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Ogun state in Nigeria, Akingbolahan Adeniran, “You need to have visionaries who are passionate, persuasive, and who have a mindset for change management. They will play a central role in the design and implementation of successful people-centred justice.”
What is people-centred justice?
People-centred justice (PCJ) is emerging as a concrete approach to (national) justice programming. Justice practitioners and sector innovators alike have identified the ‘enablers and impediments’ that support the successful implementation of PCJ. The key goal is to ensure that justice sector professionals spend time in ways that people expect and direct services towards those priorities.
People-centred justice consists of five core elements: First is the need to collect data on justice experiences. Second, apply best practices on ‘what works’. Third, open up to innovations to create and scale game-changing solutions. Fourth, justice sector professionals must create an enabling environment and nurture private-public partnerships that show results. And finally, strengthen the movement toward change by creating accountability and ensuring the justice system’s shared goals are met.
The Hague — FOUNT and HiiL announce the launch of the Innovating Justice Fund: a first-of-its-kind fund with a unique focus on SDG 16: equal access to justice for all. We are currently deploying for our first investments, as we continue to raise additional capital via like-minded mission-oriented investors.
Each year, more than 1 billion people face a serious justice problem. Up to 55% of these problems remain unresolved or are resolved in a way that is felt as unfair. Our current justice system is unable to deliver equal access to justice for all. This lack of justice causes huge suffering, erodes social cohesion, entrenches and exacerbates inequalities, and disrupts economic development.
To close the Justice Gap, innovation is needed to bring new services to scale that can prevent or resolve justice problems for all. Start-ups with game-changing business models are a key driver in this transformation of the justice sector.
The Innovating Justice Fund addresses the Justice Gap by providing funding and technical assistance (TA) to early-stage start-ups that sustainably deliver innovative justice services in emerging markets. Their services prevent and resolve pressing issues around employment, family, fraud, crime, land, housing and neighbour conflicts.
The Fund’s main ambition is to contribute to people-centred justice services at scale. Eligible portfolio ventures must demonstrate a measurable contribution to this mission. The Fund impacts SDG 16 (equal access to justice for all) as well as SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) and SDG 10 (reduced inequalities).
The Fund is a strategic partnership between FOUNT and HiiL. HiiL brings in-depth justice sector expertise, a strong presence in the justice ecosystem and a pipeline of ventures via its Justice Accelerator (139 innovations supported since 2011). FOUNT, a leading impact investment firm, provides extensive investment and fund management expertise (10+ years and currently managing three impact funds) in developing countries.
The Fund is financially viable and presents a unique opportunity to support the justice sector in several regions and to be a frontrunner as investor in the first SDG 16-focused impact investment fund.
The Fund features:
A dedicated investment team of seasoned professionals;
A strong proprietary pipeline of early-stage gamechangers;
Access to a hub network providing access to in-depth local knowledge and stakeholders.
Currently, the Fund is being launched with support from the Dutch Government, a long-time partner of HiiL. The Fund is to be established as a Dutch limited partnership (CV) with a blended capital structure. The target capital size is EUR 10 million.
Global justice leaders convene for the World Justice Forum 2022
The Hague – Justice leaders, practitioners and innovators from across the world come together for the World Justice Forum from 30 May to 2 June to make people-centred justice happen. This year’s annual conference will focus on access to justice, combatting corruption, and protecting equal rights. The conference is organised by the World Justice Project in partnership with HiiL, IDLO, CIVICUS, Pathfinders, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
“Access to justice is a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 16.3) and is on equal footing with global priorities such as addressing climate change or expanding access to healthcare and education,” said HiiL’s CEO Sam Muller. “Unfortunately, however, justice is the last sector to go through a much-needed transformation. We know that two-thirds of the world’s population is facing unresolved problems. It’s clear that justice systems are not delivering enough but this conference is proof that a shift towards people-centred justice is underway. We thank the World Justice Project for pulling it together.”
The current trust crisis in government institutions and democratic rule of law leads to further polarisation. Add to that the unjust war in Ukraine, the ongoing pandemic, and an economic downturn resulting in more inequality and discontent. We believe that the right approach is to nourish trust and social cohesion through better ways of solving conflict.
In a well-functioning justice system conflicts are resolved, rights can be invoked and violence prevented. People-centred justice is justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and effective, putting people and the outcomes they need at the centre. This is an emerging approach to creating fair, inclusive, and timely solutions to justice problems. This approach leads to sustainable solutions but also brings impressive social and economic benefits.
The core elements of people-centred justice programming are: data collection on the needs and experiences of people, moving to evidence-based practice, developing gamechanging justice services, creating an enabling environment, and ensuring engagement and accountability. Each of the five elements has been tried and tested in different environments; a people-centred justice programme brings them together.
“This conference is really about making people-centred justice a reality and about the wider movement.”
Insights gained from HiiL’s various country projects have shown that anchoring people-centred justice projects in a country framework is the best way to make change happen. That is why we are joining forces globally to work on national priorities for people-centred justice in six countries and to reach a ‘turning point’ in each by 2024. These efforts, along with attracting funding for national people-centred justice programmes in key countries, are integral to closing the justice gap.
The Forum will feature public officials and business leaders from all over the world including UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, Microsoft President Brad Smith, European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová and Chair Mo Ibrahim from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. HiiL will lead or participate in five sessions:
Justice Needs and Satisfaction Study in the US: Lessons for Moving from Data to Action (Tuesday, 31 May)
People-Centred Justice: How to Make it Happen Systematically? (Wednesday, 1 June)
Creating a Functional Justice Marketplace with Public and Private Sector Engagement (Thursday, 2 June)
Scaling Gamechangers for people-centred justice (Friday, 3 June)
Side event on Customary and Informal Justice and SDG16+ (Friday, 3 June)
Sam Muller will lead the session, “People-centred justice: how to make it happen systematically?” on 1 June. The session will bring together important changemakers from several countries to discuss how national people-centred justice programmes can work on the ground.
The World Justice Forum will also see the launch of the Innovating Justice Fund, a first-of-its-kind financial fund with a unique focus on SDG 16. “To close the Justice Gap, innovation is needed to bring new services to scale that can prevent or resolve justice problems for all,” said Ronald Lenz, Director of Justice Accelerator. “Startups with gamechanging business models are a key driver in this transformation of the justice sector.”
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator has supported 139 startups in the past 10 years, and some of them are growing fast. Many of these successful entrepreneurs connect the public and private sectors to develop innovations that increase access to justice. The 2 June session, ”Creating a Functional Justice Marketplace” will explore what marketplace is required for gamechanging justice services to scale.
“This conference is really about making people-centred justice a reality and about the wider movement,” said Sam Muller. “HiiL is part of that movement, and joining forces with the World Justice Project, along with our co-partners, enables us to achieve greater impact and make people-centred justice happen at a bigger scale.”
Now is the time to make people-centred justice a reality. Visit the World Justice Forum website for more details and information about the conference.
Stakeholders from Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, the Netherlands and the USA exchanged best practices and challenges on realising people-centred justice at a Justice Dialogue that took place on Wednesday, 20 April. The participants all work at the forefront of applying people-centred justice approaches.
“The Justice Dialogue sought to better understand how the justice sector can make the transformation to people-centred justice programming, a way of working that puts people and the outcomes they need at the centre, not institutions.”
The timing of the Dialogue could not be more pertinent. While the conversation was organised as a precursor to HiiL’s plenary at the upcoming World Justice Forum, it also brought together the much-needed perspective on some of the critical components needed to bridge the access to justice gap.
To throw further light on the challenge, we see the demands for access to justice growing across different parts of the world. People and SMEs are demanding that governments deliver justice more effectively. There is a promise in SDG16 for equal access to justice for all. Constitutions in most countries, along with other laws, contain a commitment to access to justice. However, more changes are needed for the justice system to deliver on the promise of equal access to justice for all. Average rates for fair resolution remain in the range of 30% and need to be doubled or tripled.
At the same time, changes are starting to take place. Justice practitioners want to be more effective and contribute more toward people-centred justice. More concretely, five core elements for such an approach are emerging. First is the need to collect data on justice needs. Second, apply best practices on ‘what works’. Third, open up to innovations to scale and create game-changing solutions. Fourth, justice sector professionals must create an enabling environment and nurture private-public partnerships that get results. And finally, create accountability to ensure the justice system’s shared goals are met.
“People-centred justice programming has five components that, together, keep the focus on getting justice systems to fully fulfil their potential to society and the economy.”
The Dialogue was organised to learn more about challenges and impediments to people-centred justice programming and provide input for HiiL’s research into these questions. We will build on the inputs from this webinar during a plenary session that HiiL will convene at the World Justice Forum on 1 June. The stakeholders validated the hypothesis presented by HiiL that factors such as time and resources, incentives, knowledge and trust play a fundamental role in creating scale for national people-centred justice programming. Many agreed that these factors are both enablers and impediments – depending on how they are constructed within the policy and social framework of a country.
The Justice Dialogue was organised under Chatham House Rule. The dialogue featured the following participants:
Akingbolahan Adeniran Partner, Awodi & Co. Former Attorney General, Ogun State, Nigeria
Maha Jweied Non-Resident Fellow Center on International Cooperation, New York University, USA
Paul Kimalu Director, Planning and Organisational Performance Judiciary Kenya
Rose Wachuka Chief of Staff, Office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Kenya and President of the Supreme Court of Kenya
Jane Adongo Senior Sociologist Uganda Law Reforms Commission
Folusho Obienu Director of Citizens Rights Ogun State, Nigeria
Chinedu Agu Secretary of Imo State Bar Association, Imo State, Nigeria
Natalie Anne Knowlton Director, Special ProjectsInstitute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), USA
Gerald Abila Founder BarefootLaw, Uganda
Angela Lungati Executive Director Ushahidi, Kenya
Odunoluwa Longe Co-founder TLP Advisory, Nigeria/UK
Why is ‘people-centred justice’ a priority:
Stakeholders agreed that investing in PCJ is crucial for a variety of reasons. “People-centred Justice focuses specifically on people’s problems and provides alignment towards creating solutions that address these problems.”
“When the governments make PCJ a priority, it helps drive investment and promote the growth of the economy,” said one participant. This provides an important link between justice and economic progress and a perspective on why PCJ may be necessary to be implemented at scale.
Make the case
Participants at the Dialogue were of the view that making people-centred justice work requires a strong case. “The first major enabler towards people-centred justice programming is having conversations like these and getting all our perspectives together on the table,” said Sam Muller, CEO at HiiL, when he opened the session. “And making the case starts with data, data, data.”
The discussants unanimously agreed that a lack of data was “pervasive” and undermining the efforts to enact change. As one participant noted, “more data would enable practitioners to focus on the right issues”.
However, making the case also involves living the experience. For example, one participant voiced their wishes to take their governor to more places where justice needs emerge and show the exchanges of how people deal with their respective problems. In this way, the governor could witness the justice journey of an average citizen.
“We need to make sure we are spending time on things that people actually need and directing services towards those goals.”
Convene the right stakeholders and enable the environment
“This is a massive change management project,” said another participant. At its core, delivering justice involves interactions between people who commit themselves to making people-first choices. Scaling people-centred justice is a cross-sectoral work. Bringing the right people together is a large part of the solution. These conversations serve to create an environment where trust, incentives, time and resources and relevant knowledge can enable positive change.
The government’s role in this process cannot be undermined either. Their willingness to have the right regulatory framework contributes towards developing an enabling environment that nurtures game-changing justice innovations that can address people’s justice problems at scale.
Innovating and implementing
The appetite for innovation is growing across different stakeholders. “Justice practitioners want to be valued and more effective,” said Maurits Barendrecht, HiiL’s Director of research and development. “Judges, lawyers, prosecutors, social workers, informal justice providers, civil servants, therapists, and mediators are all working within communities to pilot, grow, and improve access to justice.”
Indeed, as one participant commented, “the risk of doing nothing is greater than taking action.” The Justice Dialogue laid a foundation for continuing the promise of people-centred justice. Looking ahead, discussions on what components and elements support the successful implementation of such an approach will be of utmost importance during the 2022 World Justice Forum (The Hague, 30 May to 3 June 2022). In particular, HiiL will lead a Plenary Session titled “People-centred justice: how to make it happen systematically?” which will feature several stakeholders from the Justice Dialogue among a diverse group of international practitioners all committed to realising user-friendly justice.
What factors and characteristics contribute to justice innovation? How can existing justice services improve their models to increase access to justice? How can the private sector and public sector support and innovate people-centred justice?
HiiL tackled these questions with three expert-led working groups. Each working group was charged with examining the critical success factors for realising effective justice services. The sessions focused on three gamechanger categories: Community Justice Services, User-friendly Contracts and One Stop Shop Dispute Resolution.
On 23 March, we published the insights and findings in policy briefs during a live webinar.
“This is about focusing on the users and empowering them to develop the best possible solutions for everyday justice problems,” said Kanan Dhru, Justice Innovation Advisor at HiiL.
Community Justice Services
Community justice services seem to be an indispensable element of a justice system that provides equal access to justice for all. Gradually, policymakers are discovering how to scale the programmes at regional and country levels. This policy brief lists a number of critical success factors that HiiL developed with insights from leading experts in the field. The five factors essential to scaling community justice services are:
Standardising working methods of the community justice service.
Monitoring the outcomes delivered to people.
Combining the strengths of informal justice and rights-based dispute resolution.
Making community justice services affordable and financially sustainable.
Building scale from the ground up.
“Drawing on the collective experience of HiiL and our working group experts, we also identified examples of services that have already been scaled or are internationally recognised for their quality of services,” said Manasi Nikam, Knowledge Management Officer at HiiL.
Of course, this is only an overview of our policy brief. To learn more about each critical success factor as well as the examples of community justice services, please refer to the full policy brief.
Contracts are essential tools for enabling cooperation between people. Although legal professionals are comfortable with such documents, most people find contracts difficult to understand. However, a growing group of scholars and innovators are making contracting a more positive experience. These Gamechangers are developing user-friendly contracts that are fair and transparent and help people to better understand their rights and obligations.
The five factors essential to scaling user-friendly contracts are:
Optimising user experience.
Showing and optimising the benefits for client companies.
Changing the mindset of lawyers and companies on contracting.
One-stop-shop dispute resolution systems humanise legal procedures by giving people more control over how their disputes will be addressed and resolved. Subsequently, many courts now operate online dispute resolution modules, however, few examples of large scale implementation exist. In this policy brief, we detail the following critical success factors to help scale OSSDR systems.
Having a User-centred design of the dispute resolution procedure and system.
Solving the ‘Submission Problem’: Getting the other disputing party to the table.
Monitoring outcomes that the system provides to people.
Forming effective public-private partnerships.
The government opening the regulatory doors to stimulate different types of initiatives.
“When we talk about Gamechangers, we’re not talking about blockchain or automated judgements,” said Maurits Barendrecht, HiiL’s Director of Research & Development. “Instead, we get a glimpse into the next generation of services and these are about community justice, next-generation courts, and next-generation contracts. They focus on people and their needs and relationships.”
In his report “Our Common Agenda,” the United Nations secretary-general refers to an “ever deeper crisis of trust” and a “frayed social contract.” The 12,000 leaders that the World Economic Forum surveyed for “The Global Risks Report 2022” saw the rising risks of “social cohesion erosion” and “livelihood crises.” Writing about the “2022 Edelman Trust Barometer” report, Edelman’s CEO says that distrust “is now society’s default emotion” and that societal fears are becoming more acute.
This International Women’s Day, HiiL celebrates the brave and innovative women committed to a diverse, equitable and inclusive world. This is a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination. And a world where difference is valued and celebrated.
This year, we’re thinking of women on the front lines in Ukraine where they are fighting for their right to self-determination. The women in West Africa at THRMedia (2021 Innovating Justice Challenge winners) helping women and girls break free, find shelter and recover from sexual and gender-based violence. And the countless women-led organisations and female entrepreneurs around the world committed to making people-centred justice possible.
Not to mention our own HiiL colleagues leading justice transformation initiatives and promoting best practices to advance game-changing solutions in the justice sector. All these women and those who support them are raising awareness against bias and discrimination. Their tireless efforts are people-centred, collaborative and unstoppable, and the world is a safer place with their leadership. #BreakTheBias
HiiL strongly condemns the armed attack of Russian forces on Ukraine, which is in flagrant violation of international law. As part of its justification, the Russian political leadership invokes an idea of justice that we at HiiL do not understand and which runs contrary to the work HiiL has done with many brave and innovative justice practitioners in Ukraine.
That work is people-centred, geared towards resolving concrete problems that people have. It protects fundamental rights and ensures that the government is accountable. With the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research HiiL collected data in 2016 about the justice needs of people from across Ukraine, including from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions but not from Crimea. Data shows that people from both sides had similar justice needs.
And since 2016, the HiiL Justice Accelerator has built a vibrant justice innovation ecosystem. It has also supported 15 people-centred justice innovations in Ukraine, which have helped people and SMEs with the means to resolve and prevent their most pressing justice problems.
This is the real justice work. Unstoppable. Collaborative. Concrete. HiiL’s efforts to support Ukraine’s justice practitioners and its people will continue because our shared goal is to build a strong and effective people-centred justice system.
Each year, HiiL welcomes a selected number of startups to compete in the annual Innovating Justice Challenge. This flagship programme of our Global Justice Accelerator culminated with Demo Day on 16 February 2022.
Sixteen startups representing seven countries from Africa, the Middle East and Europe took part in this year’s edition. They pitched their game-changing justice innovations to a panel of judges in a bid to win the top three cash prizes of €20,000, €10,000 and €5,000.
This year’s top prize went to THR Media, a social enterprise using new media and technology solutions to help women and girls break free, find shelter and recover from Sexual and Gender-Based Violence. They wowed the judges with their justice innovation addressing « a real and present danger of our times. » Second and third place went to Civitas (Tunisia) and Legal Ascend (South Africa). They were awarded €10,000 and €5,000, respectively.
👏 Congratulations to THR Media, who just won the Innovating Justice Challenge and a cash prize of €20,000 👏 They wowed us and the judges today during #DemoDay2022, presenting their justice innovation addressing "a real and present danger of our times." #SGBV
Demo Day 2022 was organised virtually for the second time due to the pandemic. More than 300 people tuned in globally including justice sector practitioners, innovators, and civil society representatives.
In addition to the three winners above, this year’s startups included:
« The innovations participating in Demo Day are ambitious and thoughtful, » said Nadine Hafez, Justice Accelerator Project Officer. « They are managed by tech-savvy entrepreneurs with a fierce commitment to promoting access to justice. »
Demo Day marked the end of the 2021 Innovating Justice Challenge but also the start of our 2022 programme. Beginning today until March 31, the Global Justice Accelerator is accepting applications from the next generation of justice innovators. For the next month, HiiL will be on the lookout for the new generation of Gamechangers from East Africa, West Africa and MENA. Once selected, the startups will go through a 4-month long training programme culminating in the next Demo Day in February 2023.
An important step was taken last week in anchoring people-centred justice in the efforts of the UN member states and the organisation to realise SDG 16 and justice for all. In a consultation organised by the President of the UN General Assembly, HiiL’s CEO, Sam Muller, set out how people-centred justice can be programmed and which investments are needed for that.
At the opening of the UN General Assembly in September last year, the UN Secretary-General published his vision for tackling the challenges facing the world as the UN turns 75, seen against the backdrop of the 2030 SDG Agenda. In his report, Our Common Agenda, António Guterres notes that he is picking up an ‘ever deeper crisis of trust’ and a ‘frayed social contract’. One of the reasons for this, he notes is that institutions are “[f]ailing to deliver what people need most, including basic services”. Justice systems included.
“Justice systems are part of the problem”, agreed Sam during the session. As the Task Force on Justice worked out in its 2019 report, they deliver only for the few. Furthermore, 5.1 billion people – two-thirds of the world’s population – lack meaningful access to justice. And 1.5 billion of them face unresolved civil, administrative or crime-related problems. The most vulnerable are the most affected. Three Justice in a Pandemic reports, which Sam co-authored, show that the figures are now worse.
“But justice systems are also a large part of the solution – as critical drivers of trust”, Sam went on to say. “It is the place where conflicts are resolved, rights can be invoked, frustrations may be channelled, and violence can be prevented. It strengthens trust. Between people – because conflicts get resolved and it is known that the rules apply to everyone. In-state institutions – because, they too, are seen to be accountable and because they deliver a critical public good: justice and fairness in people’s lives. And – as an aside – it’s also good for the economy“.
“So if there ever was a time to massively invest more in justice systems, it is now”. Sam appealed. He highly commended the Secretary-General’s new vision of the rule of law that puts people at the center. And he fully agreed that such a new people-centred vision should be inclusive, concrete and practical, and with one primary focus: delivery.
Sam pointed out that in past years an evidence-based and innovation-driven approach has emerged to realise this people-centred justice vision.1 “It now needs to be massively scaled up and the member states, supported by the UN have a critical role to play in that”. Sam set out four concrete investments that are needed to make people-centred justice happen, all anchored in HiiL’s new three-year strategy.
First: to help countries build capacity to regularly collect and share data about people’s justice problems and experiences. This data helps prioritise and measure effectiveness. Countries like Argentina, Canada, Niger, and others are already collecting such people-centred justice data. HiiL has developed tools for this. These efforts can be further systematised and scaled.
Second: investments to build the capacity of justice professionals to improve evidence-based work and approaches. This means capturing and sharing which interventions work best to prevent and resolve specific justice problems. This is also being done. For example, in Uganda guidelines on what works best for family justice have been developed.
Third: investment in innovation such as Gamechangers that get the justice interventions that work best to as many people as possible, and as efficiently as possible. This is about delivery. Local justice centers, user-friendly contracts, and platforms to help people claim access to public services are examples of such people-centred game-changing solutions. They can be adapted, upgraded, and scaled. This is an area where we have seen youth and young lawyers come together and excel.
Fourth: investment in an enabling environment for encouraging people-centred justice. Over the past two years, thanks to the SDG vision of justice for all, more justice leaders than ever have come together to work on this. One key initiative globally is the Justice Action Coalition of the Pathfinders for Justice which is supported by organisations such as the Justice Leaders and The Elders. Regionally, efforts include informal meetings HiiL is facilitating in the Arab region. While our stakeholder dialogues held in countries where HiiL works have contributed at national levels. Taken altogether, this is an area where the UN and its member states can provide a lot of value with their convening power.
“What we need is not rocket science. Its core components are known. It is a good investment,” concluded Sam.
Adding to the urgency of the message, the other speaker on the topic of justice, Sara Hossain, Honorary Director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust and member of the Task Force on Justice stressed local and ground-up approaches for achieving people-centred justice.
“Realising a new vision of the rule of law and putting people at the centre of justice requires collaboration amongst actors within the justice profession,” she said. “The legal profession, in particular, can be more inclusive and innovative in how it operates, and work alongside others beyond the profession such as human rights defenders, paralegals, community justice advocates as well as state authorities.”
A copy of Sam’s speech can be found here, including a summary of questions asked and relevant closing remarks by the UN’s Under Secretary for Policy, Volker Turk.
« Accelerating the SDGs through sustainable financing and building trust » was the second thematic cluster of Common Agenda consultations. You can watch the full event at UN Web TV.
Come January and the Forum team at HiiL is abuzz with the preparations for our flagship event ‘The Innovating Justice Forum (IJF)’. The Forum, since 2010, has been an annual meeting ground for justice leaders, innovators, practitioners, academicians and members of the legal fraternity from across the world to come together to discuss ways to make justice more people-centred. This year, however, we are following another exciting approach.
Building on the success of the past years, we have decided to take our Forum to the next level to achieve greater impact. We are working to achieve this by progressing the conversation about people-centred justice through a new collaboration and format with the World Justice Project this year.
We are thrilled to become one of the official partners for the World Justice Forum 2022! This hybrid event will take place from 30 May to 2 June this year in The Hague and online on three intersecting themes: access to justice, anti-corruption and open government, and equal rights and non-discrimination. The Forum will bring together a global network of rule of law actors, including representatives from governments, international organisations, philanthropies, and the private sector working for change at both local and international levels.
Through this partnership, HiiL plays a leading role in a global movement consisting of key partners and organisations working on people-centred justice to achieve a greater impact towards making SDG16.3 a reality. Having joined forces with the global community of partners working on people-centred justice, we are now working to feature HiiL at the World Justice Forum as a builder of national people-centred justice programmes.
Across three days, HiiL will play a key role at the World Justice Forum. On day one, Martin Gramatikov, Director of Measuring Justice at HiiL, will present data from our recently conducted Justice Needs Survey in the USA in an interactive working session along with the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) which maps out the legal problems people in the US face in their everyday lives.
Day two will consist of an exciting mini-plenary session on developing and implementing national people-centred justice programmes. Prior to this mini-plenary, the HiiL Forum team will work with the Programme Directors and members from our country teams to organise a ‘Justice Dialogue’. This will feature stakeholders from our focus countries, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Niger and the Netherlands. The Justice Dialogue will focus on understanding how people-centred justice is being developed and implemented in different countries, the success stories from the ground and will dive deeper into the framework laid out in our latest Policy-Brief, ‘The Promise of People-Centred Justice’. A selection of these stakeholders from the Justice Dialogue will join the World Justice Forum in person (Covid permitting) and will share their vision and work on people-centred justice with the global audience.
On the final day of the World Justice Forum, members of the Justice Leadership Group will participate in a conversation during the Closing Plenary session. The Justice Leaders are an independent group of justice officials who have served at the highest levels in the government and have first hand experience on what it takes to transform justice systems to make them more focused on the realities of people.
Apart from these three events, members from HiiL team will also participate in the selection of the coveted World Justice Challenge and convene regularly with the other partner organisations to develop a stellar collective agenda to further the goal of keeping Sustainable Development Goals on track.
We strongly believe that collaboration and partnerships play a pivotal role in achieving our mission to prevent and resolve justice problems for millions, in a more effective and much faster way, putting people and the outcomes they need at the centre.
As the preparation for our participation at the World Justice Forum starts in full swing, we hope you will continue to follow our journey on social media channels. We are delighted to partner in this exciting agenda and look forward to keeping you updated! The detailed agenda for the World Justice Forum can be found on this link which features Justice Expo, off-site events and also activities at cultural institutions in the Hague. We hope you will actively take part in this Forum and join us in our exciting journey to achieve people-centred justice.
For more information about the programme details and to register, please visit the Word Justice Forum website.
HiiL produces Treatment Guidelines that can help justice workers decide how best to assist people when they experience a conflict. Our latest Guideline, informed by evidence-based practices, presents recommendations on interventions for resolving conflicts among neighbours.
Many cultures and communities around the world encourage us to form good ties with our neighbours. However, disputes between and among neighbours are a reality of life. All too often neighbours must contend with noise, pets and animals, rowdy children, boundaries, and even visual annoyances such as property appearance and trash. So how can we deal with these issues in a way that delivers good outcomes for all parties?
HiiL has put together sets of recommended interventions drawn from international literature for resolving neighbour disputes. They are based on empirical research in the fields of psychology, communications, criminology, and conflict resolution.
Justice problems, much like diseases, afflict every person around the world regardless of race, ethnicity, age or sex. Our Guidelines offer practical approaches on ‘what works’ to help justice workers better address people’s urgent justice needs.
“The justice sector is ready for new ways of sharing, acquiring, and applying knowledge about what works when it comes to solving legal problems,” said Martin Gramatikov, HiiL’s Director of Measuring Justice. “An evidence-based approach to justice provides a path forward.”
The recommendations can be found in our Treatment Guideline for addressing problems between neighbours features 11 recommendations so far. Each recommendation is linked to building blocks or types of interventions including prevention, communication, resolving, and aftercare. These shared practices can help people reach fair solutions.
What impact can startups and private sector innovations have in addressing legal concerns and wider problems of justice? Examples at HiiL’s 2022 Demo Day will present what is possible.
HiiL’s Global Justice Accelerator will convene 18 startups from Africa, Ukraine and the Middle East to showcase their justice innovations at Demo Day 2022 on February 16th. The flagship event featuring investors, entrepreneurs, and the wider justice innovation community will conclude an impactful 2021 Innovating Justice Challenge which launched back in March 2021.
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator is an innovation ecosystem builder dedicated to scaling meaningful tools and services within the justice sector. It offers startups a four-month programme that provides €10,000 non-equity funding, business training and support, coaching and mentorship, and access to a global network to advance development and investment opportunities to justice sector Gamechangers.
This year’s Demo Day theme is “Unlocking the justice potential in startups”. Held virtually with a global audience and selected jury, the 2021 cohort of #Gamechangers will present their unique solutions for addressing the justice gap in their respective countries and communities. The innovators will be judged on how well their game-changing idea scales to sustainably improve people’s access to justice. The panel will challenge the innovators with questions about their game-changing idea and subsequently choose the top three pitches. Selected winners will receive a grant of €20,000, €10,000 and €5,000, respectively.
If you are looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs that are closing the justice gap, this is the place to be.
Demo Day is also an opportunity for learning and interaction between startups, investors, and a global network of Gamechangers reimagining the justice sector in hotspots around the world.
« This year’s cohort is a tough bunch,” said Iran Huffels, Justice Accelerator Programme Manager at HiiL. “They have pushed forward against all the voices that told them to stop. The instability, inequity and uncertainty of the pandemic did not discourage them, but motivated them to push harder for justice. These founders are agents of change in their communities and beyond.”
For 10 years, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme has supported startups with significant potential to help people prevent or resolve their justice problems. With a focus on sustainable, self-sufficient, and scalable business models, the participating innovations at Demo Day are ambitious and thoughtful. They are managed by tech-savvy entrepreneurs with a fierce commitment to promoting access to justice.
“I can not wait to share their achievements with you on Demo Day,” added Iran. “Come to be inspired, to learn and to join our movement to make justice a reality everywhere.”
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user- friendly justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, affordable, and effective. We will ensure that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best. We are friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central in all that we do. We are based in The Hague, the City of Peace and Justice.
A new global initiative has been launched to advocate for engaging effectively with the customary and informal justice (CIJ) practices and thus, realise equal access to justice for all.
The global ‘access to justice’ gap is vast. This widening gap cannot be bridged by one organisation or agency alone. It is the responsibility of the global justice community to come together to develop the right solutions that work for people. This means creating and supporting accessible and affordable services that address everyday justice problems.
One platform bringing together 60+ international and national organisations on people-centred approaches to solving justice issues is the Working Group on Customary and Informal Justice and SDG16+. This global initiative has come together to advocate for engaging effectively with the customary and informal justice (CIJ) practices. The goal is to pursue a common agenda for SDG16, realising equal access to justice for all.
CIJ practices remain the first point of contact for many of the world’s population but especially for women, poor people, minority groups, and marginalised communities. It is estimated that 80% of legal disputes around the globe get resolved outside of formal courts systems using CIJ systems.
“Sometimes the line between how a dispute is resolved in community and healing is blurred” – Juan Carlos Botero, Panellist at the High-Level Dialogue and Associate Professor, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Customary justice practices have been around for hundreds of years and are deeply grounded in the realities of the people they serve. These diverse justice mechanisms prioritise community needs making CIJ highly people-centred, collaborative and harmonious. This is especially true when compared to the post-colonial retributive formal legal systems across the Global South. And despite the criticism of perpetuating existing power dynamics and conservative social norms, CIJ systems do remain a very important vehicle to address access to justice.
However, there is an opportunity now more than ever, for informal and formal justice systems to effectively coexist. In fact, many countries have provided helpful examples of them working very well together. These include Timor Leste, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan and Colombia.
On 8 December 2021, a High-Level Dialogue on CIJ and SDG16+ met to discuss the challenges and opportunities of coordinating the formal and informal justice systems. Organised by the Working Group on CIJ, the dialogue featured policy-makers, members of the civil society, academicians and community justice practitioners and sought to galvanise support for placing CIJ at the centre of the global discourse on people-centred justice.
This debut meeting of the working group kicks off a series of conversations on CIJ systems. A sharper understanding of the practices and complexities of CIJ systems will help justice-sector stakeholders apply a more holistic framework for people-centred justice. That, in turn, will help realise equal access to justice for all around the world.
*Kanan Dhru works as Justice Innovation Researcher at HiiL and also represents the organisation at the Working Group on Customary and Informal Justice and SDG16+.
A new report examines the opportunities, challenges and risks associated with improving the rule of law and increasing access to justice.
Each year, more than 1 billion people face a serious justice problem. Up to 70% of these problems remain unresolved or get resolved in a way perceived as unfair. Existing justice institutions find it difficult to cope with the demands for justice. So, how can justice systems be more responsive to the needs of people? What shifts are required of institutions to deliver justice that is people-centred?
In this report, we develop an international and comparative overview of justice innovations with a focus on government-centred technology innovations for improving the rule of law and access to justice. Through interviews and literature review, we identify the barriers, opportunities and risks that justice innovations present to improving the rule of law and access to justice.
“The data suggests that government led innovations more often resort to non-tech solutions, whereas private innovations rely on technology as the core component of their product. Further analysis is needed on which digital tools create opportunities for local security and justice delivery and what the accompanying risks are. However, it’s clear that digital tools provide great promise in addressing access to justice.”
To map the emerging trends in the justice innovation ecosystem, we analysed 150 innovations across public and private sectors in 68 countries (75 government-led technology innovations and 75 gamechangers). For each innovation, we collected data on 15 parameters in order to inform our analysis. These include the type of justice problems addressed, technology deployed, demographic focus, capacity to resolve the justice problems, and their financial models.
We also examine the risks that innovations pose in terms of breach of data, digital exclusion and perpetuation of inequality of access to justice. Along with risks, we analyse the barriers to the growth of these innovations, such as lack of financial resources, lack of skills to use technology, and low internet penetration.
Keys findings from the study include:
Government-led justice-tech innovations and gamechangers most frequently address justice problems related to crime, business, family, civil and land.
Target groups served by innovations include the government, urban population, lawyers and law firms, and small and medium-sized enterprises.
Tools and technology frequently used by the innovations are web portals, social media, electronic case management systems, artificial intelligence, multilingual chat platforms, and blockchain.
A significant percentage of innovations (67%) exclude people who do not have access to technology.
Ijeoma A. Nwafor at the Kaduna Justice Transformation Forum
How do we communicate to critical stakeholders in a country that the legal infrastructure, processes and outcomes are not reaching the majority of the people? How do encourage buy-in on making justice accessible, affordable and easy to navigate? What do we do to ensure that innovations that can impact the highest number of people in a country are empowered, deployed and mobilised to actually become Gamechangers?
We believe we can do all these and more by communicating, deliberating, listening and acting with gatekeepers working in various agencies of government, civil society organisations, legislators, innovators, and heads of religious and traditional institutions. The beginning of these stakeholder dialogues took place in Kaduna on December 1st, 2021.
In preparation for the Justice Transformation Lab (JTL) in Kaduna, HiiL organised a Forum featuring 100 experts and practitioners from across the justice ecosystem. The Forum sought to introduce HiiL to the justice community in Kaduna and orient participants to the proposed JTL, a series of dialogues to craft an actionable way forward for realising people-centred justice across the state.
“The people of Kaduna should get ready for the paradigm shift from institution-centred justice to people-centred,” said Ijeoma Nwafor, HiiL’s Justice Transformation Country Representative in Nigeria. “That is the essence of user-friendly justice!”
Roughly 40 attendees from the Forum, all strategically selected based on their background and expertise, will participate in the JTL. The nine to twelve-month long process will kickstart with the first of three dialogues in January 2022. Each SD will last three days and involve a retreat with the aim of prioritising justice goals and identifying Gamechangers, those unique services and tools that help solve or prevent people’s most pressing justice needs.
“We are here to ensure that justice flows in Kaduna like a river, reaching every nook and corner of the society,” said the Solicitor General in his energetic closing remarks.
HiiL began its work in Nigeria in 2016. Data has been an integral part of our approach to increasing access to justice in Africa’s most populous country. In 2018, we conducted a Justice Needs & Satisfaction survey which will serve as the basis for the upcoming JTL.
We can strengthen justice systems by putting people and the outcomes they need first. This approach leads to sustainable solutions but also brings impressive social and economic benefits. In this policy brief, we share what is emerging about developing and implementing national people-centred justice programmes.
In September 2021, the UN Secretary-General presented his agenda for the tremendous challenges the world is facing as the UN celebrates its 75 anniversary. In his report ‘Our Common Agenda,’ António Guterres makes two important observations to the UN member states: first, the troubling erosion of the social contract and second, the inadequate response of justice systems which « deliver only for the few. »
Data backs this up. The most pressing justice problems occur when jobs, housing, land, family relationships or public services essential for survival are at stake. Only 32% of people experiencing a justice problem report that it is resolved in a satisfactory way. Furthermore, 7% use a court or some other form of tribunal. And only 8% get advice from a lawyer or another professional.
There is growing recognition of a new paradigm that can help us deal with the challenge of achieving SDG16.3 – access to justice for all: people-centred justice.
The good news is that countries are becoming more successful in providing security and preventing crime. But the highly regarded Rule of Law Index shows that more safety does not equal more justice. Indicators suggest that the protection of human rights is deteriorating over the past 5 years.
All told, the justice gap is widening and leaving an indelible mark on people’s lives and well-being.
However, a concrete approach is emerging. It comes from the pioneering work of many including the Task Force on Justice, Pathfinders for Justice, the OECD, the Portuguese EU Presidency, World Justice Project, Namati, Open Society Justice Initiative, the Elders and more. The elements of the emerging approach can be described in many ways. This policy brief attempts to bring the elements together in an integrated approach and details five main investments:
Data
Evidence-based practice
Gamechanging justice services
Enabling Environment
Engagement and accountability
Each of the five elements has been tried and tested in different environments; a people-centred justice programme brings them together. The approach is modular and integrated. It can be accompanied by a solid business case in terms of social and economic benefits. It can provide the assurances investors need.
Now is the time to start to understand this way of programming and to help develop it further.
As we get close to 2030 with every passing year, how close are we to achieving the ambitious agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, mainly target 16.3’s promise to ‘ensure equal access to justice for all?’
The World Justice Project and the Task Force on Justice estimate that approximately 5 billion people in the world do not have access to justice to problems such as land injustice, employment injustice, modern slavery, insecurity due to armed conflicts and so on. Clearly, the demand for justice is high. We need a fresh take in order to meet this demand for justice and to achieve the 2030 target goals.
Increasingly, researchers and justice workers alike are relying on evidence-based practice to resolve people’s justice problems. HiiL’s Justice Dashboard brings to you evidence-based guidelines on resolving the most pressing justice problems related to family, land, neighbours, and employment. These guidelines support front-line practitioners such as paralegals, lawyers, judges, mediators, social workers, and community justice workers in applying what has proven to work in preventing and resolving justice problems.
They contain a set of actionable interventions that justice workers can apply to deliver outcomes that people desire from dispute resolution. They can be implemented by any person with limited or no additional support necessary from peers. With these recommendations, we aim to bridge the gap between research and professional practice. In the future, we will have these guidelines reviewed by external justice workers to confirm their practical application.
Taking inspiration from methods used in the medical sector to establish standard ways of working, we have identified interventions from literature produced by experts and scholars to prevent and resolve justice problems. The empirical evidence has been sourced from the fields of psychology, criminology, communications, and conflict resolution. Using the evidence, we studied the benefits and pitfalls of each intervention, then compared them to other equivalent interventions and graded the quality of each intervention based on its empirical validity or the GRADE method ― a scholarly benchmark given by the medical sector to evaluate the quality of evidence.
The interventions are grounded in core classes of interventions called ‘building blocks’ that are used in various phases of dispute resolution. The seven basic building blocks are preventing, mapping facts, convening, communicating, resolving, moving forward, and aftercare. Different types of justice problems require different building blocks, but an effective justice treatment will typically contain at least one building block.
To get a snapshot of interventions, head to the guideline on family problems. In there, we show 21 sets of interventions that provide recommendations on parenting styles, sharing expenses related to childcare post-separation, and household arrangements. They can be used by family and friends who are helping the disputing parties, therapists, mediators, lawyers, paralegals, and judges. Broadly speaking, each of these recommendations belongs to broad categories of building blocks such as preventing, communicating and resolving.
In the coming weeks, we will be releasing similar interventions to resolve problems related to land, employment, neighbours, and domestic violence. Keep watching this space for more.
Throughout the past few months, we introduced you to startups from our current cohort who are working to solve justice issues. All of these innovators are now preparing to pitch their unique solutions for addressing the justice gap at the HiiL’s Demo Day 2022. This 2021 cohort of Gamechangers is competing for the top prize in our 2021 Innovating Justice Challenge.
The innovators dedicated to the Justice Issue: Crime, money, family
Meet Varonique Philander, Founder of Legal Ascend
Legal Ascend is a platform that supports families & individuals with the admin after-death process.
We interviewed Varonique, the Founder of Legal Ascend to learn more about her justice innovation that guides people who have lost their loved ones through the admin and legal process.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
“We started our Legal Ascend product in March 2020. I am an attorney and conveyancer who loves entrepreneurship & community building.”
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
“Losing a loved one is a very painful experience and struggling with “admin after death” while grieving can be very frustrating. Especially, if you do not know how to start the process. Many times the death of a loved one can place the family under severe financial pressure because accounts get frozen and without proper guidance, they get stuck in the system. Our Legal Ascend platform aims to solve this justice issue.”
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
« We have launched an Empowering Community Paralegal programme in which we train community paralegals about the “admin after death” process. The aim is for them to be able to help their community Clients by providing guidance and document support using our Legal Ascend tool. We hope to be the most Trusted Online Admin after Death Guidance Tool in South Africa that assists marginalised persons/families navigate through a very painful time in their lives. We hope to do this by training more community paralegals to offer guidance and document support in respect of the “admin after death” process which allows us to reach and create opportunities for communities across South Africa.
Hiil’s user-friendly justice approach has been instrumental in assisting our team in being more customer focussed and building a solution that is impact-driven. “
Meet William Chidube, Founder of Avocat
Avocat offers Nigerians quick legal aid in emergency situations via their mobile app.
We interviewed William Chidube, the Founder of Avoact to learn more about his justice innovation that provides people with legal help in emergency situations.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
“Avocat is my third attempt at starting a company. It was inspired in 2020 by the ENDSARS protests that were sparked by police brutality. We wanted to foster a better relationship between people and the police using legal professionals as catalysts. It was important to offer timely legal protection to citizens who could be exposed to abuse by security forces. The idea has since grown beyond police brutality to include domestic violence and even abduction cases.”
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
“Because we want a society where each person is treated with respect and is in full knowledge of their basic human rights and that they are respected in every situation, regardless of their income, social status, race or gender. We work with anyone whose profession or lifestyle exposes them to any potential form of abuse, so the range of people we work with is diverse. From international expatriates, political activists, journalists, domestic and emotional violence victims.”
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
« Currently we focus on understanding and serving the Nigerian people. When we believe we have our grounds set, we will begin our Pan-African expansion beginning with our neighbouring country: Ghana. It is our vision to see a country without oppressive behaviour. We hope that thousands of Nigerians will successfully avert violent human rights over the next two years. Additionally with our legal consultation feature we expect to have connected thousands of Nigerians with legal professionals by the end of 2022.”
This Month is dedicated to the Justice Issue: SMEs, entrepreneurs & employment
Meet Maushami Chetty, Founder of Kleva Contracts
Kleva Contracts works with employers and entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized enterprises to simplify their startup procedures. They tackle this unique justice-related issue by providing online contract creation, access to legal services, and educational materials in multiple South African languages. The result: increasing access to legal services and facilitating more efficient and sustainable practices that encourage employment.
We interviewed Maushami Chetty, the Founder of Kleva Contracts to learn more about her justice innovation towards democratising the legal procedures for SMEs and promoting a successful startup culture across Southern Africa.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
“I’m an attorney with 15 years experience and particularly love working with entrepreneurs and start-ups. I love the energy of new beginnings and the promise of big dreams and impact. I enjoy bringing risk management and security to these big dreams. Kleva Contracts began as an idea in 2017 but started in 2019.”
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
“I work with entrepreneurs in my consulting business and realized how other small businesses could not afford risk management themselves and did not see the added-value that law can bring in building a resilient business, especially considering their limited resources. I wanted to have a true impact on these small and medium businesses and found the only way is to use digital platforms to scale and reach more ventures.”
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
« We are working on key partnerships. In particular, a big challenge for us is expanding internet access especially outside larger cities and towns. But we are committed to solving this challenge through partnerships. And with help from HiiL’s network we have been widening and broadening our own network, which is something we find invaluable and a stepping stone towards the partnerships we want to see through to make the largest impact. For now, a key goal of ours is to reduce the 80% failure rate among SMEs in their first three years. »
Meet Zhukov Mykyta and Oleh Horlachov, Co-Founders of Legal Design
Legal design is a platform that assists people to understand household contract conclusions without the need for lawyers’ contribution and offers access to user-friendly legal documents that are easily interpreted by all users.
We interviewed Zhukov Mykyta and Oleh Horlachov to tell us more about their justice innovation and what they hope to achieve next.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
“We started working on this project in April 2021. In the beginning, we only wanted to simplify the legal world to the end-user and through time we decided to transform the modern legal theory to comprehensible legal documents easily perceived by users without a need for professional lawyers.”
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
“Both of us are experts in our niche and every day we come across hundreds of people who are victims of ambiguous legal documents. Together we saw an opportunity to make their lives better through legal design.”
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
“In general, we hope to automate legal design contracts. We want to create bots and design contractual templates accessible to all our users, a click away on their smartphones.
Our main goal is to replace ambiguous legal documents with comprehensible ones for everyone to use without having to resort to legal counsel. We also try to popularize our activities and gain exposure in the media as well as get the appropriate mentoring and financial support for the development and automation of our products.”
Meet Amer Kurdii, Founder of Adel
Adel enables employees experiencing difficulties from injustice at work to access our legally automated platform to check their employment compensations and connect them with experienced attorneys.
We interviewed Amer Kurdi and asked him to tell us more about his justice innovation towards employment rights.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
“In the past six years of my service as an attorney to facilitate efficient, productive interviews with my clients, I have developed a series of questions related to building their employment claim; through time, this list of questions developed and enabled me to automate it and make it accessible to thousands of employees who demand instant help, to self-assist themselves and know their rights.”
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
“I choose to work on this specific justice issue for many reasons. Amongst many, firstly, it’s important to notice that employment laws offer excellent protection and compensation against the violation of employment rights, however, 80% of the employees in MENA are deprived of those rights because they simply are not aware of them. Secondly, this falls right in my expertise. I always wanted to innovate and incorporate technology and law given the immense impact and the vast outreach. Finally, I wanted to disrupt the employment sector by helping those in need by levelling the playing field between employees and employers through legal technology.”
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
“Our next steps are to refine the claim checker to make it even more user friendly and free of legal jargon, as well as finalize the process of partnering with the lawyers required to provide legal services, and split our business model to contain a free version of the claim checker the advanced version to be paid.
We also want to expand in the MENA region and localize the claim checker to the employment laws of at least 5 countries and decrease the percentage of Labour deprived of their fundamental rights in MENA.
Hill’s support is empowering us. We’re looking forward to continuing working with dedicated entrepreneurs and building on the connections and knowledge from Hill’s vast network of mentors and experts in the field.”
Meet the co-founders of Legal Fundi
Legal Fundi provides free legal assistance whilst simultaneously providing low-cost legal services to those who we believe need it most: SMEs.
We interviewed Jack Chennells, co-founder of Legal Fundi and asked him to tell us more about his innovation.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
« Legal Fundi was born when our Chief Legal Expert, Colleen, South Africa’s Paralegal Manual author and I partnered. We brought together the legal business processes I had developed with their underlying technology and sat down first with the community to validate the service.
Throughout our journey, we have been able to bring the cost of SME legalities down by 85% without compromising the crucial role legal practitioners play within the sector and its advancement. «
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
« Since I’m an entrepreneur myself, I understand the pain associated with legal understanding and services and how expensive these services are. According to SME South Africa, 78% of startups indicated that they required assistance in understanding law and regulations and 92% said that it was not affordable. We believe innovation plays a huge role in using, understanding and sourcing legal solutions.
With over 250 thousand SMEs within South Africa, the market at large is open for inclusion. The market is composed of businesses that are under 5 years which makes up 86% of the SME market. 61% of these companies stated that their biggest challenge was the lack of guidance on the legal aspect of their business. »
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
« There is no doubt the role SMEs play to develop & uplift the community and diversify, as well as strengthen the economy. Through our services, technology and access to information, we aim to empower, support and sustain the success of SMEs within Africa.
We want to grow our team in the next phase and raise investment to expand our services & technology to support more SMEs on their way to growth. »
The innovators dedicated to the Justice Issue: Housing/Land
Meet Waihiga Muturi, Founder of KYR Africa.
KYR (Know Your Rights) Africa is a platform providing access to user-friendly, affordable justice education and advice on individuals freedoms and rights via Mobile (Call, Text), Social media
We interviewed Waihiga and asked him to tell us more about his justice innovation towards rights & legal transparency
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
“My story started back in 2002 when my dad passed away and I watched as some of my relatives take away my dad’s property by force and back in 2007/08, my friends and I experienced a lot of injustices within our suburb location that we were unable to and didn’t even know how to seek appropriate justice resolutions for. This incident planted a seed that matured 13 years later when the community and my close friends amidst the Covid-19 pandemic would go to me for solutions to their various justice issues.
As a serial social entrepreneur, I am always interested in working with people building businesses that are building Africa (ensuring last-mile impact). If you are looking for a like-minded individual to work with, then Let’s Create Africa – reach out to me.”
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
“Justice access and education is an opportunity to not only empower citizens of our African continent within their respective countries but to also ensure public access to information whilst protecting fundamental freedoms in accordance with national legislation and international agreements. This is also in line with one of the SDG 16 goals.”
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
“Majority of Africans have in the recent past been denied access to information and thus have for long been excluded from decision-making processes in public affairs. In 5 years we want KYR Africa to be a one-stop platform for citizens who seek legal information and legal help to foster their individual freedoms and rights to transparency in personal decision-making. I find justice innovation to be a bottomless pit to sort out infinite human struggles. This is great because the impact brought about by justice solutions is a reminder of humanity. I simply LOVE the chance to be human!!
In the next year, we hope to achieve the following:
Get into 5 more countries in different regions of Africa,
Serve a total of 1,000,000 Africans through our combined platforms on Mobile (Call, Text), Social media (YouTube, Podcast) and Website (Q&A Forum, Chatbot)
Provide access to timely and accurate information that provides individuals with the knowledge required to participate effectively in the democratic processes in any democratic society.
Ensure access to legal resources (consultation, counsel, documentation) & information law fostering legal understanding to openness and transparency in personal decision-making.
We are enthusiastic that we are a part of HiiL, as we have access to funding and hope to benefit from the network and masterclasses that shall support the sustainable development of our business model and multiply our impact.”
Meet David Bsaibes, Founder of Binayati
Binayati is an accounting and communication solution allowing tenants of a building to have access to financial and legal information related to the building.
We interviewed David and asked him to tell us more about his justice innovation.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
« It all started back in 2016 when I moved to a new building that I was managing. To make life easier, I started to build micro tools to help me manage the building. It simply started by automating emails and text messages and later, we created a webpage to publish the records and details. In April 2018, I found these micro tools I created to be very useful for me and could become a handy solution for managing buildings. So, in June 2018, I finally launched the first version of Binayati. »
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
« I didn’t really choose it, the issue chose me. I was creating these tiny tools with the intention to decrease the time spent in managing the building but they proved to be very efficient to prepare financial reports and also prevent conflicts between me and tenants, as well as the tenants with each other. Everything is properly managed, transparent and automated. »
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
« Being a part of HiiL and its network enables us to scale our solution to the MENA region, which is a step we’re prepared and want to take. We are also innovating new features in Binayati to cater to various businesses in the MENA region. Our main vision is to decrease unnecessary conflicts between tenants caused by unawareness and inaccessibility of basic laws, as well as the lack of transparency and communication. »
Meet Ndifreke Ikokpu, Founder of House Africa.
House Africa is a platform that helps financial institutions and individuals validate properties prior to investment or purchase and hence, helps in mitigating fraud, reducing risk, and increasing access to credit in the real estate market.
We interviewed Ndifreke and asked him to tell us more about his justice innovation towards secure housing and property investment.
How did your entrepreneurial story start?
« We launched the startup in 2019 but the story started in 2017 when I lost USD18k to Land Fraud. During my crisis, I realised I am one of many Nigerians who suffered from similar fraud experiences.
Together with my co-founder, we started getting creative and trying to solve these property fraud issues by making verification easy and accessible to anyone before deciding to purchase or invest in real estate. »
Why did you choose to solve this specific justice issue?
« It affects me personally and touches the lives of so many other people, as well as, Landbuyers, Homebuyers and banks who finance individuals through mortgages to buy real estate. Naturally, the economic repercussions of the crisis are huge. »
What impact do you hope to achieve and what’s next for you?
« Through our startup and verification, we want to unlock $900B dead capital in real estate as a result of unverifiable properties in Nigeria alone. We have launched Sytemap to acquire property data when real estate developers list their properties, activate mortgages or partner with other mortgage providers.
Now that we are a part of HiiL, we are looking forward to the mentorship sessions and accessing HiiL’s wider network, which we believe will eventually connect us with key people who can support our mission: to facilitate convenient, secure, fast, transparent and affordable property transactions using technology. »
Shekhar Pula’s appointment brings far-reaching and hands-on experience from an international career dedicated to increasing global impact.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) has appointed Shekhar Pula as Chief Operating Officer (COO). His appointment further strengthens HiiL’s operations in line with our country-based strategy to innovate and implement user-friendly justice worldwide.
I am very much looking forward to being part of the HiiL team.”
It is an honour and humbling to be asked to contribute to HiiL’s mission — reimagining justice that is accessible and user-friendly to the largest number of people. This urgent need will be achieved through social entrepreneurship and innovation, and my primary focus for now will be to further strengthen our organisation and continue HiiL’s international expansion.”
Shekhar has an extensive career in the corporate and philanthropic sectors. Prior to joining HiiL, Shekhar led the Resources departments at Médecins Sans Frontières where he also served as an Executive Board member. His career covers more than 15 years of experience managing complex international environments, both in the corporate and NGO sectors. Additionally, his hands-on experience in international operations brings valuable expertise to help co-lead HiiL’s growth and to help us achieve more impact in the countries where we work.
Shekhar takes up his role on 1 November. His appointment is part of HiiL’s new realignment process emphasising a country-based strategy. This approach will enable HiiL to deliver more impact on the ground and concentrate on achieving people-centred justice. Shekhar will lead operations across HiiL and play a key role in strengthening our local presence in strategic contexts.
“I am delighted to welcome Shekhar to the team,” said Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL. “His experience and expertise are exactly what we need to scale further and deliver people-centred justice in line with the promise of SDG16.3 and Our Common Agenda.”
In Our Common Agenda, the Secretary-General of the United Nations acknowledged that despite the promise of SDG16 “many justice systems deliver only for the few.” António Guterres made clear that our shared priority is “transforming justice systems in ways that strengthen the bonds that hold our societies together.” HiiL is committed to supporting this cause.
“Shekhar joins HiiL at an important moment when our substance work needs to scale,” said Maurits Barendrecht, HiiL’s director of research. “I look forward to working with him and strengthening our agility, creativity, and results-driven approach.”
HiiL is growing fast. In 2021, funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Dutch Postcode Lottery, MoTT Foundation, and European Union among others, supported our ability to make the necessary steps that catalyse change.
At HiiL, we are excited about this new appointment which further paves the way for our new country-based strategy to deliver user-friendly justice for 150 million people by 2030.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is an international social enterprise committed to user-friendly justice. Our global mission is to ensure by 2030 that 150 million people can prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. To achieve this, we gather data and use evidence-based practices that promote ‘what works’ and help stimulate and scale game-changing justice innovations worldwide.
A new study from HiiL explores the relationship between poverty and access to justice using survey data from 13 mostly low or middle-income countries.
How do poverty and access to justice relate to each other? Do poor people encounter more or different types of justice problems? Do they experience worse justice journeys and receive less justice? These key questions form the basis of research and a new report that involved data from more than 70,000 individuals across 13 countries.
After analysing the data we see that the relationship is neither straightforward nor simple. Poverty and access to justice are not in a linear relationship! Simply put, it is not that the poor do not receive access to justice. Or that non-poor do not have problems with justice. The interaction between access to justice and poverty is complex and nuanced.
Poor people experience roughly the same number of legal problems as non-poor. However, the poor deal with different types of problems, and most commonly with disputes related to land. In lower-income countries land is the main means of subsistence for many people. The poor and rural populations in particular are significantly more likely to be dependent on the land and thus depend on the law to secure land rights and tenure. Poor people also encounter more family, debt and social welfare issues. By contrast, the non-poor are more likely to deal with crime, accidents, employment and disputes with neighbours.
What is more concerning is that poor people receive worse outcomes for their legal problems. The formal and informal justice systems deliver fewer resolutions. The legal problems that poor people encounter have a greater impact on their lives.
Non-poor have more access to institutional sources for information, advice, and dispute resolution. The poor on the other hand rely more often on family members, friends, and neighbours.
On the path to justice, poverty does not play an independent role. Both poor and non-poor do not differ in their evaluation of the quality of processes and outcomes. However, ways in which people perceive justice interact with other factors that apparently disadvantage the poor.
The policy implication is that one size does not fit all. Assisting individuals with access to justice should not be only about income and means-testing. A more nuanced approach is needed. Next, the findings from the research suggest that the problem of access to justice does not get solved when people are lifted from poverty. It transforms into a different type of challenge. Most likely with an increase in income, the legal problems will become more complicated and will require different strategies for resolution at scale. These dynamics can be anticipated, planned, mitigated, or even avoided.
On 12 October 2021, EU justice officials gathered online for an e-conference focused on the digital transition of justice systems. Discussions underscored the challenges and opportunities facing the EU.
The Forum was organised in three sessions:
Digital transformation in justice at national level and its impact at EU level;
Overall EU approach to digitalisation / general principles and needs of the various legal professions and society;
EU cross-border judicial cooperation: Present and future needs of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) agencies and bodies.
HiiL CEO Sam Muller delivered remarks during the forum “from the perspective of quality, efficiency, and facilitating access to justice.” Select highlights from his speech include:
Transformation is not change. Change makes something better. Transformation makes a better something. Change is about modifying a practice. Transformation is about changing a system…our justice systems need a transformation.
The outcome we should all be fighting for is digitalisation that is part and parcel of making justice systems people-centred.
Data from the World Justice Project shows that out of 100 EU citizens:
60 had justice problems in the past 2 years, for which 24 of them caused hardship.
26 of them find satisfactory resolution (or are on track).
34 citizens remain stuck or unsatisfied.
Only 2 obtain a court-like decision. Agreement is the most common way to resolve problems.
48 walk the road to resolution mostly by themselves using the internet or booklets for information, and receiving some help from a single law practitioner or using the help of friends or family.
Only 10 get full-fledged lawyers get help from a government legal aid office.
When I say ‘justice system’ I use it in a broad sense, just like the OECD does. [It is] a vibrant, multi-actor space, from courts and lawyers to mediators, online resolution of a dispute, social workers, and legal aid insurance.
The elements of a justice transformation programme and its digitalisation should be anchored in four integrated core components: evidence-based working, innovation, creating a better market place, and creating accountability.
The 2019 Task Force on Justice showed that, globally around 1.5 billion people – one-eighth of the world’s population – have civil, administrative or crime-related problems they can’t resolve.
To address people’s justice problems at scale, consider taking these three steps: Identifying desired outcomes, applying evidence-based treatments, and monitoring the outcomes of each treatment. Our latest updates to the Solving and Preventing page details how.
HiiL has revised its Solving and Preventing page on the Justice Dashboard. The data portal provides justice workers with insights and knowledge on what works to help resolve the justice problems of everyday people. With this page, we propose a systematic approach to streamlining the use of evidence-based treatments in the justice sector. Presented in a user-friendly manner, we hope this information galvanises discussions on the uptake of evidence-based practice in the justice sector.
To that end, we set out to identify the outcomes people desire following the resolution of a dispute. Land disputes, for example, typically focus on securing fair access and ownership to property and the fair distribution of profits. In contrast, an employment dispute elicits a desire for equal treatment and fairness especially vis-a-vis the worker and her supervisors and colleagues. Receiving salary as agreed upon with the employer reflects one example of a successful desired outcome. With this in mind, we asked people in Ethiopia, Uganda and the USA about the kind of outcomes they seek and expect when disputes have been resolved.
« Lately, my village needs me more and more. I help them in finding agreements together. »
In the case of land disputes, the results indicate a desire for fair ownership of land and compensation resulting from loss of income or property. Regarding employment disputes, people desire payment of due wages and a good relationship with the employer. Similarly, with regards to family disputes, people seek safety and security for their children, fair division of property and debts, and respectful communication.
To help realise these desired outcomes, HiiL has developed evidence-based guidelines for justice workers on the frontline of dispute resolution. These include lawyers, judges, police, social workers and community leaders who aspire to increase access to justice in their communities. The guidelines are practical and can be implemented by any person with limited or no additional support necessary from peers.
“Being a judge comes with great responsibilities. I am passionate about the law as an instrument of fairness and helping people who are in need.”
In the future, we will have these guidelines reviewed by external justice workers to confirm their practical application. Currently, we have guidelines on the prevention and resolution of disputes related to family, employment and land. In the coming months, the Justice Dashboard will add guidelines dealing with neighbour disputes.
Although based on evidence, HiiL will test and monitor the impact of these guidelines in various justice sector contexts. In the upcoming months, we will share ideas on how to effectively apply these guidelines so they can help achieve and deliver the desired outcomes of those seeking fair and equal justice to their concerns.
What do you know about the Dutch Postcode Lottery? Did you know, for example, that they directly support people with solving their justice problems in Southern Africa?
In this series, we dive deeper into the history of the creation of our Southern Africa hub, an initiative launched by HiiL and supported by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Learn more about HiiL and about our work supporting justice innovations across the globe.
In 2019, we became proud partners of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, (Nationale Postcode Loterij), one of the largest charity lotteries in the world. Due to the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s generous support of 1 million euros, we have continued our mission of extending access to justice to millions of people in Southern Africa. The funding has been especially important for HiiL’s Justice Accelerator Hub in Johannesburg, South Africa and the 14 justice startups we support in the region.
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator is the only startup programme and innovation ecosystem builder in the world entirely dedicated to access to justice. Through the support cycle enabled by HiiL, our Innovation Hub in Southern Africa, the innovators, and the donations from the Dutch Postcode Lottery, we are able to provide training, mentorship and seed funding to justice innovations. This has translated into direct help for those who need it most and tailored to their needs.
What would you do if you suddenly lost your job, if you needed a divorce, or if you had a dispute with your business partner, but had no legal help offered to you?
Since the creation of our Hub in Johannesburg, we have helped 14 justice startups with innovative solutions to people’s legal issues. But how does this process really happen? It starts with generous donors, like the Dutch Postcode Lottery, who made it possible for us to run the Justice Accelerator Programme in regions like Southern Africa. The only startup programme and innovation ecosystem builder in the world entirely dedicated to access to justice. Through the support cycle enabled by HiiL, our Innovation Hub in Southern Africa, the innovators, and the donations from the Dutch Postcode Lottery, we are able to provide training, mentorship and seed funding to justice innovations.
Help is provided directly to those who need it, with solutions tailored to their needs.
Inspiring stories:
Meet Grace, the founder of Luma Law. Luma Law is one of the justice innovations we accelerated through HiiL Innovation Hub Southern Africa. We mentioned justice innovations, and how they are tackling justice problems tailored to people’s specific needs. In this interview, you can discover a success story from the perspective of an innovator, who works towards better access to justice.
Like Grace, Claire and Frank were also able to scale up their justice innovation, thanks to the Justice Accelerator programme in Southern Africa:
« Being part of the HiiL Justice Accelerator has been challenging, educational, fun, door-opening and enormously inspiring! All the things you’d want from a startup accelerator programme. »
« Being part of the HiiL Justice Innovation Challenge helped us transform our Legal4ASM Platform into a recognizable, viable, conducive and go-to legal service for artisanal and small-scale miners in Zimbabwe.«
This award recognizes contracts that are designed to be easily accessible and understandable by all. We are honoured to receive this official recognition, as we believe that user-friendly contracts ensure fairness and contribute to our global mission to increase access to justice for all.
HiiL received this award thanks to the amazing work of Creative Contracts a South Africa based firm specialising in Comic and Audio legal agreements. Creative Contracts helped us create a Grant Agreement in pictures which HiiL uses as a binding contract for the innovators in our Justice Accelerator programme.
But did you know that Creative Contracts once was one of the innovations we supported through the programme? That’s right! In 2018, Creative Contracts became part of the Justice Accelerator Cohort through the HiiL Innovation Hub Southern Africa, through the project supported by the Dutch Postcode Lottery.
Today, we still work closely with Creative Contracts’ founder Robert de Rooy as we continue our work towards promoting user-friendly contracts through the Working Group on User-friendly Contracts; and advance Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 (SDG 16.3) goal: access to justice for all.
At HiiL, we practice what we preach. That is how we hope to make a difference.
Lasting social impact
Together with the Nationale Postcode Loterij, we set a goal to establish and scale a sustainable justice Innovation Hub in Southern Africa. The aim has focused on shrinking the justice gap and increasing access to justice to the region’s 1 million people who lack proper legal help.
“The effects of lack of access to justice are well documented. From miscarriages of justice to service delivery protests to interminable delays in land reform cases to poor protection of those vulnerable to gender-based violence – it’s a catalogue of everything that we know can and should be better in South Africa today.” said Adam Oxford, heading HiiL’s Innovation Hub Southern Africa in an article on justice innovations in South Africa.
Since the creation of the Hub, HiiL supported innovators have provided justice help to children, women, victims of domestic violence, vulnerable groups, SMEs, and community paralegals. Below, you can discover each innovation in more detail.
But justice problems cannot be prevented or resolved overnight. Justice innovations need time to grow and scale so they can reach more people. Continuity is essential to help justice entrepreneurs overcome obstacles and grow into Gamechangers, those unique services and tools able to improve the lives of millions of people.
So what are the next steps for closing the justice gap in Southern Africa?
On 15 November, HiiL will kick-off the 2021 African Justice Innovation Symposium. This symposium will start with a roundtable discussion hosted by the Southern Africa Hub and will provide a platform to discuss the future of justice innovation.
Looking ahead, scaling and local fundraising will be key to continuing to support justice innovations. This is why the local presence we built in Johannesburg is so important: so that we can create a lasting social impact.
So now you know how the Dutch Postcode Lottery, a charity advocating for a greener and fairer world, directly supports people-centred justice in Southern Africa. This is how from The Hague to Johannesburg, €1 million helps millions to make a difference in delivering justice for all.
HiiL and IAALS (Advancement of the American Legal System) launched the ‘US Justice Needs’ report on 1 September and 15 September to reveal insights and the policy implications of America’s first nation-wide study on access to justice.
“While it is widely understood that there’s an access to justice problem in the United States, the full extent of the justice crisis has been less clear. [This] lack of clarity regarding the extent of this crisis means that there is a lack of clarity around possible solutions.”
With these words, David Yellen, CEO of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) set the stage for the report launch of our latest Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) study. The ‘US Justice Needs’ survey reached 10,058 Americans, asking them about the legal problems they have experienced in the last four years, what they did to solve those problems, and ultimately whether they felt they managed to reach a fair resolution.
Funded by the Bohemian Foundation, the nationwide survey is the first of its size in the US to measure how Americans across a broad range of socio-demographic groups experience and resolve their legal problems.
“This study clearly shows a great diversity of justice needs, sources of help, advice treatments, and interventions for nearly 120 million Americans,” said Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL. “[Americans] need better, faster, and more fair solutions for their legal problems and too many of them are stuck.”
Key Findings
The US JNS study provides nationwide representative data on how people in the US experience justice and resolve their justice concerns. With the goal of promoting greater understanding, the report highlights what is working but also what is not, and seeks to inform and assist reform efforts aimed at increasing people-centred justice in the United States.
Highlights from the report include:
Access to justice is a broad societal problem—66% of the population experienced at least one legal issue in the past four years, with just 49% of those problems having been completely resolved.
While low-income Americans are a particularly vulnerable population, the study shows that the need for fair resolution of legal problems is experienced universally across different groups of the population—67% of Americans with household income of less than 25K per year faced one or more legal problems in the last four years.
When we look at the rates at which people encounter legal problems, the relative seriousness of those problems, and the rates at which they were able to completely resolve their legal problems, the following groups stand out as most vulnerable: lower income, women, multiracial and Black Americans, younger and middle-aged, and those living in urban and rural environments. For example, 71% of Black Americans had to deal with legal problems in the last four years.
The JNS study highlights the wide range of negative consequences that result from these legal problems and the justice journeys that people experience. Those negative consequences correlate with problem seriousness, which means that the most serious problems identified are also associated with more negative consequences in people’s lives.
The study examined only the legal problems of adults over age 18 and did not include hidden populations such as inmates, people living in mental health facilities, or people in hospitals.
“Justice is often compared to education, healthcare and other public policies,” said HiiL’s Director for Measuring Justice, Martin Gramatikov. “This data and this evidence raise questions such as what if 120 million diseases remained untreated or what if half of the children in the US do not go to school.”
During her presentation, IAALS’ Director of Research Logan Cornettaddressed justice journeys and the actions taken by those seeking to resolve their justice issues. “About three quarters of Americans surveyed took some kind of action to resolve their issue. That means they engaged at least one source of legal help, or that they negotiated directly with the other party.”
Additionally, the study helped researchers identify over 820 unique combinations of sources of help that people engaged as they work through their justice journeys. Logan continued, “Of course, there are many differences across problem types and demographic groups but the data tells us that people look to numerous resources and combinations of resources for help in resolving their issues.”
The people who most often took action had issues related to family, public benefits, land, and money related issues. While the people who took action least frequently had government services issues, problems with the police, and traffic and parking.
Using this data to change how we think
“What we see from this research is that this access to justice crisis is not just one of low income,” said Brittany Kauffman, the Senior Director at IAALS. “It is a crisis that extends across the full spectrum of our society, and so that is a critical piece.”
In speaking to the crucial implications of the JNS study, Professor Maurits Barendrecht, HiiL’s Director of Research & Development, emphasised the wealth of data and the opportunities for action. For example, shifting to more online services and platforms to help deliver people-centred justice.
The US, a litigious society? Access to justice only for the rich? Systemic racial injustice? Will American innovation finally solve the worldwide access to justice problem?
IAALS and HiiL convened at a second webinar on 15 September 2021 to dive deeper into the takeaways and policy implications of the report. At a later date, IAALS and HiiL will launch online interactive dashboards that will allow greater transparency and interactive modelling of the data.
Watch the complete webinar: US Justice Needs Study: 10,000 Voices.
Watch the complete webinar: The US Justice Needs Study: Policy Implications for Access to Justice
About IAALS
IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, is a national, independent research center dedicated to facilitating continuous improvement and advancing excellence in the American legal system. Our mission is to forge innovative and practical solutions to problems within the American legal system.
About HiiL
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is an international social enterprise committed to user-friendly justice. Our global mission is to ensure by 2030 that 150 million people can prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. To achieve this, we gather data and use evidence-based practices that promote ‘what works’ and help stimulate and scale-up game-changing justice innovations worldwide.
A report from IAALS and HiiL highlights the breadth and scope of the American access to justice issue, including racial, ethnic, and socio-economic disadvantages, allowing for targeted civil justice reform in a research-driven way, during a time in our history when it is most critically needed.
IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, and the Netherlands-based HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) completed the first nationwide survey of its size to measure how Americans across a broad range of socio-demographic groups experience and resolve their legal problems. The US Justice Needs survey, funded by Bohemian Foundation, reached 10,000 Americans, asking them about the legal problems they experienced in the last four years, what they did to solve those problems, and ultimately whether they felt they managed to reach a fair resolution. The full report with the survey results will be released on September 1, with two live webinars presenting the data, reporting on the outcomes, and suggesting solutions.
“The findings of this survey,” says Dr. Martin Gramatikov, Measuring Justice Director at HiiL, “indicate what our research has historically shown—that oftentimes the more developed a nation is, the more justice needs exist in the population, and the greater the challenge of access to justice for all. While it is widely understood that there is an access to justice problem in the United States, the full extent of the justice crisis has been less clear, until now. With the results of this survey, and IAALS’ focus on evidence-based reform, we can begin to truly understand the scope of the problem, and work towards the changes needed to address this justice gap.”
The results of the survey provide a clear picture regarding the landscape of legal problems in the United States. Access to justice is a broad societal problem—66% of the population experienced at least one legal issue in the past four years, with just 49% of those problems having been completely resolved. There is no income group, gender, race or ethnic group, age group, or geographic area that does not face a substantial number of legal problems. On an annual basis, that translates to 55 million Americans who experience 260 million legal problems. A considerable proportion of these problems—120 million—are not resolved or are concluded in a manner which is perceived as unfair. This study shows that access to justice challenges are significant and pervasive.
“This is a crisis that demands increased advocacy and funding for policies and services that increase access to justice across broad segments of society,” says Brittany Kauffman, Senior Director at IAALS. “Previous research has been heavily focused on those with low income, or has been limited in geographical scope. While this study confirms that those with low income are a particularly vulnerable population, it also reflects that the access to justice crisis is not limited to this group. We surveyed people across all regions of the United States, including urban and rural areas. Understanding the breadth and reach of the problem helps us create evidence-based solutions and sound the alarm that we need to take urgent action.”
The data reveals what kinds of justice problems people face in the United States and how—and to what extent—those problems vary across socio-demographic characteristics. It provides insights into the most serious problems, as well as the extent to which those problems are resolved. The report also focuses on two problem types in particular—1) work and unemployment and 2) money-related problems—both of which are particularly serious and impactful for Americans.
“Money-related, work, and unemployment problems disproportionately impact vulnerable groups in society,” says Logan Cornett, Director of Research at IAALS, “and we anticipate these problems will become even more common and impactful as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data also highlights the critical issues of inequity in the United States justice system. While access to justice is a broad societal problem, the effects of the justice crisis are not equally distributed. Looking at the justice crisis through the lens of different socio-demographic groups reflects different constellations of problems, different experiences, and different outcomes.”
The report examines the rates at which people encounter legal problems, the relative seriousness of those problems, and the rates at which they were able to completely resolve their legal problems. The following groups stand out as most vulnerable: lower income, women, multiracial and Black Americans, younger and middle-aged, and those living in urban and rural environments.
“The nature, seriousness, and resolution rates of the legal problems Americans experience are affected by their income, gender, race and ethnicity, age, and living environment,” says Jim Sandman, President Emeritus of Legal Services Corporation and member of the US Justice Needs Advisory Committee. “The result is that some socio-demographic groups are particularly disadvantaged in getting access to justice. We hope the data provides a greater understanding of this inequity to guide reform efforts and ensure that the needs of all are met in a fair and equitable way.”
The findings and implications outlined in the report are based on the need to improve access to justice, and access to fair resolutions in particular, for Americans—and are intended to support policymakers and providers of justice services in their efforts to increase the number of legal problems that are prevented or resolved in a fair and effective way.
“The justice sector lags behind others—for example education, the economy, health—in both availability and use of data. Policy makers and service providers must currently make decisions about how to spend scarce resources guided only by very limited information about how individuals need, perceive, and access justice,” says Rebecca Sandefur, Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and US Justice Needs Advisory Committee member. “Data are essential for assessing what works. Longitudinal data, in particular, are critical for understanding the impact of justice delivery models and interventions. Without data, justice cannot work for people. The US Justice Needs report is a critical piece in closing the U.S. justice resolution gap.”
IAALS and Hiil will release the co-published final report on September 1, 2021. A webinar on the release day will be followed by a second webinar on September 15, 2021. Both are live, free, and open to the public. See details and registration information below. Online interactive dashboards that will allow greater transparency and a deeper dive into the data will be available at a later date.
The US Justice Needs Study: 10,000 Voices, Wednesday, September 1, 9 a.m. MDT: In this launch-day webinar, IAALS and HiiL will share the report, present key data points, and speak to the implications of this research—for those in the justice system, policymakers, and beyond.
The US Justice Needs Study: Policy Implications for Access to Justice, Wednesday, September 15, 11 a.m. MDT: Following the launch of the US Justice Needs report on justice needs and satisfaction in the United States, this webinar will bring together experts from across key justice institutions and perspectives to speak to the outcomes of the report and crucial policy implications for access to justice in the United States.
Two auditoriums filled with expectant Nigerian Law School students made for optimistic energy for the forum. Maryam Abba-Shehu gave her personal story of how she went from being a law student to being called to the Bar before seeking an opportunity to work for an international NGO.
Maryam along with HiiL’s very own Ijeoma Nwafor and Theresa Smout presented the makings of a people-centred justice in Nigeria to two auditoriums of 500 students and 650 students respectively.
Nigeria Law graduates are expected to go through a one-year post-graduate programme at the Nigerian Law School before they are called to the Bar to practice law, making them particularly receptive to HiiL’s work. Not to mention that we had future Nigerian justice leaders in the room!
The presentation discussed local realities, linking different examples to the five-pillar approach we practice at HiiL.
The importance of working from data was followed by highlights of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey and a call to action for the future lawyers to consider a career in measuring justice.
With applying best practices, we shared the 7 Gamechangers that have emerged thus far from justice innovations across the globe. The participants were then encouraged to consider innovative solutions that can be scaled as gamechangers to have a great impact in solving people’s most pressing justice challenges. Examples of some of HiiL’s innovators from past Innovating Justice Challenges were shared with an emphasis on Nigeria and West Africa, at large.
The importance of creating an enabling environment by bringing justice leaders and other stakeholders together in a justice transformation dialogue through our labs were also explained. We briefly shared the outcomes of the Imo State Justice Transformation Lab and Ogun state Civil Justice Transformation Lab. During this particular pillar, we made them realize that in less than a year they would join the pool of stakeholders and policymakers that can make people-centred justice happen in Nigeria.
Strengthening the movement was explained as not just the global community but also in-country movements, from the small community spaces like the Nigerian Law School to states, villages and countries.
We asked a few reflective questions to the students:
What does justice mean to you?
What motivates you to become a lawyer?
Which words come to mind when you hear the term people-centred justice?
Only 8% of people turn to lawyers for legal advice. Only 15% turn to the legal sector for resolution. Does this information resonate with you? Do you see the opportunities that this offers?
While some of the students answered the reflective questions, others asked further questions and made comments. In the end, all echoed that the forum has inspired them to think outside the box and to challenge their professional space to make justice user-friendly. A large portion of the student body wanted to know if HiiL had any platform for a network of like-minded persons interested in working to make people-centred justice a reality. Some of the students are already part of the social impact space and wished to collaborate with us. Of course, we always encourage those interested in justice to engage with us, and each other, on our social media channels.
In all, the forum has made it clear that this “catching them young” approach embarked on in Nigeria is poised to give future justice leaders, innovators and perhaps investors what it takes to “Make people-centred justice happen in Nigeria.”
Since the launch of the Innovating Justice Challenge 2021 in mid-March, our Justice Accelerator team has been on the lookout for the new generation of Gamechangers in Justice Innovation. From Tunis to Nairobi, from Lebanon to Lagos, and from Johannesburg to Kyiv, 18 innovations made the final selection from 7 countries after a rigorous selection process, a Bootcamp and 5 Pitch Events.
HiiL is proud to present to you the 2021 cohort of Justlers. Discover these game-changing innovations, and how they address user-friendly justice in their part of the world.
Online information, advice and representation platforms
Country/ Region: Tunisia, MENA | Justice problem addressed: Public sector issues | Female founder: Yes
Stemming from the belief that “Democracy starts with access to information,” and “a knowledgeable citizen is a less vulnerable citizen,” Qanouni (Arabic for “my law” provides access to all legal resources in Tunisia (laws, regulations, and case law) through a strong search engine.
Country/ Region: Kenya, East Africa | Justice problem addressed: Family, Employment, Micro & small enterprises | Female founder: No
Given that 37.6 million Kenyans have unmet justice needs (Kenya Law Review), KYR (Know Your Rights) Africa supports middle-to-low income Kenyans who are unable to access affordable and convenient forms of justice for their different justice needs, by providing comprehensive legal advice and resources on rights by promoting civic and citizen education to lead to action.
Country/ Region: Kenya, East Africa | Justice problem addressed: Crime issues | Female founder: No
Started as student movement in the University of Nairobi, Mombasa campus, in 2016; We Are More works with the most vulnerable Kenyan citizens – women & youth- providing them with a digital legal aid platform that connects citizens to advocates and mediators in order to resolve their legal disputes, and enhance their civic education and engagement.
Country/ Region: South Africa| Justice problem addressed: Family issues | Female founder: Yes
Chaya Legal developed Legal Ascent to assist DIY Executors who face poor estate planning by the deceased (eg. no Will was left), resulting in family tensions about inheritances issues and property ownership transfers issues. Legal Ascend is an online tool designed to assist executors, master’s representatives and agents to administer a deceased estate quickly and easily.
Country/ Region: Nigeria, West Africa | Justice problem addressed: Crime, Land, Neighbour, Housing & Employment issues | Female founder: No
With the average Nigerian left vulnerable to arbitrary detention, evacuation or other abuses due to the limited legal aid and protection they have access to, Avocat offers Nigerians quick legal aid in emergency situations via their mobile app.
Country/ Region|: South Africa | Justice problem addressed: Micro and small enterprise issues | Female founder: Yes
Statistics indicate that 50% of the SMEs in South Africa do not know or cannot afford the legal assistance needed to do what needs to be done to register and obtain formal compliance, discouraging them. LegalFundi is simplifying legal and regulatory processes to ensure compliance and unlock opportunities in the startup ecosystem by offering SMEs simplified compliance documents in the price range of one hour with an attorney.
Country/ Region: Nigeria, West Africa | Justice problem addressed: Family issues | Female founder: Yes
THR Media is a social enterprise that uses technology and media to support 18-55 years old Nigerian female survivors of rape, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, or Single mums battling custody rights or child support, both in urban and suburban communities across Lagos, Abuja, and Calabar. The THR app ensures they access a centralized ecosystem of psychosocial support, legal aid, shelter placement, economic empowerment, with services provided online and onsite.
Country/ Region: South Africa | Justice problem addressed: Family, Land, Neighbour, Housing & Employment issues | Female founder: Yes
Molao365 offers a simple solution to a complex problem. Most low-income South Africans need legal advice, rather than actual legal representation in court. Therefore, Molao365 focus provide low-income South Africans with free legal advice via a mobile application, in local South African languages, by qualified and experienced lawyers.
Country/ Region: Ukraine | Justice problem addressed: Public sector issues | Female founder: No
Clarity App compiles that open data that is published by different authorities in different places and in different formats, usually unorganised, feeding it back in a user-friendly manner to citizens, companies, and even government agencies who need the systematization of open data to be able to analyze it and make the right decisions.
Country/Region: Ukraine | Justice problem addressed: Family, Consumer, Public sector and Employment issues | Female founder: No
Consultant works directly with Ukranians struggling to find the right, affordable lawyer for their legal issues, by providing a mobile application to get a legal service online in a few clicks from only verified professionals, at a fixed price.
Prevention programmes
At 16.7% of our cohort, Prevention programmes is the second largest category of Gamechangers in this year’s cohort:
Country/ Region: Nigeria, West Africa | Justice problem addressed: Land issues | Female founder: No
With an average of 500,000 Nigerians losing money to property fraud annually, HouseAfrica created PropVat: A modern, affordable, user-friendly online property verification system. HouseAfrica helps financial institutions and individuals validate properties before investment or purchase – Hence, mitigating fraud, reducing risk, and increasing access to credits.
Country/Region: Kenya, East Africa | Justice problem addressed: Crime issues | Female founder: No
Upesy offers Kenyan mobile users of all income brackets access to responsive, reliable and affordable emergency response services at the click of a button, including a platform to share real-time location with the authorities in case of emergency.
Country/ Region: Kenya, East Africa | Justice problem addressed: Crime issues | Female founder: No
According to the Kenya Police crime report, 14,000 motorcycles are lost each year through theft and robbery. By leveraging on the Internet of Things (IoT), Vindex Systems focuses on tracking and recovering stolen assets, namely motorcycles and taxis widely used for commercial transport in Kenya.
User-friendly contracts
The third-largest category of Gamechangers reflected in this year’s cohort is User-friendly contracts:
Country/ Region: South Africa | Justice problem addressed: Micro & small enterprise issues | Female founder: Yes
SMME’s in South Africa are poorly catered to by expensive, unfriendly or geographically inaccessible lawyers, resulting in avoidable business failures and litigation. English is the primary language used in business but it is spoken by only 8.2% of people, therefore legal services in English alone exclude many SMME’s. Kleva Contracts solves this by providing online legal services and a legal education in multiple South African languages resulting in more sustainable businesses and higher employment.
Country/ Region: Ukraine | Justice problem addressed: Housing and Consumer issues | Female founder: Yes
Legal Design aim to simplify the legal world. They make documents such as Terms of service, Privacy policy, and Cookie policy clearly understandable on websites for the users. This significantly minimizes the risk of violating the rights of the user. The same applies to such contracts as rent, where they greatly simplify the legal text, and include drawings to make certain conditions clearer, thus ensuring there can be no abuse in the contract.
Country/ Region: Tunisia, MENA | Justice problem addressed: Public sector issues | Female founder: No
Complex processes, long deadline and lack of transparency have made municipal services a heavy burden for both municipalities and citizens in Tunisia. Civitas Digital intervenes by granting citizens an online application to access the municipal services at any time in full transparency and at a fraction of the cost.
Country/ Region: Lebanon, MENA | Justice problem addressed: Housing and Neighbour issues | Female founder: No
Binayati is an accounting and communication solution that provides access for tenants to all financial reports related to their building to assure transparency, in addition to access to common laws ,regulations and procedures related to buildings and neighborhood, and an organized way for communication between tenants.
Overview of the 2021 cohort composition
The figures below provide a bird’s eye view of the 2021 cohort division by region, female founder, justice problems addressed, and Gamechanger category:
On Wednesday, 4 August 2021 from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm WAT, HiiL will engage students of the Nigerian Law School in a hybrid (in-person and virtual) Justice Transformation forum titled, “Making People-Centred Justice Happen in Nigeria.”
In the process of engaging with critical justice leaders during the Justice Transformation Labs in early 2021 in Nigeria, it became clear to the Stakeholders and HiiL that a sustainable paradigm shift would require different approaches and broader engagement. The Justice Transformation Labs offered a unique opportunity for that shift to a more people-centred justice delivery mindset with critical justice leaders and stakeholders; but the group recognised the potential to create more impact by catching future leaders as well.
The Nigerian Law School offers that opportunity. In Nigeria, Law graduates are mandated to attend a one-year postgraduate study before they are called to the Bar to qualify to practice law in the country. These postgraduate study campuses are located across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria with the main campus and headquarters in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.
HiiL will host this forum with the Law students as they are literally the people who would occupy different roles and positions in the nearest future in the country’s justice ecosystem and beyond.
In collaboration with the management of the Nigerian Law School, headed by the Director-General, Prof. Isah Chiroma, HiiL has planned this 90-minute event to begin to share the ideas of people-centred justice data, innovations, and transformations around the world. This is all in anticipation that these young justice leaders will enter the field already embracing the importance of user-friendly justice. Innovations in justice delivery methods that are people-centred also provide the opportunity for employment amongst new lawyers in the country.
Taken altogether, this intersection of justice data, innovation, and participation from Nigeria’s youthful legal scholars and leaders provide the ingredients for “Making People-centred Justice Happen in Nigeria.” We look forward to the exchange on August 4th.
Summary of the Innovating Justice Challenge 2021 Pitch Events in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine.
On 13 and 14 July, 32 innovators from eight countries across Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine pitched their justice innovations to a panel of regional experts and general audience. The Pitch Events serve as part of HiiL’s 2021 Innovating Justice Challenge which launched on 15 March and provides justice sector innovations a chance to compete for a place in the HiiL Justice Accelerator Programme.
Following a rigorous selection and interview process, the shortlisted candidates enrolled in a 1-week Bootcamp that interactively discussed the fundamentals of business, including how to deliver an elevator pitch. Shortlisted innovators showcased their innovations virtually to a regional and global audience during the two-day Pitch Events, and got to engage with experts in the field of justice innovation.
The cohort of innovators focused on people’s everyday justice problems including land, crime, family, public sector, money, employment, neighbour and consumer issues. Their game-changing solutions have ranged from community justice and online information platforms, to user-friendly contracts, prevention programmes, and one-stop dispute resolution mechanisms. This year’s Pitch Events were also an opportunity to discuss region-specific issues in the maturing field of justice innovation. The Pitch Events were hosted by the HiiL Innovation Hubs based in each of the five Justice Accelerator regions.
In West Africa, the conversation examined how outliers can be the most effective Gamechangers. HiiL Justice Accelerator alumna Funkola Odeleye, co-founder of DIYlawNG, a tech company focused on access to legal services and information, proved the point. Drawing from her experience with her founding partner Ondunoluwa Longe, the Head of the HiiL Innovation Hub West Africa, Funkola described the perfect pairing of a “love-preneur” (n. a lawyer with love for entrepreneurship & entrepreneurs) and a “hustle-preneur” (n. a lawyer with love for a good hustle).
Founder of Kickoff Africa, Fola Olatunji David provided a timely reminder that the world already has “too many wise men, not enough fools,” and emphasised why it’s important for innovators in a niche sector like justice innovation to take the leap, to “jump; and measure and learn along the way”.
In Southern Africa, keynote speaker Mr. John Jeffrey, the South African Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, addressed the need to “think outside the box” to help people resolve or prevent their justice problems. He described how technology can be used to empower initiatives and innovations that strive to “improve access to justice services for all”. Weighing in on the innovations that were pitched, Panelists Tshanelo Tsoaedi from CAOSA, Simphiwe Mntambo from Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, and Darryl Bernstein from Baker McKenzie, praised the “simplicity” and “sustainability” of the solutions presented by the innovators to the justice problems they are tackling, and encouraged all to collaborate and learn from each other where possible.
Representing the MENA region, under the theme of “Technology & Diversity to Bridge the Justice Gap,” HiiL alumnus Anis Kallel of Kaoun spoke about the importance of asking “different questions” and how the HiiL Justice Accelerator dares innovators to self-reflect, assess and revise the impact their ideas have on people’s lives and access to justice. Amel Saidane, president of Tunisian Startups reminded the innovators that while it is an uphill battle, the justice sector in the MENA region is ripe with opportunities, precisely because it is the last to revisit and innovate how it works. International business lawyer, Rany Sader, and Hayfa Sdiri, a UNDP Youth and Innovation Programme Analyst spoke about the importance of targeting innovation on the local justice systems to build a strong foundation before setting sights on globalisation.
In East Africa, the panellists discussed “Creating an enabling environment for justice innovations to thrive”. Samira Saidi from FOUNT spoke about the importance of local investment in spurring local innovations. Esther Mwikali from ASSEK spoke about the role hubs play in supporting innovators to build on their ideas, and become investment ready, as well as the need for innovations to “double-down” on what they need to prioritise, and the support they receive from a hub instead of jumping from hub to hub. Rodgers Kidiya from Tax Justice Network spoke about the impact of taxation schemes on startups, the innovation sector and the importance of applying a progressive taxation system.
In Ukraine, the keynote speaker Roman Romanov, Director of the Human Rights and Justice Program at the International Renaissance Foundation, underscored “that together with HiiL, we are looking at justice as a foundational value, not a court system”. The panel discussion explored how justice innovations can improve people’s awareness of their rights. HiiL’s alumnus and CEO of Pravoman, Regina Bondarenko, gave an example of how increasing legal awareness became part of their business model with 50 percent of users coming back and learning about their constitutional rights. Olga Osinska, from the Ministry of Digital Transformation in Ukraine, pointed out that the educational series, « Digital Lawyer’s »raises awareness of innovations among lawyers which at the end of the day helps to increase legal awareness of people. And Alexander Baranov, the acting Director of the Coordination Center for Free Legal Aid, shared how they support legal aid services in Ukraine with innovations like the WikiLegalAid portal and legal aid app.
Altogether, the Justice Accelerator’s Pitch Events detailed the expansion of justice innovation underway around the globe. The two days also reaffirmed the knowledge exchange that is strengthening a network of justice sector entrepreneurs and professionals and their commitment to SDG 16 – equal access to justice for all.
Looking ahead, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator team will welcome select startups to join a 4-month long “acceleration” programme and receive grant funding of 10,000 euros. Connect with us to get the latest updates and learn more about how you could join the next generation of HiiL-supported innovators working to advance user-friendly justice.
In 15 years of advancing user-friendly justice, HiiL has identified seven categories of game-changing services that reimagine the way justice is delivered. These justice Gamechangers prioritise people’s needs and experiences and provide justice that is affordable, accessible, and easy to understand.
In an effort to strengthen Gamechangers in each category, HiiL has begun to convene working groups with justice sector experts to identify best practices that can help scale up community services and make them more effective in their respective contexts.
“Community Justice Services hold a significant promise in addressing the most pressing justice issues across geographies and have potential for replication. Scaling this gamechanger requires a detailed set of tools, practices, case studies, network of people as well as know-how that can be documented and disseminated across relevant stakeholders.”
Kanan Dhru, Justice Innovation Researcher at HiiL
On 8 July, the first working group gathered to address Community Justice Services. The working group discussed critical success factors and concrete steps required to make Community Justice Services more effective and successful in increasing access to justice. The next Community Justice Services working group will meet on 12 August where they will identify multiple case studies to help inform best practices for the network.
The Working Group will further validate this important research while creating an opportunity to bring together a ‘task-force’ as articulated in HiiL’s 2021 Trend Report: Delivering Justice, Rigorously. With this approach, we hope to expand knowledge exchange networks and strengthen people-centred justice initiatives aligned with HiiL’s values. We are excited to take one more step towards boosting the global movement of realising SDG16.3 – equal access to justice for all.
HiiL’s ‘Working Groups on Game-changing Services’ feed into our five-pillar approach to realising people-centred justice. Game-changing services also play a critical role in HiiL’s global mission to empower 150 million people to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems by 2030. You can learn more about the Gamechanger category Community Justice Services at HiiL’s Justice Dashboard: https://dashboard.hiil.org/the-gamechangers/
HiiL supports Justice Innovations from Africa, the Middle East & Ukraine through its annual Innovating Justice Challenge. This year, shortlisted startups that applied to the Innovating Justice Challenge participated in the 2021 Bootcamp, a locally delivered 1-week training on the fundamentals of business and including guidance on how to pitch their business in 3 minutes or less.
On 13 and 14 July, this year’s Bootcamp participants will present their innovations during the Pitch Events followed by an engaging Q&A with judges and/or audience. This culminating event is part of HiiL’s final selection phase towards supporting the next generation of Gamechangers who will be ‘accelerated’ by HiiL in 2021. Innovations accelerated with HiiL support will receive €10,000 in grant funding and participate in a 4-month long tailored training programme designed to help them scale-up their initiative.
The Pitch Events will be streamed online and you are invited to tune in! You can register to watch the startups pitch their ideas and engage with the amazing teams that we believe have the potential to make justice user-friendly for their communities! *Click below on the region to register
The Pitch Events also offer a great chance to meet and interact with our local HiiL Innovation Hubs. These are the teams leading the search for the next generation of Gamechangers in each respective region. We hope you will join us!
Odunoluwa Longe – HiiL Innovation Hub Head, West Africa
Adam Oxford – Hiil Innovation Hub Head, Southern Africa
If 2019 was “a watershed year” for HiiL, then 2020 challenged everything else we knew about our work and our lives. And yet, from the jolting experience of a global pandemic, to the economic uncertainty and political upheaval, 2020 also served for HiiL as a year of rebirth and reinvention. Our 2020 Annual Report details the many highlights, milestones and lessons learned in supporting and achieving people-centred justice around the world.
The 2020 Annual Report details the progress made with our project work in Ethiopia, Mali, Uganda, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Syria and the United States. This work included Stakeholder Dialogues focused on people-centred justice programming in Uganda, Mali and Nigeria, as well as Innovation Labs to spur justice innovation for Syria.
The year also saw us take several steps towards the establishment of HiiL’s Innovating Justice Fund. As the world’s first impact investment fund for people-centred justice, the fund will help bring game-changing innovations to scale further proof of HiiL’s commitment to transforming the justice sector based on data and research, and grounded in local realities.
Our Justice Accelerator, HiiL’s flagship innovation programme, expanded its social franchise model adding Hubs in three new regions: Ukraine, Southern Africa and Kenya. A Nigeria Hub is underway now further advancing the programme that funds, trains and coaches a global cohort of justice startups each year. This new and exciting structure will enable greater impact, stronger regional networks and local fundraising.
The Justice Accelerator, supported by HiiL’s research team, identified seven categories of Gamechangers — justice services that have the potential to address justice problems in a scalable and financially sustainable way.
During the Innovating Justice Forum from 4-5 February, more than 300 participants from across the world joined us in The Hague for an exchange of knowledge around increasing financing for justice innovation and identifying actionable ways to integrate justice innovation in national budgets. Our 2020 Trend Report: Charging for Justice, contributed to this effort by examining the enabling environment for (innovative) people-centred justice services.
“It was an extraordinary year,” said Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL. “I deeply thank all those who supported and worked with us. Our board members, our funders, the people and institutions we worked with, those that cheered us on and those who gave us valuable criticism. We will continue to work hard to earn and keep your trust.”
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user-friendly justice. We are committed to realising justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and useful. By 2030, HiiL aims to have facilitated the justice needs of 150 million people worldwide. As friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements, we will do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central to this effort and all that we do towards delivering justice. HiiL is based in The Hague, known worldwide as the International City of Peace and Justice.
A New Justice Dashboard page shows a comparative view among countries on access to justice.
The recent World Development Report 2021- Data for Better Lives laments the lack of incentives to collect, use and share data in the Global South. This is especially true in the legal and justice sector and not just in the Global South but throughout the world. The new Global Comparisons page on HiiL’s Justice Dashboard tries to remedy that by providing empirical data on justice problems of people in several countries.
In the past few years, HiiL has collected people’s experiences of justice in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Oceania and Europe. Thousands of people in every country surveyed recounted stories of how they sought justice for their money, land, crime, neighbour, housing, family and employment related problems. Based on this information, we have distilled data on the prevalence of justice problems, the types of justice problems, resolution rates and most effective paths to achieving justice.
To enable a country-wide comparison, HiiL has laid out this data in a user-friendly way. We invite justice practitioners, innovators, students, researchers, and policymakers to explore this new iteration of the Justice Dashboard and pursue action-oriented answers. The information presented can help identify justice gaps, recognise new trends in justice needs and inform the design and delivery of relevant services.
Currently, the reader can compare the proportion of people who encountered legal problems, the resolution rates, and the providers of justice perceived as most helpful. Comparison can be made also at the level of the top six most prevalent categories of legal problems per country. For instance, the most frequent legal problems occurring in Kenya are disputes around neighbours, land, money, family and relationships, and crime. By comparison, the problems that most often affect people in Ukraine involve social welfare, neighbours, housing, employment, crime and consumer disputes.
There are inherent limitations to making comparisons between countries. For example, socio-economic, political and legal distinctions make literal comparisons between countries risky. Methodological differences in research instruments used for each study and sample composition of each survey have similar effects. Therefore, direct comparisons need to take into account such limitations.
In the upcoming weeks, we will release the Enabling Environment page that can guide ministers, judges and high-level policymakers in designing financial and regulatory systems and promote new justice services that can thrive. So keep watching this space for more!
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user-friendly justice. We are committed to realising justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and useful. By 2030, HiiL aims to have facilitated the justice needs of 150 million people worldwide. As friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements, we will do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central to this effort and all that we do towards delivering justice. HiiL is based in The Hague, known worldwide as the International City of Peace and Justice.
“The daily justice needs for millions of Syrians remains urgent, and out of reach,” said Theresa Smout, HiiL’s Director of Justice Transformation, in her welcoming remarks during the event Stories of Change: Syrian Innovators for user-friendly justice. The 16 June event served as a capstone to Phase II of the Syria Justice Innovation Process (SJIP), a HilL-facilitated project committed to identifying and addressing the everyday legal problems facing Syrians.
« SJIP illustrates the power of hope, hard work, dedicated focus and community,” Theresa continued. “These results could not have been possible without the commitment of innovators, sub-grantees, expert guidance, and generous funding from the EU. »
Led by a Stakeholder Team of Syrians representing different perspectives, backgrounds, areas of expertise, ages and gender, SJIP has identified six legal areas for advancing justice innovation in Syria: Women’s protection; Access to personal documentation; Housing, land and property rights; Child protection; Access to public services; and Safety and security for all Syrians.
« We are committed to finding the right ideas for the right contexts,” said Rana Milhem, the MENA Justice Transformation Lead at HiiL. “And we are seeking support for the remaining goals to broadly cover legal priorities as identified by SJIP stakeholders. »
In her presentation, Rana discussed SJIP’s focus on two of the six goals. Namely, reducing violence and discrimination against women, and expanding safe and effective access to documentation.
Millions of Syrians are suffering from lack of access to their personal papers and documents.
Five promising Gamechangers
The SJIP Sharing event offered a unique opportunity to hear directly from Syrian innovators committed to addressing the legal problems affecting Syrians. Among the group of presenters were five entrepreneurs and social justice workers who pitched their ideas and highlighted examples showing how their innovative justice solutions are making an impact in daily life.
YasminaBot: Launched in February 2021, this Arabic chatbot provides free adaptive legal advice to Syrian women survivors of domestic violence and other forms of human rights violations. The virtual assistant also provides women with the capacity to remain completely anonymous while also listing specialized entities and sources that offer in-person support. During its first month, YasminaBot connected with over 850 women.
Beit Dafy (« Warm House »): This board game designed for children over the age of 13 raises awareness about the consequences of underage marriage and child exploitation. The game and its message was inspired by young girls who wished to express their concerns to their parents and was co-developed with input from psychologists. To date, the game has reached more than 200 families (an estimate of 1,000 individuals) and has a goal of reaching 10,000 people.
Survivors: As part of the “I survived” campaign and Ego Jasmine initiative, this e-commerce platform uses storytelling to support sexual violence survivors and empower them to become entrepreneurs. The initiative achieves this through online training in operational, technical and financial skills and with a goal to create financially independent women who can improve their well-being and support themselves and their families.
Syrian Documents Guide: Providing easy access to important documents for Syrians at home and abroad presents an overwhelming challenge. Syrian Documents Guide is an app ready to help achieve this goal. It allows any Syrian national to discover the required steps and procedures for obtaining documents as far back as 30 years, gain access to those documents, and understand the importance of the document they would have secured. Developers have set a three year timeline that would allow the app to reach 200,000 people in the first year, 300,000 in the second, and 1,000,000 in the third.
SyrGo: The number of Syrians without access to personal documents is huge. SyrGo is another online service designed to address this issue. It is the first online marketplace that helps Syrians around the world to receive their personal and legal documents, by connecting them to trusted lawyers. This includes birth certificates, marriage certificates, and proof of education.
SJIP will continue to support and develop scalable, user-friendly solutions that can help tackle the most pressing legal problems facing Syrians.
On 18 May, HiiL, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Government of Ethiopia announced results of its Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey of refugees and host communities.
The study articulates findings and offers recommendations for ensuring equal access to justice for refugees and host communities. More than 2,000 respondents from the Somali and Tigray Regions of Ethiopia participated in the survey which focused on their justice experiences and how they work to resolve the legal problems they encounter.
“This survey provides important insights into the needs of refugees and host communities,” said Ann Encontre, UNHCR’s Representative in Ethiopia. “It is a useful tool for the Government of Ethiopia and humanitarian partners committed to improving access to justice.”
According to UNHCR, more than 900,000 refugees currently live in Ethiopia, making it home to the second largest refugee population in Africa. Most of these displaced persons have fled conflicts in South Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. The JNS study was conducted before the latest outbreak of unrest in Northern Tigray.
As a result of the increasing numbers, Ethiopia is spearheading commendable and far-reaching changes to its refugee laws and policies. The aim is to support national development planning and improve socio-economic development and public service delivery for both refugees and host communities. Part of this process also includes ensuring equity for host communities in their access to justice-related services vis-a-vis general and refugee populations.
Of all refugees who reported at least one legal problem, 49% identified crime as the most serious one; mostly theft and assault.
Conducted in partnership with the Government of Ethiopia and its Agency for Refugees and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), HiiL and UNHCR coordinated a research team to conduct interviews in seven refugee camps and their surrounding communities along the Eritrean and Somali borders.
“The data and findings stemming from this unique research project provide systematic evidence about the needs for justice, said Martin Gramatikov the Director of Measuring Justice at HiiL. “This data will help establish demand-driven models that can assist ARRA in ways that will improve access to justice for refugees, host communities, and the general population in Ethiopia.”
Only 21% of refugees’ resolved their most serious legal problems compared to 40% of the legal problems experienced by Ethiopia’s general population.
The three most prevalent legal problems facing refugees and their host communities include crime, gender-based violence, and community disputes. Prioritising these areas can help strengthen Ethiopia’s broader national justice strategy and programming towards refugees and host communities.
Refugees trust camp services and security providers, including Refugee Central Committees and camp-based police. However, these units lack the enforcement powers that can provide fair and responsive outcomes. Courts and lawyers are inaccessible to refugees too.
From a socio-economic inclusion perspective, safety and security – along with access to housing and documentation – emerge as top justice priorities for refugees and their host communities.
In terms of legal advice, refugees express preference for advice that explains how dispute resolution procedures work. They also seek psychological support and more communication about their rights and duties. Universities, local NGOs, and the Danish Refugee Council in particular provide free legal aid for a high percentage of host community members.
More than 80% of both refugee and host community populations have access to a phone, thus suggesting an opportunity for better identifying justice needs and delivering justice-related services.
Simple measures could be taken to help deter criminal activity. This could include, for example, installing street lights in remote communities and camps, and initiating trust-building programmes to promote stronger connections and collaboration between the Shurta (refugee volunteers who provide safety within and around the camps) and the police.
“With this data, we now have an opportunity to focus on integrative solutions that will help address the serious justice concerns of these vulnerable groups and the broader population,” added Martin.
The Justice Needs and Satisfaction of Refugees in Ethiopia project and its report is the first in a series of JNS studies planned between HiiL and UNHCR. The next JNS survey will examine access to justice for refugees and internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso.
HiiL and the Ministry of Justice of Ogun State unveiled a strategy with recommendations for the effective implementation of gamechanging pathways to improve people-centred justice in Ogun State and across Nigeria.
On 19 May, high-level officials from Ogun State, including Governor Prince Dapo Abiodun, Deputy Governor Noimot Salako-Oyedele, Attorney General Akingbolahan Adeniran, Chief Judge Mosunmola Dipeolu, and the Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly gathered with HiiL’s Nigeria team to present practical next steps towards civil justice transformation in Ogun State. The strategyemerged from the Civil Justice Transformation Lab, a series of Stakeholder Dialogue sessions convened by HiiL and targeted at making people-centered justice a reality for Ogun state people.
Speaking at the launch of the strategy at the Obas Complex, Oke-Mosan, in Abeokuta, Governor Abiodun regarded efficient administration of justice as an important pillar and indicator towards the ease of doing business in any society. “It is our vision for Ogun State to be the safest place to live, to work and to do business,” he declared.
“This strategy offers a comprehensive path forward for making people-centred justice possible, not only in Ogun State but across Nigeria more broadly.” – Ijeoma Nwafor, HiiL’s Justice Transformation Country Representative in Nigeria
Recognising that business and justice are inextricably linked, the strategy offers recommendations for addressing people’s justice problems in Ogun State, an economic and commercial hub neighbouring Lagos. Additionally, a Deep Dive report accompanying the strategy contains data on justice needs and research on “what works.”
“This launch is the next step to showing the outside world what was done,” said Sam Muller, the CEO of HiiL. “And it sets out next steps, including arranging a task force structure to continue this process and establishing innovation labs to develop solutions that can be financed in ways to help deliver on the four goals, 19 indicators and three pathways outlined in the strategy.”
Land, neighbour and family disputes were identified as the most pressing civil justice needs that Ogun people face. To address these, four Civil Justice Transformation Goals were developed with accompanying indicators and targets to quantify what could realistically be achieved within a two to three year timeframe.
Goal 1: Ogun people will make land title registration more flexible, transparent and technologically driven to prevent land disputes.
Goal 2: Ogun people will increase their use of informal and local dispute resolution mechanisms to resolve neighbour issues.
Goal 3: Ogun people will have access to improved resolution of family disputes.
Goal 4: Ogun people will have fast and effective access to protection in the event of domestic violence.
“We would like to inspire an eagerness to think outside the box,” added Theresa Smout, HiiL’s Director of Justice Transformation in West Africa. “And to provoke thoughts on how to ensure people-centred Gamechangers can drive a transformative process.”
The state-level Civil Justice Transformation Lab consisted of three dialogues that involved 25 stakeholders including civil justice practitioners, judges, lawyers, academics, and public officials. The dialogues sought to contribute to the broader ambition of Ogun State – namely, to transform attitudes, promote technology, and deploy (game-changing) activities in the administration of civil justice.
“The success of the strategy will depend on a cohort of dedicated individuals taking personal and collective responsibility for follow-up and implementation,” said Attorney General Adeniran. “With this strategy, Ogun State renews its commitment to the global community striving to achieve Sustainable Development Goal, target 16.3 – equal access to justice for all by 2030.”
Forthcoming report from HiiL, UNHCR, and ARRA to detail recommendations and findings following a study of everyday legal problems affecting refugees in Ethiopia.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), roughly 800,000 refugees currently live in Ethiopia, making it home to the second largest refugee population in Africa. Most of these displaced persons have fled conflicts in South Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. As this population continues to grow, however, a new reality has set in for the Government of Ethiopia. Under this backdrop and led by the Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affairs (ARRA), Ethiopia has begun taking gradual steps to integrate refugees with their host communities.
“The fact is that many refugees remain in their new host country for years,” said Jelmer Brouwer, the Data Analysis & Reporting Officer at HiiL and a co-author of the upcoming report. “In Ethiopia, it’s likely that most people won’t return home anytime soon. The question now is, how do you improve the lives of these refugees and help them resolve their conflicts.”
Identifying the justice needs of refugees and host communities in Ethiopia enables the design of accessible, user-friendly justice services empowering refugees and host communities to resolve their legal problems.
To answer this question, HiiL partnered with UNHCR and ARRA to identify and understand the justice needs of displaced communities in Ethiopia. This Justice Needs and Satisfaction study surveyed 1,200 refugees and an additional 801 members of host communities. The study concluded in November 2020 before the crisis ensued in the Tigray Region.
“Given the scale and partnership, this is the first study of its kind in Ethiopia,” said Gijs Verbossen, a Senior Researcher at HiiL and co-author of the report. “Our interviews and empirical findings are still highly relevant for the Tigray Region and perhaps even more so considering the central role that justice has in conflict resolution and restoring peace and stability.”
The survey sampled refugee populations from seven refugee camps in two regions along the Eritrean and Somali borders.
Snapshots from the report include:
Approximately 4 in 10 refugees experienced a legal problem during the last four years in Ethiopia.
Crime was recorded as the most prevalent and pressing justice problem experienced by refugees (58%) and members of host communities (37%).
Only 21% of refugees’ resolved their most serious legal problems compared to 40% of the legal problems experienced by Ethiopia’s general population.
More than 80% of both the refugee and host community populations have access to a phone suggesting an opportunity for identifying and delivering justice needs and services.
Refugees trust camp services and security providers, including Refugee Central Committees and camp-based police. However, these units lack enforcement powers that can provide fair and responsive outcomes. Courts and lawyers are inaccessible to refugees.
The report is set to be released on 18 May 2021 during a launch event convened with the Government of Ethiopia, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ARRA, and UNHCR.
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user-friendly justice. We are committed to realising justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and useful. By 2030, HiiL aims to have facilitated the justice needs of 150 million people worldwide. As friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements, we will do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central to this effort and all that we do towards delivering justice. HiiL is based in The Hague, known worldwide as the International City of Peace and Justice.
HiiL and the Ministry of Justice of Ogun State to present a strategy with recommendations for the effective implementation of game-changing pathways that could better serve people-centred justice in both Ogun State and across Nigeria more broadly.
The Hague and Abeokuta, Nigeria – A group of high-level justice practitioners convened by HiiL and led by both the Governor and Attorney General of Ogun State will announce a civil justice transformation strategy following several months of stakeholder exchanges and a deep dive report. The strategy offers recommendations for addressing people’s justice problems in Ogun State, an economic and commercial hub neighbouring Lagos, and is the result of expert research, collected data, and a Civil Justice Transformation Lab (CJTL) organised by HiiL.
“We challenged ourselves to step away from the business-as-usual approaches that may not be sufficient in addressing the justice needs of the average person in Ogun State,” said Akingbolahan Adeniran, the Attorney General of Ogun State. “At the forefront of our minds were the frustrations and hurdles experienced by everyday Nigerians and Ogun people specifically.”
Recognising that business and justice are inextricably linked, justice sector leaders met both virtually and in person over the course of three dialogues to examine how embracing a people-centred approach to justice would strengthen the ways people and businesses prevent and resolve their most pressing justice needs.
Land, neighbour, and family disputes were identified as the top civil justice issues affecting Ogun people. For the group of stakeholders, addressing the need to resolve the issues in these areas led them to develop four Civil Justice Transformation Goals – each with indicators and targets to quantify what could realistically be achieved within a two-to-three-year timeframe.
“It is our vision for Ogun State to be the safest place to live, to work and to do business,” said Prince Adedapo Oluseun Abiodun, the Governor of Ogun State. “This Civil Justice Transformation process focused on building stronger communities, elevating trust in government, and promoting equitable economic growth.”
The state-level CJTL consisted of 25 stakeholders including civil justice practitioners, judges, lawyers, academics, and public officials from the Ministry of Justice.
Launching the Civil Justice Transformation Strategy
An event to announce the strategy took place when leaders from the CJTL and across Nigeria’s justice sector gathered to unveil the transformation strategy. The event served to widely communicate the people-centred results that emerged from the Civil Justice Transformation Lab in Ogun State.
Justice Transformation Labs facilitated by HiiL take a systemic, collaborative, and experimental approach to justice. The process includes combining evidence-based and stakeholder-driven approaches. In Nigeria, the lab series sought to contribute to the broader ambition of Ogun State. Namely, to transform attitudes, promote technology, and deploy (game-changing) activities in the administration of civil justice.
“This launch is the next step to showing the outside world what was done,” said Sam Muller, the CEO of HiiL. “And it sets out next steps, including arranging a task force structure to continue this process and establishing innovation labs to develop solutions that can be financed in ways to help deliver on the four goals, 19 indicators and three pathways outlined in the strategy.”
As a satellite state of Lagos – Nigeria’s largest commercial hub – Ogun State plays an important role in the economic and justice development of Africa’s most populous nation. It is estimated that Nigerians deal with 25 million legal problems each year including a growing number of land disputes. To further understand the impact of such disputes, HiiL conducted a Justice and Needs Satisfaction (JNS) survey in 2018.
More than 6,100 Nigerians across 18 states shared their justice experiences and how their justice problems often adversely affect the ease of doing business. Data from the JNS shows that roughly 17% of Nigerians reported land disputes as having a severe impact on their lives. Neighbour and family disputes, as well as crime, round out their top justice-related concerns. The full results of the study can be seen in HiiL’s Justice Dashboard, an interactive portal that visualises the data.
A Call to Action
For Ogun State, the Civil Justice Transformation Strategy aims to serve as a practical guide towards developing new models and decentralising approaches to realise people-centred justice. This includes financing and implementing game-changing services to make Ogun State’s justice sector affordable, accessible, and easy to understand. Additionally, a Deep Dive report accompanying the strategy contains data on justice needs and research on “what works.”
“The success of the strategy will depend on a cohort of dedicated individuals taking personal and collective responsibility for follow-up and implementation,” said Attorney General Adeniran. “With this strategy, Ogun State renews its commitment to the global community striving to achieve Sustainable Development Goal, target 16.3: equal access to justice for all by 2030.”
Both the CJT Strategy and Deep Dive report are available on HiiL.org under the project Civil Justice Transformation in Ogun State, Nigeria. More on the Civil Justice Transformation Strategy will be announced and shared following the public launch on 19 May.
The CJT project is made possible with support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ogun State Ministry of Justice, leaders involved in the Civil Justice Transformation Lab in Ogun State, and Roes Partners.
Ijeoma A. Nwafor Country Representative, Justice Transformation (Nigeria) T: +31 (0) 70 762 0700 | E: ijeoma.nwafor@hiil.org
HiiL – user-friendly justice:
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user- friendly justice. That means justice that is accessible and effective. We will ensure that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We will do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best. Data and evidence is central in all that we do. We are friendly rebels based in The Hague, the City of Peace and Justice, and focused on concrete improvements in the lives of people.
(HiiL, Muzenstraat 120, 2511 WB, The Hague, The Netherlands, www.HiiL.org)
The digital revolution and new technologies have behooved governments and citizens to rethink justice and access to justice. For example, millions of people around the world now rely on mobile devices to meet their everyday justice needs. However, this shift from physical to digital comes with functional, cultural, and regulatory challenges.
To understand how emerging technologies can be an accelerator for access to justice, both at the European level and abroad, the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union convened a virtual conference, “For a people-centered e-Justice”. The gathering sought to promote reflection among governments, international organisations, academia, civil society, and the private sector on the digitalisation of justice, and what it could mean for the principles of equity, transparency, and protection of human rights.
Organised over the course of two days, themes from “For a people-centered e-Justice” examined the future of justice, fair access and inclusivity, women in justice, and digital ethics and cybersecurity. It also highlighted several new innovations and initiatives.
HiiL played a prominent role on the second day of the conference. In the session, Connecting Technology and Innovation to Better Justice, HiiL CEO Sam Muller led a panel discussion on justice systems in Europe. The exchange featured Toñis Saar, Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice in Estonia and Renko Dirksen, a Member of the Board at ARAG SE in Germany.
« Technology allows more than we can afford today or are willing to afford today, » said Toñis. For his part, Renko added, « The customer experience should be at the foundation of legal systems, and we will need a generally accepted legal system that is digital. »
In 2019, more than 1 billion euros was invested in justice tech but less than 3% of that investment was steered towards customer facing and interfacing technology.
Professor Maurits Barendrecht, the Director of Research & Development at HiiL presented insights focused on data and evidence-based practice during his session, What is ‘better justice’: How can technology support people-centered justice? His presentation offered a snapshot into systematic approaches employed by HiiL over the past decade and further detailed in our latest Trend Report, Delivering Justice, Rigorously.
« One critical aspect to successful people-centred justice involves setting up task forces, » said Maurits. « These can help to create an environment that spurs and supports Gamechangers, the unique services or tools that can have the greatest impact towards realising justice transformation goals. »
E-Justice tech and trends
The presentation by Maurits provided an appropriate transition to the parallel sessions exploring game-changing justice innovations. Each moderated by HiiLers, the three sessions focused on claiming platforms, user-friendly contracts, and online dispute resolution.
In the first session on claiming platforms, HiiL’s Director of Innovation, Ronald Lenz moderated a conversation featuring three game-changing services having an immediate impact in e-justice and helping to shape how justice services actually benefit citizens.
“E-justice is a key element in the modernisation of judicial systems,” said Ronald. “It can be defined as the use of technology, information, and communication to improve both access to justice and judicial action for citizens.”
The Gamechangers included CONNY, a legal services platform in Germany focused on tenancy, labour, and telecommunications law; DemanderJustice, a Paris-based platform facilitating applications to the Labour Court system in France; and AppJection, a portal for submitting appeals based in the Netherlands.
Representatives from each of these services and the others featured during the parallel sessions – Axdraft, Cryptonomica, WeAgree, Justice42, Justix, and Jur.io – acknowledged the impact of Covid-19 which pushed the justice sector to accelerate its digital and online transformation.
“A community of innovators in the justice space is thriving and there is openness to share knowledge and collaborate,” said Iran Huffels, Programme Manager with HiiL’s Justice Accelerator. Her moderated session on user-friendly contracts, however, also highlighted a need for more openness from governments and the public justice sector towards private service providers. This can be especially true when it comes to open access to important data typically available only to governments (e.g. taxation, criminal records).
« Tech can enhance justice services we provide, » recapped Borja Gutierrez, the Justice Accelerator Fund Specialist at HiiL and moderator of the online dispute resolution session. « But we are probably measuring quality in the wrong way and not focused enough on the end-user and how they experience their justice journey. More data will help. »
With advancements in technology and the increasing adoption of AI, public-private partnerships will be key to justice innovation and delivering on the promise of expanding access to justice that “make customers feel victorious!”As one panelist remarked, “Tech is not a solution, it is a means.”
Indeed, in the words of another participant, « Legal literacy will be key in all of this. Because if people know the system, they will know how to access it. »
It is with great sadness that HiiL shares the passing of Innocent Chukwuma, a member of the Programmatic Steering Board at HiiL since late 2019.
We would like to express our deepest condolences for the unexpected loss of this friend, colleague, husband and father. We do so on behalf of all the colleagues and board members of HiiL. I also do so as a friend who deeply admired his compassion and imagination.
Innocent was a long time friend, advocate, and collaborator with HiiL. He pioneered evidence-based working in the justice sector over 10 years ago and worked tirelessly to advance the cause of justice around the world. For us, Innocent was a pioneer amongst the pioneers. He provided HiiL with valuable advice in these challenging times and led by example as Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria (CLEEN Foundation).
During his time at the Ford Foundation, Innocent continued to pioneer for us. He helped HiiL set up the Justice `Accelerator programme, and served with me on the Global Agenda Council on Justice of the World Economic Forum where his voice for Africa and developing countries exemplified a spirit of hope and action.
HiiL is very grateful to have had him on our Programmatic Steering Board, where his sharp and critical mind helped us realise better results in the countries where we work.
HiiL is committed to his legacy and we will continue to build on his contributions in the work that we do. We will miss Innocent Chukwuma tremendously as a leader, socio-political activist, friend, a man of wisdom, and as a justice warrior. Our hearts go out to his friends and family in Nigeria and across the world.
Every year hundreds of the world’s most promising innovations in the field of justice apply to the Innovating Justice Challenge. Do you want your justice startup to grow with our Justice Accelerator Programme? Then read on….
What is the Innovating Justice Challenge?
We are looking for the most promising startups from East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, the MENA region and Ukraine that aspire for everybody to have access to justice at work, at home, in the neighbourhood and in business.
Startups that empower people with break-through innovations to create better
working conditions with their employer
separation terms with their spouse
protection against theft, fraud and violence
arrangements about noise, damages and property access with their neighbour
housing maintenance and rent conditions with their landlord
agreements on ownership, registration and use of land
contracts, fraud protection and compliance for their small business.
The Innovating Justice Challenge selects the most promising justice innovations for the HiiL Justice Accelerator programme. Between 15 March and 30 April 2021, justice startups can apply to the Challenge via www.hiil.org/innovating-justice-challenge .
The HiiL Justice Accelerator
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator offers startups a four month programme that provides €10,000 non-equity seed funding, business development support (which includes training, coaching and mentorship), access to a global network, international exposure, and connections for further investment opportunities. At the annual Innovating Justice Forum, startups pitch to an international jury and compete for additional cash prizes: €20,000 (1st place), €10,000 (2nd place), and €5,000 (3rd place).
During the third and final stakeholders’ dialogue on 22-24 March, participants took ownership and responsibility for the work required going forward to realise civil justice transformation in Ogun State, Nigeria. The two-dozen stakeholders, including high-level justice practitioners, political leaders, and Ogun State Attorney General Akingbolahan Adeniran identified how implementing civil justice transformation would fall within their sphere of influence.
“As an Ogun state civil justice transformation Gamechanger, the next step I will take is to use my office to get as many development partners (international and national) collaborating with the state in resolving civil justice matters,” stated one participant.
This follows several months of discussions and interactive labs where indicators and goals have been identified to transform people-centred justice in Ogun State. Together, the high-level group have analysed challenges and opportunities for tackling justice related issues involving land, neighbour, and family disputes. The approaches thus far involve three game-changing pathways:
A hotline for domestic violence victims.
A local dispute resolution model for resolving neighbour disputes.
Digitising data collected from traditional leaders and local authorities for inclusion in the land registry.
“The process is about the people of the Ogun state,” said Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL. “It’s about stronger communities, higher trust in government, and equitable economic growth.”
In the coming months, HiiL and the Office of the Attorney General of Ogun State will announce a strategy document that details future steps in Ogun State’s civil justice transformation.
The latest page from HiiL’s Justice Dashboard offers solutions and recommendations to problems at the workplace.
Millions of people around the world regularly experience employment issues. Research conducted by HiiL in 18 countries puts the number of disputes at more than 8 million annually. What do these disputes look like? Non-payment of wages, discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, bullying by colleagues or bosses, and sexual harassment get reported as some of the most common employment-related problems.
Moreover, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to job destruction on a massive scale. Workers in the informal economy and as well workers in the formal economy who work in hospitality, retail, and travel and tourism have lost jobs or faced significant reductions in their income.
The new Employment Justice page on HiiL’s Justice Dashboard dives into the most pressing employment related problems that people face as well as the solutions that can resolve these problems. Through the voice of Robin, a justice seeker, we provide justice practitioners employed at various levels and services, including policymakers, social workers as well as justice seekers, a glimpse into the bottlenecks that people face in claiming their rights and the kind of outcomes they desire.
The data offered on the Dashboard page has been collected from empirical research conducted by HiiL in over 18 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the MENA region. It provides actionable insights on various facets of the justice journeys that people undertake, such as stakeholders who were most helpful in resolving the problem, people’s satisfaction with the outcomes that they received and the extent to which their problems were resolved. This data can be unpacked to conduct a granular and in-depth analysis using filters of country, gender, age, and geography. We invite readers to explore the data, formulate questions and look for patterns that emerge with the help of the interactive visualisations.
For example, persons living in rural and urban areas attribute different stakeholders or mechanisms as being most helpful in resolving employment disputes. In rural areas, 38% of persons regard self-action as most useful, followed by personal networks (18%), other organised procedures (18%), courts and lawyers (9%) and police (7%). On the other hand, a higher percentage of persons in urban areas rely on self action (44%) and personal networks (25%) followed by courts and lawyers (12%). A relatively smaller percentage of urban residents rely on other organised procedures (15%) and police (3%).
People seek help from these stakeholders to arrive at outcomes that are conducive to their well-being. These outcomes may take the form of timely payment of wages, improvement in the relationship with the employee and acknowledgement, and respect for the work performed by the employee. To deliver these outcomes to people, HiiL has developed a set of recommendations that justice workers and even justice seekers can apply to employment disputes.
Taking inspiration from methods used in the medical sector to establish guidelines for medical professionals, we identify evidence-based guidelines that justice workers can take as starting points while resolving a problem. To that end, we identified interventions from literature produced by experts and scholars to prevent and resolve employment disputes. We studied the benefits and pitfalls of each intervention, then compared them to other equivalent interventions and graded the quality of each intervention based on its empirical validity or the GRADE method ― a scholarly benchmark given by the medical sector to evaluate the quality of evidence.
These recommendations address the most common and impactful concerns that employees and employers have recorded. Recommendations include but are not limited to:
Increasing availability of effective dispute resolution mechanisms at the workplace
Building a healthy relationship between employer and employee
Coping with work related stress
Offering a fair way for documenting rights and responsibilities of both parties.
The recommendations are anchored in building blocks or core classes of interventions that are effective in resolving and preventing employment disputes. Taken together, these building blocks and recommendations present evidence-based solutions to justice seekers and workers that are helpful in resolving real workplace problems.
Additionally, we bring to you innovations from all over the world that address wide ranging concerns in the employment sector. To illustrate, FarmworkerzApp addresses issues that crop up between landowners and farm workers. And WageIndicator compares wages and labour laws for the use of employers and employees.
The second decade of the 21st century was marked by issues that have set the world back by several steps. At the same time, it also provides us an opportunity to rebuild society in an equitable and just way. By unveiling this combination of data and solutions, we seek to strengthen the efforts of justice workers in bridging the unmet needs of millions of people in the world and in developing workplaces that ensure well-being of the employer and employee.
Second dialogue discusses approaches to advancing people-centred justice in Nigeria
Sola is the owner of a small family business. To expand her business, she bought land to build a small shop — a step forward from her original small kiosk. Sola paid for the land, received a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) from Nigeria’s Ministry of Lands, and broke ground building her new small business. Weeks later, another person unexpectedly showed up with a second C of O for the same plot of land. Confusion and cost ensued as Sola was forced to resolve the dispute.
Unfortunately, Sola’s experience is not unusual in Nigeria. It is estimated that Nigerians deal with 25 million legal problems each year including a growing number of land disputes. According to HiiL’s Justice and Needs Satisfaction survey, 17% of Nigerians report such disputes as having a severe impact on their lives. And although nearly three-quarters of Nigerians seek information or advice for their justice-related problems, more can be done.
Under this backdrop, Ogun State’s Attorney General, Gbolahan Adeniran has made facilitating people-centred justice a top goal. His office hears regularly from citizens who wish to improve the ease of doing business in Ogun State, an important economic zone outside Lagos. But increasing investors’ confidence in land designation and ownership extends beyond Mom and Pop shop owners and includes multi-million dollar manufacturing companies. To address these concerns, Attorney General Gbolahan Adeniran has committed his office to making land title registration more flexible, transparent and technologically driven in Ogun State.
HiiL is engaged in these efforts through an ongoing stakeholders’ dialogue in Ogun State focused on civil justice transformation. On 22 February, the second dialogue wrapped up with a more detailed view and understanding of how to improve access to justice and ease the resolution of land conflicts, in addition to family and neighbour disputes throughout Ogun State.
“We are part of the solution!” one participant exclaimed after reflecting on the work expected from both formal institutions and the people of Ogun state. “It suddenly dawned on me that what we are doing here can be a real gamechanger. It can be very impactful on the administration of the justice system.”
The 3-day tailored retreat focused on developing goals with SMART indicators and targets to better address the justice needs of all citizens in Ogun State.
“We are navigating challenging questions and considerations with participants from different sectors of the larger justice ecosystem,” said Ijeoma Nwafor, HiiL’s Justice Transformation Country Representative in Nigeria. “For the second time this year, the collegiate experience instilled confidence in the participants that people-centred civil justice is not only achievable but measurable, and in line with the expectations of SDG16.3.”
Gamechangers time
An interactive session on Gamechangers — the unique services or tools that can create the greatest impact towards realising justice transformation goals — set the tone for considering new possibilities. “Effective people-centred justice critically depends on availability of data,” said Maurits Barendrecht, HiiL’s Director of Research & Development.
“We would like to inspire an eagerness to think outside the box,” added Theresa Smout, HiiL’s Director of Justice Transformation in West Africa. “And to provoke thoughts on how to ensure people-centred Gamechangers can drive a transformative process.”
Linking the Gamechangers to the ease of doing business allowed the participants to explore how goals, indicators, and targets might affect the impact of life, work, and business in Ogun. However, the effects of family and neighbour disputes is less obvious compared to land disputes. This is especially true when considering ease of doing business. Yet, during the dialogue, the stakeholders took an empathetic approach to mapping out the link.
“In delving deeper into the efficacy of the Gamechangers, obstacles and conditions for having ‘enabling environments’ were explored and addressed with no reservations,” said Ijeoma. “There has been a determination to create a new normal where the needs of the people are placed ahead of institutional conveniences and the complacency of bureaucratic bottlenecks.”
The question of how these goals and indicators get implemented will be the theme of the next session. This final installment of the civil justice transformation stakeholder dialogue will take place between 22 and 24 March 2021. It will be followed by a strategy launch in April 2021 to unveil a report offering a comprehensive path forward for people-centred justice in Ogun State, Nigeria.
Calling all game-changing justice startups that want to grow their impact and business.
We are looking for the most promising startups from East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, the MENA region and Ukraine that aspire for everybody to have access to justice at work, at home, in the neighbourhood and in business.
Startups that empower people with breakthrough innovations to create better
working conditions with their employer
separation terms with their spouse
protection against theft, fraud and violence
arrangements about noise, damages and property access with their neighbour
housing maintenance and rent conditions with their landlord
agreements on ownership, registration and use of land
contracts, fraud protection and compliance for their small business.
We are especially interested in startups that work on what we’ve identified as potential gamechangers.
We seek startups that have a proven solution with increasing annual revenue and impact, have a scalable business model, are on their way to financial sustainability and are led by a strong team with experienced founders. Startups can be for-profit or non-profit!
The HiiL Innovating Justice Challenge 2021
The Innovating Justice Challenge scouts and selects the most promising justice innovations for the Justice Accelerator programme. Between 15 March and 30 April 2021, justice entrepreneurs can apply for the Challenge via www.hiil.org/innovating-justice-challenge.
The HiiL Justice AcceleratorHiiL’s Justice Accelerator offers startups a four-month programme that provides €10,000 non-equity seed funding, business development support (which includes training, coaching and mentorship), access to a global network, international exposure, and connections for further investment opportunities. At the annual Innovating JusticeForum, startups pitch to an international jury and compete for additional cash prizes: €20,000 (1st place), €10,000 (2nd place), and €5,000 (3rd place).
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator is the only accelerator that focuses on preventing and resolving justice problems. We look for startups that can grow and scale to impact thousands and potentially millions of people. HiiL has supported more than 120 justice innovations worldwide since 2011. Some of those have become big, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and scaling to a regional level with the potential to become global players.
How do we select?
We look for startups that:
– Focus on resolving or preventing a pressing justice problem– Have the potential to grow and scale nationwide or internationally– Have a proven solution with increasing annual revenue and impact– Have a scalable business model and have the potential to become financially sustainable– Are led by committed founders and a dedicated team
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user- friendly justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, affordable, and effective. We will ensure that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best. We are friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central in all that we do. We are based in The Hague, the City of Peace and Justice.
“A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change. So let’s all choose to challenge.”
Women transform our lives every day and in all places. For HiiL, one example of this transformation involves Information Technology (IT). As the pandemic forced companies to digitise and accommodate working-from-home environments, six women at HiiL challenged the “tech guy” stereotypes and led a digital revolution at the organisation. Together, they spearheaded an innovative and seamless transition to a suite of online tools that have improved HiiL’s efficiency and work culture.
On this International Women’s Day, we introduce you to our six IT Champions and celebrate their camaraderie, professionalism, and “aanpakker” (Dutch: go-getter) attitude. Meet Armi, Claudia, Evelien, Gabby, Nadine, and Velika who, besides working towards user-friendly justice full-time at HiiL, have also strived to build and sustain user-friendly IT throughout the company.
The following article is based on conversations with the IT Champions team. The text has been edited and condensed.
What is an IT Champion?
“An IT Champion is someone who is tech-savvy and interested in technology,” said Claudia Heemskerk, HiiL’s Director of Shared Services and a founding member of the IT Champions team. “First and foremost, IT Champions support other HiiLers in digitisation, making it relevant to their work.”
For Armi Korhonen, a Justice Sector Advisor and another original member of the team, an IT Champion is “someone who has a special knack for IT and for helping others. It’s a person who can support colleagues to adopt new tools but also improve internal work processes and encourage a growth mindset for both the organization and the individual.”
Working alongside five other women
For more than 15 years, HiiL’s fieldwork and research have focused on shrinking the justice gap. Around the globe, 5.2 billion people still live with unresolved legal problems. In 2018-19, HiiL identified another gap, this one closer to home. The knowledge disparity in technology and online security. This prompted improvements to the IT and project management structures at HiiL. The changes have contributed directly to HiiL’s ability to meet its mission: realise people-centred justice programming and ensure that 250 million people have adequate access to justice.
“The fact that six women took up the initiative to improve the whole IT structure at HiiL made no difference,” said Nadine Hafez, the Justice Accelerator Project Officer. “It’s not gender-hindered work. At the same time, however, working alongside five other women for me felt similar to my all-female kickboxing class. I think we’re very efficient as a group and very results-oriented.”
It’s an empowering experience, added Gabby Rialland, HiiL’s Digital Communications Specialist. “I feel we really have broken a gender barrier and expectations — as seen or experienced at other organisations — where you don’t need to have the « tech guy » with his dirty shirt and set of keys fixing your computer troubles. We are breaking that mould, like the Rosie the Riveter poster.”
For Evelien Evenhuis, the Justice Transformation Project Officer and newest member of the team, the experience has been one of growth and learning. “It’s been a nice way to get acquainted with HiiL and the new systems,” she said. “I think we can be most proud of the fact that we’re doing it ourselves and without the formal training in IT. And yet, we’re making a direct impact on HiiL’s impact! »
Women have the power to connect and resolve
Studies show that having more women in leadership roles can lead to positive changes and improve public confidence in community development, the rule of law, equality, anti-corruption, and access to justice. When women have the power to make a difference and make decisions, entire communities can benefit. This philosophy is no different for the IT Champions.
“As a group, we are constantly trying to make things better,” said Nadine. “Helping people with IT requires a bit of compassion. We have to be present and understanding and patient in a way that creates a general sense that our (new) colleagues are welcome here.”
“With this group, we have five women who are highly educated, smart, data-driven, research-oriented, and who can transfer and translate the IT systems into daily operations,” said Claudia. “When I see this team, I think of the Dutch word ‘aanpakkers,’ which I think in English translates to ‘go-getters,’ hands-on people who take action.” She added, “I am most proud of our team’s ability to convert ideas from paper into action. They are actually implementing ways of working and doing it together to make HiiL better, more efficient.”
For Velika Yordanova, the Junior Project Manager, the team reflects a broader sense of women’s leadership. “I believe that if more world leaders were women, then there would be fewer conflicts and more collaboration,” she said. “I think there’s a sense of community and understanding among us women that allow us to collaborate and accomplish things in productive ways. We believe in each of us — here and abroad — and everyone is dedicated to doing their part of the job.”
This inspiration is personal for Velika. Her family consists of scientists and engineers. “Being an IT Champion actually helped me fit in with my family.”
And when asked what advice she may offer to those who #ChooseToChallenge, Velika had this to share, “Be curious. And don’t shy away from trying to understand the problem to help increase your own understanding and knowledge. If you want to learn something, just ask. The more you learn, the more confident you will be.”
The Hague is internationally known as the city of peace and justice, a badge it earned for being the home of several international organisations that work towards building a safer world for everyone. Whilst the organisations are busy formulating solutions for justice problems across the world, one is likely to wonder: what is the status of the justice needs of people who live in The Hague?
HiiL, with the Municipality of The Hague, conducted an online Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (eJNS) to find out. The survey assessed the most common legal problems of residents of The Hague and whether available legal provisions provide sufficient and adequate solutions in 2020. This survey is the first-ever JNS to assess justice needs of residents of The Hague. We interacted with 395 people, a number that could have been higher had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the study provides a glimpse into the justice needs of people living in the international city of peace and justice.
Keeping in line with HiiL’s efforts to provide justice workers a repository of data on justice needs of people, we showcase findings of this study on the Justice Dashboard. Our interactive charts will take you through how people of both sexes and across age groups experience a legal problem, how many took action to resolve the problem, who was the most helpful provider of advice, and how many problems are resolved. Below we summarise the the key findings of the study:
45% of the people experienced a legal problem in the past one year
Problems related to neighbours, housing and crime are the most pressing legal problems
Self-action and personal network were the most helpful sources of help while resolving justice problems
14% of the people stated that their problems are completely resolved. 44% problems are on-going and 12% are not resolved at all.
There emerge a few differences in the experiences between men and women as well as across different age groups in relation to legal problems. Among women, employment is the second most pressing justice problem whereas among men, employment falls in the category of least pressing problems.The resolution rate among men is lower than women — 16% of men stated that their problems are not resolved, as compared to 9% of women.
A higher percentage of youth (11%) aged 25-39 report complete resolution of the legal problem as compared to senior citizens (6%) and persons in middle adulthood (5%). As compared to persons falling in other age-groups, a smaller percentage of youth aged 25-39 (85%) have taken action to resolve the problem.
The results of this study can be contrasted with the nationwide assessment of justice needs of people in the Netherlands conducted by HiiL in 2015. However, we caution the reader to take into account the limitations of this study while doing so.
Ogun State can be considered the satellite state to Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria. Investors come to Ogun State in droves to build factories, establish companies, and house their staff. As a result, land has become a major source of income as well as conflict. The land disputes experienced by the people of Ogun State have overwhelmed the justice sector in recent years. HiiL is working to assess and apply people-centred approaches that will help resolve these land disputes and address people’s justice needs.
Part of the response to these challenges includes three civil justice transformation stakeholder dialogues in Ogun state. Representatives from the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Nigerian government met for the first dialogue on 18-19 January 2021. The discussion also welcomed Justice experts from the private sector as well as practitioners from civil society organisations and innovators.
“We sought to identify and prioritise justice needs necessary for shifting the needle towards people-centred civil justice transformation in Ogun,” said Ijeoma Nwafor, HiiL’s Justice Transformation Country Representative in Nigeria.
The virtual event served as an opportunity to assess possible Gamechangers – the services or tools that could contribute to improving the daily lives of people. With facilitation sessions that included both breakout sessions and larger plenary discussions, the two-day engagement “flowed like a river reaching the sea,” as one participant commented. Critical stakeholders from the larger Ogun State justice sector assembled to brainstorm solutions, exchange experiences, and offer hope during a knowledge sharing process that has become the hallmark of the HiiL approach.
The rich content stemming from analysis, experiences shared, and recommended solutions did not deter the exchange which was originally planned as a physical event but later adjusted to a virtual format to account for the spike in COVID-19 infections across Nigeria.
Capitalising further on the Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) Survey of Nigeria conducted by HiiL in 2018, the dialogue examined how some justice needs play out in Ogun state. By the second day, the event offered a clear vision of where the people of Ogun state would feel the most impact relevant to their civil justice needs. At the end of the process, land disputes, family, and neighbourhood disputes emerged as the top three pressing issues. Some stakeholders even hypothesised that family and neighbourhood disputes are usually bordering on land issues, as well.
Data, innovation, and transformation lie at the core of HiiL’s approach to people-centred justice. These three values featured prominently during the Civil Justice Transformation Stakeholder Dialogue. Combined with the JNS survey, the information collected will feed into the 2nd Stakeholder Dialogue and be incorporated into the rest of the process. This ensures that HiiL and partners maintain an evidence-based approach in Ogun as the state strives to eliminate the fraud, family, and neighbourhood disputes arising from land matters.
“When elders gather in Nigerian culture, it is assumed that they meet for the greater good of the community,” said Ijeoma. “When justice-sector stakeholders gather, even for a virtual dialogue, as part of our civil justice transformation lab in Ogun state, it also serves the greater good of the people of Ogun state.”
The next civil justice transformation stakeholder dialogues will take place February 22-24, and March 22-24, 2021, respectively.
From 8-10 February, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) welcomed hundreds of justice practitioners and thought-leaders from around the world for the 2021 Innovating Justice Forum. The three-day virtual conference featured innovators, lawyers, judges, investors, ministers, and academics to discuss developing and financing people-centred justice. Altogether, the gathering formed a people-centred justice movement committed to the mission of achieving equal access to justice for all by 2030.
Mr Paul Neo, H.E. Abdullah Al Majid, Judge Ginger L. Wren and Ms Michala Mackay on “Government as an Innovator: seeking the right leadership”, 9 February 2021
Delivery Justice, Rigorously
Day 1
On Day 1, participants focussed on « Making people-centred justice happen. » The day began with 21 prominent justice innovators from Africa, MENA and Ukraine making innovator pitches of their ‘gamechanging’ solutions, tools, and platforms for realising people-centred justice. The presenters represented numerous countries and had their innovations judged on four criteria: team, sustainability, scalability and impact.
Day 1 also saw the launch of HiiL’s 2021 Trend Report: Delivering Justice, Rigorously. The report details task forces as solutions to create “enabling environments » and realise people-centred justice. “We need a different framework,” said Maurits Barendrecht, Director of Research & Development at HiiL. “People don’t need judgements, they need solutions.” Read the report here.
Maurits continued, “At HiiL, we believe in learning. These task forces already exist around the world, but many focus on what is not working rather than improving what already does. Bringing about people-centred justice is not easy but with learning, data, and leadership, we can convert what is hard into what is possible.” Click here for a recap of more highlights from Day 1.
Day 2
The theme for Day 2 emphasised “Bringing people-centred justice to national agendas.” Throughout the day, speakers and panelists examined case studies and experiences to highlight challenges and possible interventions needed to encourage national governments of their role in promoting people-centred justice. The sessions also considered “the right leadership”.
“Strong leadership isn’t only about institutional reforms but also requires examining people’s experiences within justice systems,” said Alejandro Alvarez, Director of the Rule of Law Unit Executive Office of the Secretary-General at the United Nations. “Public servants and individuals must account for how people experience their respective issues and search for ways to solve people’s problems.”
During a ‘fire-side chat’ exchange, HiiL’s very own Rachel Ampaire, Programme Manager with the Uganda team, and Edgar Kuhimbisa, Information, Communications and Technology Officer with the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS – Uganda) discussed lessons from the HiiL – JLOS partnership, and ongoing HiiL projects in Uganda.
The second day wrapped up with an interactive panel titled, Government as an innovator: seeking the right leadership. “From desperation comes innovation, from crisis to opportunity; we [all] need to find innovative ways to resolve disputes and conflicts,” said Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren, a county court judge in the Criminal Division of the 17th Judicial Circuit, Broward County, Florida. “We need Gamechangers, leaders, and governments all to come forward to make justice innovation work.” Learn more about Day 2.
Day 3
On the third and final day, the Forum addressed « Funding for people-centred justice », introducing the money-question to the conversation. Participants probed various types of funding from both the public and private sectors and explored how governments, donor agencies, and the private sector can support gamechanging justice initiatives. Aniket Doegar of Haqdarshak said: « When we first applied for the HiiL Accelerator we were reaching about 1000 families a month. We are now reaching over 200,000 families a month. At the end of the day the most important things are your unit economics and your plan for scaling.”
We, as a local government, have a responsibility to act,” said Saskia Bruines, Deputy Mayor of The Hague. « Data and research show us the need but only offer advice. And because cities provide many services, we play an important role increasing access to justice. We can bring the right people to the table to achieve the right results based on local needs. » Click here for a recap of highlights from Day 3.
In short, the 2021 Innovating Justice Forum offered justice sector innovators, practitioners, and decision-makers a space to exchange ideas and recommit to delivering justice more effectively in communities around the world. We saw concrete examples of gamechanging justice initiatives that work. We saw a shared ambition by justice leadership to open up the justice sector more to innovation. And we saw the need to make funding part of the conversation when we speak about justice innovation.
“Inequality and access to justice are closely related,” said Birgitta Tazelaar, Deputy Director General for International Cooperation at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “You are here because you have contributed innovative solutions to think of real ways to make people’s lives better. »
Justice innovators and legal practitioners to gather from February 8 to 10 for the 11th annual Innovating Justice Forum convened by The Hague Institute for the Innovation of Law.
The Hague – The Hague Institute for the Innovation of Law (HiiL), in close collaboration with the International Task Force on Justice and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will convene from February 8 to 10 leading justice sector experts and practitioners for the 11th annual Innovating Justice Forum (IJF). The virtual conference will highlight essential contributions in people-friendly justice and focus on Making People-centred Justice Work.
« People’s justice needs have become more urgent than ever, » said Sam Muller, CEO at HiiL. « Even before COVID-19 and the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, legal systems and institutions around the globe struggled to address people’s justice concerns. Nonetheless, justice systems have a vital role to play as a platform for helping societies rebound from the pandemic, and we have seen some positive changes and advancements in the justice sector. At HiiL, we call these innovating organisations and their respective tools ‘Gamechangers.’”
According to the World Justice Report, an estimated 5 billion people globally have unmet justice needs. Shrinking this justice gap will require coordination and support from international organisations such as the UN. Simultaneously, however, the public sector, entrepreneurs, and civic society have initiated approaches and responsive solutions to address their respective communities’ needs. These efforts have been significant for realising the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 – equal access to justice for all.
Bridging the justice gap with ‘Gamechangers’
With over a decade of experience and expertise in supporting justice innovations, HiiL has gathered significant insights into the kind of services and innovations that spur change and development. Known as Gamechangers, these service providers include private startups and innovative interventions throughout the justice sector. They provide sustainable and scalable opportunities for creative disruption and offer great potential for attracting investment to advance people-centred justice.
The Forum 2021 will build on HiiL’s knowledge and research of Gamechangers to work with partners and stakeholders to help integrate and scale justice system solutions.
Seven Gamechangers themes have been identified for the 2021 Forum:
1. Community Justice Services
2. User-friendly contracts and other legal documents
3. One-stop dispute resolution platforms
4. Problem Solving Courts for Criminal Cases
5. Claiming services to help people access vital public services
6. Prevention programmes or services that ensure safety and security through technology
7. People-centered online information/advice with follow up services
Altogether, the innovations in each theme reimagine the way justice is delivered.
“IJF is designed for conversations and concrete partnerships on Gamechanging services,” said Kanan Dhru, Justice Innovation Researcher at HiiL. “We want to achieve scale and sustainability, highlighting HiiL’s research and data towards this effort. The Forum presents real-life examples of entrepreneurial people developing justice solutions that prioritise the justice needs of people. This will be especially important for justice efforts looking past a COVID-19 world”.
To date, more than 600 practitioners have registered to participate in the Forum. This includes 42 speakers representing10 countries and an additional 21 innovator pitches from nine countries.
Contact information Kanan Dhru Justice Innovation Researcher and Content Lead, IJF T: +31 (0) 70 762 0700 | E: communications@hiil.org
HiiL – user-friendly justice:
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user-friendly justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and useful. We will ensure that by 2030, 150 million people will prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best. We are friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central in all that we do. We are based in The Hague, the City of Peace and Justice.
(HiiL, Fluwelen Burgwal 58, 2511 CJ The Hague, The Netherlands,www.hiil.org)
About the 2021 Innovating Justice Forum
The Innovating Justice Forum (IJF) is a three day conference featuring justice-sector practitioners and innovators to exchange knowledge and ideas that realise user-friendly justice. The 2021 IJF will feature a series of dialogues to illuminate the potential in developing further justice solutions that emphasise people-centred justice. These entrepreneurial ‘Gamechanging’ services and tools will bring to light successful public-private partnership models within the justice sector. They will also – through data and collective purpose – encourage scale and sustainability across geographies. Together, we can strengthen justice systems around the world to make people-centred justice work and advance responsive justice solutions to over 150 million people by 2030.
HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey reveals challenges and opportunities facing justice access in Ethiopia and the push for more user-centred innovation and transformation. The survey report, Legal Problems in Daily Life, to be presented during a 23 January launch event.
The Hague – A Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS) conducted in 2020 by The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) shows that rapid development and urbanisation continue to widen Ethiopia’s justice gap. Of the 7.4 million legal problems occurring in the country, 5.2 million remain unresolved or perceived as unfairly resolved.
“Legal problems in Ethiopia are relatively low compared to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Dr. Martin Gramatikov, director Measuring Justice at HiiL. “That said, however, addressing the high demand for access and resolution to these issues will require bold action from justice stakeholders across the country. What matters is how many legal problems Ethiopians manage to resolve fairly.”
On 23 January, HiiL and its partners at Ethiopia’s Office of the Attorney General convened a launch event to share the JNS report results and findings. During the event, speakers discussed the outcomes of the survey and justice problems experienced daily by Ethiopians.
In conducting the JNS Survey, HiiL learned that the justice problems most affecting Ethiopians include crime, land disputes, conflict between neighbours, family and domestic violence, money-related disagreements, and legal employment problems.
What the data shows
As part of the JNS, HiiL and its data collection partner, the Ethiopian company ABCON, surveyed over 5,400 men and women from across the country. Respondents were selected randomly across six key regions to sample Ethiopia’s broad and diverse population. This representative portion of the people shared personal experiences stemming from legal problems over the last four years. HiiL learned how such issues get addressed and ultimately, whether Ethiopians manage to reach a fair resolution. The data has been triangulated with in-depth interviews and collective workshops involving experts from key justice institutions.
“Understanding people’s demand for justice services from the bottom-up is key for a justice sector,” said Dr. Sam Muller, CEO at HiiL. “Ethiopia strives to supply effective resolutions to legal problems. For this to be effective, justice practitioners must place people’s needs, and their experiences at the centre of justice services and they must prioritise solutions that work best in the daily lives of Ethiopians.”
Key findings include:
Gender disparities: Women encounter different problems compared to men (e.g. family disputes and domestic violence). On the other hand, men experience more often legal issues involving land and employment.
Urban versus rural areas: In cities and towns, justice concerns typically involve crime and employment problems such as theft, robbery, work dismissal, and non-payment of wages. By contrast, villagers often contend with land disputes, domestic violence, and disagreements between neighbours.
Seeking Resolution: Ethiopians actively pursue informal and formal strategies for resolving their legal concerns. Roughly 80% of the population takes some form of action including, village elders (43% of people) and the courts (18%). In only 1% of cases (mostly in urban areas) did Ethiopians engage a lawyer.
Closing the justice gap
The JNS survey confirmed a need to gather, analyse, and act upon data about people’s justice needs and experiences. This will be integral to delivering and expanding access to justice. Based on the survey and the interviews of justice-sector stakeholders, HiiL recommends several dimensions or strategies for realising people-centred justice:
Develop mechanisms to triage and prioritise severe legal problems that need more resources and attention. Consider the vulnerable groups’ needs – women, children, refugees, internally displaced people, and the illiterate and impoverished.
Build bridges between informal and formal justice systems to ensure broad access to justice at community levels and boost accessibility to formal justice mechanisms as needed.
Encourage courts to shift focus to matters that pose a more significant legal and factual difficulty. Accomplishing this requires a careful organisational and legal design that puts the people’s needs and expectations at the centre of such processes.
Continue to study “what works” and replicate the best practices at scale in both informal and formal justice journeys.
As one justice-sector stakeholder acknowledged, “Where there is better access to justice, there will be development. And if there is development, then everybody benefits including the government, the economy, as well as our society.”
For more in-depth and detailed information about people-centred justice in Ethiopia:
● Report: Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Ethiopia: Legal problems in daily life (available for download from the project page)
Contact information Martin Gramatikov Head of the Measuring Justice T: +31 (0) 70 762 0700 | E: communications@hiil.org
HiiL – user-friendly justice:
HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) is a social enterprise devoted to user-friendly justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand, and useful. We will ensure that by 2030, 150 million people will prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We do this by stimulating innovation and scaling what works best. We are friendly rebels focused on concrete improvements in the lives of people. Data and evidence are central in all that we do. We are based in The Hague, the City of Peace and Justice. (HiiL, Muzenstraat 120, 2511 WB The Hague, The Netherlands, www.hiil.org)
After separating from my partner, I was very worried about the future of my children, ages 12 and 15. So I decided to get a will to ensure financial security of my children if ever anything happens to me. But being the owner of a small pharmacy, I could not afford to hire a lawyer to draw up the will. That’s when someone suggested that I check out online providers of legal documents. And voila! For less than half the price of a lawyer, I got a will. One of my biggest worries has now been taken care of.
~ Sonia (42)
Millions of people like Sonia want access to affordable and accessible legal services. Unfortunately, the needs of such people often fall through the cracks of the traditional justice system. Clearly, we are at a juncture where we need to embrace fresh ideas to realise people-centred justice.
The Justice Dashboard presents innovations from the private sector as well as the public sector that have the potential to deliver justice to millions of people around the world. These innovations prioritise people’s needs and experiences and provide justice services that are affordable, accessible, and easy to understand. Termed by HiiL as Gamechangers, these innovations have reimagined the way justice is delivered.
The Gamechangers work with a variety of justice initiatives from across the world and reflect over a decade of experience supporting justice initiatives including private startups and innovative interventions in the judiciary among others. At HiiL, we have gathered significant insights into the justice innovations that provide scalable and sustainable opportunities (products, services and models) to enact the (local) solutions most responsive to people’s justice needs.
Beginning with community justice services, HiiL has identified seven Gamechangers themes of which five are presented here:
In many countries, parallel to formal legal services, there exist community-based dispute resolution mechanisms. The community justice services bring justice to the doorstep of many who cannot afford to hire lawyers and engage in court battles. To acknowledge the significance of the role they perform and to bring them under the purview of the law, countries such as Uganda (Local Council Courts) and Colombia (Houses of Justice) have facilitated their institutionalisation in the countries’s legal system.
In a person’s life, he or she needs several legal documents: real estate contracts, divorce papers, and prenuptial agreements, among others. Small business owners need tax forms, trademarks, patents, licenses, and business compliance documents. However, hiring a lawyer to prepare these documents is costly for many. That’s where online legal service providers can step in. Avadocs in Ukraine, LegalZoom in the US, LawPadi in Nigeria, VakilSearch in India all provide a range of document preparation services that individuals and small businesses need. Others such as Creative Contracts in South Africa and Visual Contracts in the Netherlands offer simplified, visual employment contracts that make legalities easy to understand.
One stop shop dispute resolution platforms offer services that are required at various levels in a legal dispute. They provide legal advice, negotiation, mediation, and adjudication all under the umbrella of one institution. In the Netherlands, for example, Justice 42 helps couples going through divorce without unnecessarily escalating the problem. Likewise, Civil Resolution in Tribunal, in British Columbia, Canada, provides legal information, tools, and tribunal services on disputes related to motor vehicle injury, small claims, societies and cooperative associations, and home ownership.
Problem solving courts for criminal cases involving lawyers, judges, and social workers come together to bring about restorative justice in local communities. The Red Hook Community Justice Centre is one such example. It offers unconventional programmes such as community restitution projects and short-term psychoeducational groups to address needs of offenders, victims, and the community. It tackles cases related to crime (minor level), family disputes, neighbour conflicts, and other civic issues. Similarly, CrimeSync in Sierra Leone offers a case management system that automates the criminal justice process from the inception of a case to the release of an inmate, thus providing a single view of the offender’s journey.
5. Claiming services to help people access vital public services
Claiming services thathelp people access vital public services have emerged in several parts of the world. These include services aimed at social security benefits, personal identity, healthcare, and simplifying taxation procedures. Haqdarshak in India and Turbotax in the USA serve as two examples. The former helps eligible individuals claim social welfare benefits while the latter aids individuals with tax filings and procedures. Both services simplify complex and bureaucratic systems that save time and money for both individuals and public servants.
Looking ahead, we are excited to share the upcoming pages of the Justice Dashboard in a couple of weeks. Check back again soon to learn more about the Gamechangers shifting the justice landscape along with information on two more Gamechangers categories:
Prevention programmes or services that ensure safety and security through the support of apps and focused on violence and fraud
People-centered online information/advice with follow up services
Justice thought leaders shared their thoughts and insights on solutions and interventions for delivering justice in the Covid-19 time.
News reports in recent weeks have indicated several promising vaccines for Covid-19. Nonetheless, the coronavirus is likely to affect everyday life through 2021. Billions of people around the world will need to be vaccinated and until that monumental logistical effort succeeds, most of the world’s population could remain burdened by the public health and economic uncertainties of the pandemic. For justice thought-leaders and providers, the Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the threats and weaknesses of justice systems around the world.
At the onset of the global pandemic, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) sought to understand the potential impact on justice-related issues stemming from the spread of Covid-19. In 2020, HiiL researchers and experts conducted the Covid-19 Survey with justice thought leaders around the world to assess this looming widening of the justice gap and its possible ramifications for individuals and governments. The first round of HiiL’s Covid-19 Survey mapped the current and anticipated impact on individuals and societies. This follow-up survey among a smaller group of justice leaders focussed on three questions:
What should preventative, constructive and informal interventions during the Covid-19 crisis look like?
What are the most effective models for delivering community justice?
What kind of systems change do these unprecedented circumstances most urgently demand?
The thought leaders surveyed represent 19 countries. Mostly Uganda (22%), Bulgaria (16%), the Netherlands (13%), and Syria (11%) followed by Lebanon, Chile, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Kenya, Mali, Turkey, Bangladesh, Germany, Jordan, Kuwait, South Africa, South Sudan, the US, and Yemen. Over half of the respondents are lawyers, judges, or prosecutors, and 69% have over 10 years of experience in the justice sector.
Preventive, Constructive, and Informal interventions During the first survey, respondents made clear that during the pandemic, preventative, constructive, and informal interventions would have the greatest potential for resolving people’s current justice problems. Sanctioning and punishing were seen as less effective. Now, however, we asked the respondents during the 2nd follow-up survey to go one step further by reflecting on the interventions that would most likely facilitate key elements of a given resolution process.
The key takeaways included:
Meeting: Opening a channel of communication between the parties
Respecting: Helping parties take one another seriously as human beings
Shaping solutions: Exploring possible solutions to meet the needs and interests of the parties
Restoring: Repairing harm and preventing future harm
78% of respondents felt most confident about guided negotiations prior to court involvement in an effort to help identify, resolve, and define conflict issues.
Overall, the thought leaders were clear in their belief that a wide range of preventative, constructive, and informal interventions can facilitate resolution processes. Interventions that facilitate face-to-face dialogue and are not entirely informal (in the sense that they take place within the formal justice system) received preference compared to interventions facilitated online or in a criminal context.
Community justice delivery models Following initial survey results indicating strong support for community justice, HiiL asked respondents to confirm which community justice models they believed could deliver the greatest impact and effectively scale.
Houses of justice (centres where different disciplines coordinate their interventions) and regional or local courts received support as most likely to effectively deliver. Additionally, Regional or local courts and community policing were seen as having the greatest potential to scale across the community. Religious courts and justices of the peace scored lowest among the community justice delivery models. This skepticism suggests that thought leaders feel most confident about the community justice delivery models that are connected to the formal justice system.
Other community justice service delivery models not included in the survey but highlighted and considered promising by the thought leaders surveyed include: online platforms, local governance structures, mobile courts, arbitration centres, community legal organisations, paralegal services, Local Council Courts, and traditional dispute resolution mechanisms (i.e. clan courts or councils of elders).
System change priorities In the initial survey, three major system change priorities emerged: a framework for improving procedures and technologies in the courts; the development and implementation of innovative delivery models; and adapting services and procedures to the Covid-19 climate. As part of the follow-up survey, HiiL asked respondents to offer solutions on what they believe could turn these three priorities into reality. The responses:
Improving procedures and technologies in the courts
Developing and implementing innovative and accessible justice delivery models
Adapting services and procedures to the COVID-19 climate
Respondents considered video hearings (84%), information and advice via mobile technology (65%) and platforms supporting a two-sided contract or settlement to a conflict (57%) as the most essential opportunities for improvement.
In the COVID-19 climate, thought leaders listed new technologies that support virtual justice delivery and emphasise user-friendly interfaces that combine “a human touch with input.” Examples mentioned included, video conferencing to facilitate remote hearings, electronic legal services and documents, and one-stop-shop platforms where procedures and payments could be centralised online. A “bringing justice to the people” approach also suggested restorative community justice mechanisms and mobile courts to help facilitate conflict resolution.
Lastly, thought leaders called for victim-centred justice and legal protection for women and children. This included “providing mental health and psychosocial support for survivors, focus on counteracting stereotypes and stigmatization, and survivor-centred and gender-sensitive services and procedures.”
In conclusion Based on the responses and opinions of justice sector thought leaders, the Covid-19 Crisis Report concludes that the pandemic will have long-term effects on addressing and resolving justice problems around the globe.
As the justice gap is expected to widen, many countries may also see an increase in large-scale violence. Courts, police, and informal justice services must adapt their services and focus on interventions that mitigate, prevent, and resolve an additional wave of justice problems. Rendering decisions and imposing sanctions are unlikely to work. Instead, the situation asks for a targeted and more accessible portfolio of interventions and delivered locally in communities or online where the use of and adoption of technology is not only possible but trusted too.
Regardless, emphasising innovative service delivery models will be crucial to promoting justice as leaders continue to develop new skills, relationships, and coordination processes and dismantle the barriers to justice access and services.
We are happy to announce that registration for our Innovating Justice Forum is now open.
The Forum is our annual international conference, convened in close collaboration with the International Task Force on Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands to support Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 – equal access to justice for all.
This year the Forum will be held 8 to 10 February 2021. The theme of the Forum is:
Making people-centered justice work
As the world struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, the economic downturn, and social and political upheavals, pressure on justice systems is mounting to deliver more and better justice. The justice that the world is seeking needs to be user friendly – accessible, affordable and easy to understand. How can the justice leaders, innovators, investors and those wanting to solve the justice problems create these solutions? During the Forum we will discuss perspectives on user-friendly justice, and how they meet reality: bottom-up and institutional, justice entrepreneurs and courts, informal and formal justice, innovation and research.
More information about the Forum is available on the Innovating Justice Forum website. You can also register here for participating in the Forum.
Innovators share inspiring stories on how they use data to bridge the justice gap.
« What gets measured, gets managed. » This adage served as inspiration during the 4th and final webinar focused on Research Methods to Measure Justice in Uganda. Justice innovators gathered to discuss the use of data and reflect on the past, current, and future opportunities for promoting a bottom up approach to justice and accountability. Led by The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) and its partner Evidence and Methods Lab (EML), the webinar featured three innovators from Uganda who shared their experience using data in the design of their own organisation’s mission.
“Data is important for all work but even more critical to people-centred justice, » said Michael Katagaya of EML and who moderated the webinar session. « Justice touches everyone’s life and is something we must all advocate for. By placing data at the centre of that matter we can ensure an evidence-based approach to understand the magnitude of the problem. »
Prior to the presentations, Rachael Ampaire, Programme Manager Uganda at HiiL, highlighted findings from the Justice Needs and Assessment Survey conducted by HiiL in Uganda last year. The survey conducted a nationwide assessment of the justice needs of 6,000 Ugandans spread across 14 districts. The empirical data laid out challenges and opportunities facing justice workers in Uganda.
Anatoli Kirigwajjo from Yunga Technologies explained how he used data from the JNS 2016 survey and the Ugandan Justice Dashboard to introduce a feature to Yunga, an alert system that connects neighbours to each other and to law enforcement in the event of a personal attack or emergency. By tapping a button from a Yunga device, neighbours and police could be notified and called to the rescue. The justice tool introduced a feature that allows victims of domestic violence to send an alert to their local police station. The alert is sent in real-time to the family unit of the police. Anatoli explained that this feature gained special relevance during the Covid-19 lockdown as gender-based violence had increased in Uganda and across the world.
In addition to exploring data and the innovating justice sector in Uganda, participants also discussed the impact of Covid-19 on access to justice.
« During the lockdown lawyers have been identified as non-essential workers and this has led to court cases being dismissed, » said Michael. « Because courts could not convene, that slowed down access to justice. However, one area where we could strengthen access to justice is by improving networks. Specifically, working better together with other justice actors in different sectors and across communities. We are definitely stronger if we work together. »
In the second presentation, Freweini Beyene, Co-founder of JusticeBot, shared how their friendly Facebook chatbot provides legal advice. « We’re trying to close the information gap in which 65% of Ugandans have little or no access to legal advice, as revealed by JNS 2016, and so people can better understand their legal rights, » said Freweini.
JusticeBot is concerned with the lack of knowledge that disempowers people and their ability to make their lives better. Additionally, one striking reality is how the population of Uganda in just 30 years has doubled to over 70 million people.
« The justice sector hasn’t been able to respond to the needs of this growing population, » said Beyene and thus, compounding the lack of empowerment. In terms of data, JusticeBot also conducted their own research and discovered that roughly 50% of issues in Uganda relate to land and property disputes. As a result, JusticeBot has shifted focus to this area.
Mary-Anne Ndove of Zzimba Games shared how insights from HiiL’s JNS encouraged the development of new approaches to bridge the justice gap facing Ugandans. In HiiL’s JNS survey, data revealed the prevalence of land justice problems and confirmed that people usually seek support first from friends followed by family and their extended social networks. That led Mary-Anne and Zzimba Games to leverage their gaming approach and people’s relationships to provide assistance and boost knowledge of land acquisition. The result, a land title acquisition game presenting 17 issues of land disputes. « Games are common in communities, » she said during her presentation. « They form trust within social environments, and they can be educational too! »
Altogether, the webinar offered a glimpse of the power of data and how it can transform efforts to improve access to justice in Uganda. Justice innovators around the world can take inspiration from these grassroots organisations to harness data when designing interventions to address the justice needs of citizens and to hold justice providers accountable. Together, these efforts can boost the capacity of justice institutions to provide justice that is affordable, accessible, and easy to understand.
During the fourth webinar in a 5-part series on strengthening the people-centred justice movement in Uganda, HiiL’s specialist Armi Korhonen presented research methods and best practices for collecting qualitative data. This article is the third piece in a series recapping the capacity building webinar series, ‘Research Methods to Measure Justice’.
« Interviewing as a qualitative research method focuses especially on experiences and opinions. The aim is to have an in-depth understanding of a selected topic and explore the realities that go into how people experience it and shape this reality they live in. »
With those opening lines, Armi Korhonen, Justice Sector Advisor at The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) welcomed innovators and practitioners from Uganda’s justice sector for a webinar on qualitative research methods and practice.
« As practitioners, we want to investigate a real-world issue as a research problem and ask ourselves ‘Why are we doing this?’, ‘Why do we want to engage in this research?’, » said Armi. « And keeping in mind that qualitative research will only measure an opinion, experience, or concept. »
In leading the session, Armi advised participants to first identify in a few sentences the essence of what they seek to accomplish and why. « You want to be as specific as possible about your topic and examine your own ideas and reasons behind selecting it, » said Armi.
One useful exercise to help identify one’s research problem and goal is to complete the following sentences:
We have noticed …
However, we are not sure about/if …
We want to know …
With this research we aim to know more about/if …
Conducting interviews From here, practitioners can continue by defining where to find the information needed to answer the research question. With interviews, this means asking a question: ‘Who knows what I want to know?’
Qualitative research experts refer to this as sampling or, in other words, identifying sources for information. Different interview formats include:
In-depth interviews: Typically 1 on 1 formats.
Focus groups: A group of people who discuss the issue and share their own experiences.
Qualitative surveys: For example online surveys consisting of open-ended questions that emphasize short responses and encourage participants to complete the surveys in a timely manner.
The interviews can also be complemented with observations and/or secondary research sources such as published research, legal documents, internet resources, information found at local libraries, data and info from NGO sites, and other available materials. Selecting the sampling method that works best depends on the research setting. The research question you choose should help steer the approach you take.
Interviews, however, receive significant attention in qualitative research and mainly because they are easy to organize and provide opportunities for conversation and follow-up. Three typical interview formats to consider when conducting qualitative research are Structured, Open, and Semi-structured.
Although most interviews are conducted in a semi-structured format, Armi and other qualitative research experts advise interviewers to explore all the formats and different approaches in a creative way, “So long as you are clear about your intention and goals,” said Armi.
When asked how researchers might approach individuals who might feel insecure or unwilling to participate, Armi recommended stating one’s intentions and goals clearly to engage respondents and offered these tips and best practices to keep in mind:
Be specific about your research purpose to allay concerns or skepticism.
Anticipate skepticism: Prepare a brief concept note, email, or text message ahead of time that outlines who you’re working with and what the results will be used for. How will your research be presented and get reported?
Be flexible about meeting your participants. Remember, their involvement is voluntary.
Be honest and transparent.
Respect people’s privacy and give them a chance to express any concerns.
In the end, interviews are about building trust and creating a space where people feel comfortable. A good interview seeks not only to answer your research questions but to respect the interviewee’s time and participation. And interviews that are not too long and that give both parties a sense of accomplishment can have the greatest impact.
“It’s about being open and forthright, listening actively and politely, and recording the information responsibly,” said Armi.
The final webinar in the ‘Research Methods to Measure Justice’ series will take place on 8 December 2020. The session titled, Applying User-Centered Justice Data will be public and open to all. If you wish to attend, please RSVP via manasi.nikam@hiil.org
I live in the peri-urban area of Kampala. The land where my ancestors had farmed is now being usurped by a local construction company. I have a wife and two children who are entirely dependent on me. This land is my safety net against the meager living I make as a carpenter. I cultivate sustenance crops on it. But if I lose it to the construction company, I will not be able to make ends meet. Is there someone who can help me? – Lennon
Land disputes are one of the most pressing justice problems affecting people worldwide. They are likely to have a cascading effect on people’s lives. This is especially true when land is connected to livelihood, as in Lennon’s case. Here, a land dispute can result in economic hardships for a family which in turn give rise to disputes within the family. Through the voice of Lennon, the newly released Land Justice page on the Justice Dashboard sheds light on many of these problems and offers solutions that increase access to justice for people.
Empirical data on land justice problems Drawing on data gathered by HiiL during nation-wide assessments in 15 countries, the Land Justice page showcases the impact of land disputes on the lives of people in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Readers can explore this empirical data in detail by applying filters that zoom in on country-specific data, sex and age disaggregated data and rural-urban data, including resolution rates, justice outcomes, and the stakeholders that people rely on for help. We invite you to dive into the data, formulate your own questions and seek answers.
Family justice problems – Land justice problems The Justice Dashboard gets updated regularly with data on various justice issues. In the first iteration, we published data on family justice problems. A quick glance at the resolution rates of family justice problems and land justice problems indicates that there are significantly more ongoing land justice problems (49%) than family justice problems (39%). Figures on ‘completely resolved’ problems are similar with 35% of family justice problems receiving a complete resolution and just 29% of land justice problems being resolved.
Other key findings on the Land Justice page include:
Land problems largely consist of disputes related to boundaries, access to property, use of land and land grabbing.
On average, 7,970,000 new land justice problems take place annually in 15 countries surveyed by HiiL.
At 13%, very few people rely on courts and lawyers to resolve land disputes.
The most helpful justice providers and mechanisms include ‘organised procedures’ (32%) and ‘people from personal networks’ (21%).
Solutions Apart from data, the page also reveals eight recommendations and five innovations that deliver fair and effective solutions. The recommendations are based on a thorough analysis of literature available for various types of land disputes. We identified interventions that address a problem and then selected two or three of the most effective ones. Then we evaluated each intervention by examining its pros and cons, and assessed its quality using scholarly benchmarks. Justice workers can take these recommendations as starting points while resolving a problem. The innovations have been selected based on their scalability, sustainability and ability to bring people closer to the outcomes they desire.
The outcomes that people desire while battling a land dispute have multiple dimensions. As in the case of Lennon, he wants to reclaim his land. He wants to be compensated for the loss of income he suffered in the past, a direct result of his land being grabbed. From here onwards, Lennon would like to be acknowledged as the owner of the land and have unhindered access to his property. His land also needs to be protected from potential land grabbers in the future. The recommendations and innovations proposed by HiiL can help Lennon and many others like him in achieving these objectives.
One of the leading recommendations in HiiL’s basket on land justice problems is seeking help from tribunals in the community to speedily resolve disputes related to ownership of land and use of land. This ensures that any outcomes negotiated or received by disputing parties fall within the cultural norms of that particular society as a result of which is more likely to be enforced and abided by.
An innovation that aligns with this rationale and is widely accepted is the Bataka Court. A community-based informal justice system, the Bataka Court allows elders selected by community members to intervene in land disputes as well as disputes between families and neighbours. Based in rural Uganda, the informal court system has increased access to justice for the poor by bringing courts to their doorstep and eliminating legal costs that are usually borne by justice seekers.
We invite you to engage with the data and solutions that have the potential to boost the efforts of paralegals, informal justice workers, social workers, lawyers, judges and other mediators in their goal of increasing access to justice.
Please note: Since the publication of this blog post, we have updated the personas shown on the Justice Dashboard. As a result, the names and images of the personas mentioned in this blog may differ from those currently featured on the Dashboard. To view the most up-to-date personas, please visit the Justice Dashboard.
Sitting at home, staring at the computer (or phone) screen, peaking through the window. For millions of people, this daily and hourly sequence is the new meaning of routine, defined by the pandemic. We work, laugh, communicate, and worry surrounded by screens and devices. In this new normal, social media gain a new, elevated, perhaps undeserved, meaning. From a funny and often annoying communication mesh, it turns into an important channel to share about problems.
“how are you? im about to be divorced!! unemployed is the reason.. landlord and agent is evicting family too.. what next!!!”
Justice needs on social media On Twitter, Facebook, Vkontakte, Weibo, Instagram and the likes people talk about everything. Covid, politics, sports, music, jokes, Tesla, money – it is all there. There is no reason to believe that justice is not part of the chatter. Especially during the pandemic, social media carries bits of knowledge and information about the justice needs of people. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know which justice issues people are bothered with? What do they do about these issues? Is justice seen in positive or negative nuances? Do justice issues occur more in the morning or in the evening? Are men more likely to get into legal trouble than women? What can we do with this knowledge?
“We don’t sleep at night in Lagos robbery is increasing everyday give us palliative relief and stop discrimination and tribalism”
What are people saying on social media To address some of these questions, HiiL tapped into Twitter and Facebook during the months of the pandemic. We looked globally and gathered 79 million Covid-19 and justice-relevant messages from January to July 2020. Next, we got deeper into 9 countries where we work on transforming justice and extracted more than half of millions of messages. A trained machine learning mechanism classified these messages as relevant to justice. Insights from this data is now available in our recent report, JUSTICE IN THE COVID-19 CRISIS: WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON SOCIAL MEDIA.
“I can’t even talk about the rate of domestic violence at the moment . It’s spreading at the same rate as Covid… may have accurate statistics but families are suffering in silence the adversities of this vice. #COVID19UG”
Some of the insights that you will find in the report:
Since the beginning of the pandemic globally people talk more about crimes and domestic violence;
In March and April, there was a lot of talk about medical bill disputes, financial disputes, and employment disputes;
In the focus-countries, the peak of messages about legal problems is in June. It only took 2-3 months after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic for people to start talking and worrying about legal problems;
From 1 to 100, the average sentiment score of the legal problems is 38 – way below the point of neutrality.
Our latest session in the capacity building webinar series, ‘Research Methods to Measure Justice’, explores online survey tools and best practices while undertaking quantitative research methods to quantify the justice needs of Ugandans.
On 24 November, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) held its second webinar aimed at supporting justice initiatives in Uganda. The five-part series is designed to equip civil society organisations in Uganda with skills for collecting, analysing, and using data to address the justice needs of local communities. Titled ‘Research Methods to Measure Justice’, the webinars follow the release of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey conducted in 2019 and fit into the broader HiiL project, Justice Innovation Uganda.
Galvanising the people-centred justice movement happening in Uganda In recent years, Uganda has seen a growing movement towards people-centred justice. As shown by HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey 2019, Ugandans rely primarily on friends, family members, neighbours, the police, Local Council Courts, and local authorities, as opposed to formal courts.
This webinar series aims to galvanise this movement by training civil society organisations in Uganda in collecting data on justice needs of people in their local communities. In doing so, it facilitates the grassroots and bottom-up approach by organisations committed to justice and where experiences of citizens will be used to inform interventions and programmes.
Using online tools to collect and analyse data Evidence and Methods Lab, a civic technology initiative, facilitated the webinar entitled, Quantitative Research and Analysis: An Interactive Session on Data Analysis and Visualization. The event discussed the usage of online tools such as Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, and Kobo for collecting and analysing data.
The webinar focused on giving practical knowledge to help practitioners in their data collection efforts. These data tools are useful, and they also offer safe and secure ways to measure attitudes during the Covid-19 pandemic. – Michael Katagaya, Co-founder of Evidence and Methods Lab.
To demonstrate the capabilities of each online survey tool, participants joined interactive exercises where they completed questionnaires so the group could explore data sets in each tool and gain familiarity with survey analysis.
In addition to learning about key survey tools and best practices, attendees explored the challenges of collecting data during the Covid-19 pandemic and the precautions that enumerators and researchers must undertake while collecting data. The ethics of data collection was also highlighted. Michael Katangya of EML stressed the principles of anonymity, confidentiality, and freedom to participate for participants involved in surveys.
The participants The webinar featured practitioners and justice innovators from Uganda’s civil society and justice sector. Organizations represented in attendance included, Action for Humanitarian Initiatives Uganda, International Family Support Centre, African Women Service Trust, Africa Community Partnership Programmes, African Child in Need, HELP-Uganda, Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, and Action Against Violence-UG.
Broadly speaking, for many organisations, the most significant challenge in data collection is having quality data. This is sometimes because of non-responsiveness especially if deploying digital tools but also having financial investments which help in hiring experienced assistants, process checks, field supervision, and conducting enough training. – Michael Katagaya, Co-founder of Evidence and Methods Lab.
The next webinar in the ‘Research Methods to Measure Justice’ series will take place on 1 December 2020. The focus of this webinar will be qualitative research methods.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is developing a capacity building webinar series in partnership with the Justice, Law and Order Sector in Uganda. It is a part of HiiL’s larger project ‘Justice in Uganda’, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).
Our first webinar: Quantitative Research Methods Acknowledging the role of data in informing the design of evidence-based interventions and programmes, HiiL has organised a capacity building webinar series ‘’Research Methods to Measure Justice’’ to equip civil society organizations in Uganda with skills required to collect, analyse and utilise data on justice needs of local communities.
The first capacity building webinar took place on November 16, 2020. It was based on the topic of ‘’Quantitative Research Methods’’. Facilitated by Evidence and Methods Lab, a Ugandan organization that works on access to information, accountability and generating evidence, and Rodrigo Nunez, Justice Sector Advisor from HiiL.
The focus of this webinar was to give participants an overview of the design of HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS), sampling techniques and data visualisations such as different types of bar graphs and pie charts.
Rodrigo Nunez from HiiL encapsulates the importance of quantitative data collections methods in this line, “The Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey is actionable, the survey tool generates actions. It helps in understanding the needs of the people, so that we can start tackling the most pressing justice problems.”
The data was widely appreciated by all those present at the event. “I believe that an important aspect of people-centred justice is access to timely information’’, said Elizabeth Kemigisha, Advocacy Officer at The Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
The participants were keen on understanding the nuances of survey design. They interacted with the facilitators and proactively engaged with the facilitators by asking pertinent questions which led the webinar to become a lively discussion.
The series of webinars The main objective of this webinar series is to facilitate the grassroots organisations in taking a bottom-up approach to justice, where data on justice needs and experiences of citizens will be used to hold justice providers accountable and make justice systems affordable, accessible and easy to understand.
The webinar series kicked off on November 5, 2020, with a virtual event to reflect on past, current, and future opportunities and challenges for strengthening people-centred justice in Uganda. One of the main goals of the event was to discuss insights arising from the data collected by HiiL during a nationwide assessment of justice problems of 6.000 people across all four regions of Uganda.
What happens next In the next leg of the webinar series, we will be discussing the use of online tools in undertaking surveys and how to maintain safety and security of participants and researchers while undertaking research in the times of Covid-19. Stay tuned to this space to know more.
During the war, we had to vacate our two pieces of land. After the war, we went back and found someone had encroached one of the plots. The other piece of land had a title, so there were no problems with that. We tried to negotiate with the other party, but they refused to acknowledge our right to the land. Then we went to the land committee in the village, who was able to help us. – John
In 2019, HiiL met over 6000 persons like John, who recounted to us their journeys to justice. Trained enumerators went house to house in all four regions of the country, and documented the run-ins of ordinary people with justice problems. The result is a nation-wide assessment of the justice needs of people in Uganda. You can find the detailed report here.
The new Uganda 2019 page on the Justice Dashboard brings this data to life with reader-friendly and interactive charts. It is a repository rich with actionable insights on how to resolve justice problems of people and deliver results that people desire.
Compare and contrast across time periods A similar assessment of people’s justice needs conducted by HiiL in 2015 is also displayed on the Justice Dashboard. These two datasets make it possible for readers to compare the status of people’s justice problems between 2015 and 2019, and track trends as well as upturns and downturns.
For instance, in both 2015 and 2019, Ugandans ranked disputes related to land, crime, domestic violence and family as their most serious justice problems. There was a 4% decline in the percentage of Ugandans who encountered a legal problem from 88% (2015) to 84% (2019), which is a small but promising signal of people’s well-being. Likewise, the percentage of unresolved, ongoing problems have fallen from 29% in 2015 to 21% in 2019.
It is apparent from the data and Ugandans rely primarily on friends, family members and neighbours when dealing with a justice problem. Next, they sought help from formal justice mechanisms that seem more accessible such as the police, Local Council Courts and local authorities, as opposed to formal courts. All of which together indicates that, there is a clear movement towards people-centred justice, away from formal institutions.
We invite you to play with the data, formulate your questions, and seek answers.
SDG 16 “…provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’’ As we inch closer to the 2030 agenda set out by the Sustainable Development Goals, it becomes important for national governments to implement evidence-based programmes and interventions to bridge the justice gap. On November 5, HiiL in partnership with the Justice, Law and Order Sector (JLOS) organised a virtual event to reflect on past, current, and future opportunities and challenges for strengthening people-centred justice in Uganda. In the event, JLOS integrated this data with their own version of a Dashboard along with data on performance of formal courts and the core justice problems voiced by people on social media.
The importance of data is acknowledged by civil society organisations and innovators alike. “I believe that an important aspect of people-centred justice is access to timely information’’, said Elizabeth Kemigisha, Advocacy Officer at The Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA) as we discussed strategies to materialise people-centred justice in Uganda on November 5.
A deeper focus on some of the most pressing justice problems (i.e. land, family, and crime) of Ugandans is coming soon on the Justice Dashboard. Keep watching this space for more.
We are very excited to announce that our Annual Innovating Justice Forum will be held on February 8 to 10, 2021.
The Forum is a unique chance to discuss many perspectives on user-friendly justice. In light of the unique challenges that 2020 brought to all of us and in the spirit of adaptability, we have decided to host the Innovating Justice Forum entirely online.
We invite you to save these dates in your calendar. More information will come available on the Innovating Justice Forum website.
Uganda is one of the most active countries regarding justice innovation. Uganda’s growing commitment to people-centred justice ensures putting people and their needs at the centre of justice systems. The movement calls for the transformation of justice systems to open up to a wider range of justice providers, and to open up to innovation. This is supported by new data and research on formal and informal justice delivery.
Talking about justice problems and collecting data systematically Four years after the first survey, in 2019/2020 HiiL conducted a second nationwide Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS) in Uganda. This was done with the cooperation of the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS). The justice needs of Ugandans have been extensively mapped, providing actionable insights on how to deliver more resolutions for increasing access to justice. Over the course of the research 6.129 Ugandans were interviewed in 40 districts in all four regions of the country.
Legal problems In 2019, 84% of the people are experiencing that they had at least one legal problem in the four years prior. The most frequently occurring problems in Uganda relate to crime (40%), domestic violence (35%), land (31%), and neighbour-related (29%).
The survey shows that almost 13 million legal problems occur each year in Uganda. Almost 70% of all legal problems do not receive a resolution or get a resolution perceived as unfair. Of those, 4.7 million legal problems are abandoned annually without fair resolution, 1.9 million are ongoing and 2.13 million are considered to be resolved unfairly.
Resolution and impact of legal problems People try to resolve their problems mostly by engaging third parties, such as the police. Involving the Local Council Courts (LCCs) or formal courts are seen as useful and most helpful in resolving a problem. Providing advice and mediation are the most common mechanisms used in dispute resolution in Uganda. Informal mediation by a third party, like family or friends, is the most common intervention strategy for people who were able to get their problems completely resolved. The preferred resolution intervention of the Ugandan people is talking directly to the other party involved in the problem. When offered the possibility of getting help from a third party, Ugandans want it to be face-to-face, fast, and free of charge.
More than half of people experience stress-related illnesses and loss of time and income because of a legal problem. When people use their time to solve a legal problem, they lose hours to work, to take care of their family and their house, to get an education, to relax, or to work on personal development. Solving a legal problem can also cause loss of money, so people can buy less and their purchasing power is lowered.
The JNS findings offer strong support for the innovation directions set by justice leaders and suggest it would be advisable to:
Support the Local Council Courts system, and in general, third parties that are neutral in practice;
Simplify the justice journeys of the people with most impactful problems;
Support formal courts when dealing with land problems;
Listen to the people. Promote and support face-to-face help, focused on possible solutions to problems in a fast, fair, and affordable way. Develop guidelines and catalogues for this purpose;
Go one step beyond knowing what problems people have and what works in resolving them, by measuring in detail how the resolution of problems improves the lives of Ugandans.
Judges, LCC members and other justice workers shared their views on improving the resolution processes on three pressing problem categories in Uganda: Land, Crime, and Divorce and Separation. These reports can help people-centred justice delivery and policies and will empower justice workers to serve people in resolving and preventing disputes.
Land is everything to us. Without it, there will be problems. So, it induces worry and affects even your normal life.
26% of Ugandans experienced land-related justice problems in the past four years
Common land problems: disputes over boundaries; ownership and use of land; land grabbing
87% of people seek legal advice – most people consult family members
92% of people use some sort of dispute resolution mechanism
51% are not resolved or are waiting for a resolution
Key findings of this report suggest that land problems need fast and fair resolutions, as essentially, they are social problems that create cycles of distrust and even violence. Informal justice providers, including the Local Council Courts, have the possibility to provide satisfying and fast resolutions. Women need special attention in land justice, as they are at risk of experiencing discrimination in resolution processes. Innovation that supports better documentation and agreements can eventually lead to the prevention of land problems.
The whole journey of going through criminal justice is a very complicated journey, especially for a layman. The laws are not easy to understand and you don’t understand what you are facing. It becomes hard, trying to access justice.
34% of people have encountered crime in the past four years
Common criminal justice problems: theft; burglary, robbery and damage to property
74% of people seek legal advice – most people ask advice from their social networks
77% of people take action to solve their criminal justice problem
64% criminal justice problems are not resolved or waiting for a resolution
Key findings of this report suggest that petty crime prevails in Uganda: theft is almost an everyday phenomenon and people are unable to solve their problems with property crime. Local council courts have jurisdiction over these small crimes, however, they are not often utilised. Meanwhile, formal justice providers have long case backlogs. The rate at which crimes are resolved is low: over half of the criminal cases are abandoned. A better balance between the formal and informal justice systems could help to manage large caseloads and provide Ugandans with greater access to justice. We need more local innovation that can help in providing tools to increase the resolution rate of crimes.
The law is very clear, if [the relationship] cannot work out then you can separate. But it is always hard to divorce.
7% of Ugandans have gone through divorce or separation in the past four years
85% of people seek legal advice – most people ask advice from their social networks
87% of people take legal action to solve their divorce or separation
32% of divorce and separation are left without a formal solution
Key findings of this report show that when faced with divorce or separation, many Ugandans take an active stance. Eighty-four percent look for advice or information on how to resolve the problem. Eighty-seven percent take action by involving the other party or engaging a third party. Most processes of family separation take place outside of formal institutions. Family and community networks is where most people turn for advice and resolution. Institutions are engaged less frequently. Police and Local Council Courts (LCCs) are the most commonly used justice institutions in Uganda, yet their users are relatively few. Even fewer people go to courts and lawyers to resolve their divorce or separation problems.
Half of the Ugandan people who encountered a legal problem related to divorce or separation managed to resolve it fully or partially. The two most often achieved outcomes are safety for the children and prevention of violence in the family. These are positive findings. Our interpretation is that family justice in Uganda works and delivers results. But not everyone receives fair resolution. The other half of the people say that their problem has not been resolved. Relatively few people believe that divorce or separation procedures deliver fair division of property and debt, secure housing and incomes.
Having data available for policy-making and monitoring progress is key for people-centred justice. JLOS, supported by HiiL, brought data from the Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey 2020 into a Justice Dashboard. This dashboard is now extended with data about cases in courts. Also, how people speak about justice problems is captured from social media, offering almost real-time monitoring of trends in justice needs.
For more in-depth and detailed information about the new research:
I see that formal justice systems are accessible and affordable to a very few people. Justice needs of the majority of the people go unattended. I have a great idea to change this status quo. But I am facing trouble in expanding my solution to a large number of people. If my peers have faced similar challenges, can you show me how they overcame them? – Avery, start-up founder
Every day, I see people coming in and out of the justice system, waiting intently for a solution to their problems. As time goes on, I see their hope turn into disappointment as one process after another keeps them circling around the court. I want to simplify and speed up this process. Are there new solutions that I can adopt in my court to change the way things are done? – Taylor, court leader
Does any of that sound like you? If you are passionate about resolving people’s justice problems and want to know new ways of doing it, you have come to the right place. The new Justice Services page brings to you innovative solutions that help in bridging the justice gap. It shows an analysis of 99 of the most successful innovations out of the 110 innovations supported by HilL.*
The Justice Services page The page shows what works and what does not in delivering solutions at scale through data and stories. It gives an overview of justice services that effectively resolve problems, the technologies deployed by the innovations, types of clients or beneficiaries that the innovations cater to and the relationship of the innovations to the government.
One of the key findings from our analysis is that the majority of the innovations ― 89% of them ― are technology-based. The innovations often take the form of web portals (36%), AI and machine learning (14%) and multilingual chat platforms/mobile apps (13%).
The data on the Justice Services page is visualised in a way that it allows you to explore the data and identify emerging trends in various regions. Innovators use it to shape their own innovations and to become familiar with the ecosystem of justice innovation. We hope that the experiences, both good and bad, of peers can serve as insights and learnings for upcoming innovators.
Game-changing innovations Based on insights gained from HiiL’s experience of supporting innovations, we show you a glimpse of game-changing innovations that have the potential to attract investment and deliver desirable outcomes to a legion of justice seekers. More information will be added on game-changers in the coming few weeks.
Formal justice system is catching up Apart from individual entrepreneurs, the formal justice system is also catching up in innovating the way justice is delivered. Courts in several countries have developed new services that are simplifying complex justice processes and delivering justice expeditiously to a diverse group of people.
Court leaders who are seeking new ideas can take inspiration from these examples to make formal justice systems accessible and user-friendly. “Afterall ― the government plays a crucial role in fostering and adopting justice innovations.” – quips Aniket Doegar, co-founder of the startup ‘’Haqdarshak” in India.
We hope to have inspired you to pave the path to justice with new ideas and solutions. The next stop on our journey to justice is Justice Systems. Here, we will discuss ways in which justice can be financed and the regulatory framework can be adapted to support the growth of innovations.
*Since 2011, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator programme has supported 110 innovations from Africa, Europe, Asia, North and South America and the MENA region. The programme funds, trains and helps innovators in networking with impact investors, legal tech organisations, justice institutions and academics.
Please note: Since the publication of this blog post, we have updated the personas shown on the Justice Dashboard. As a result, the names and images of the personas mentioned in this blog may differ from those currently featured on the Dashboard. To view the most up-to-date personas, please visit the Justice Dashboard.
On 27th August 2020, 10th Constitution Day of Kenya, the Alternative Justice Policy was officially launched by the Hon. Chief Justice of Kenya, David Maranga. The launch took place in the presence of the Alternative Justice Systems (AJS) Task Force among the members of the judiciary. The Policy and the Hackathon that followed showcased HiiL’s contribution to different facets of fostering justice innovation through its unique methodology and way of working.
Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey in 2017 The event was the culmination of a 3-year engagement with the Judiciary in Kenya which had initially commissioned HiiL with the creation of a Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS) in 2017. The JNS aimed at understanding justice needs of the people in Kenyan.
The launch of the AJS Policy proves the transformative nature of the judiciary. It joins mediation and arbitration that have already been rolled out with tremendous success. – Hon. Anne Amadi – Chief Registrar of Kenya Judiciary
The HiiL team surveyed more than 6.000 adults in Kenya and organised more than 30 interviews with justice leaders to get a comprehensive 360 view of the legal experience in Kenya. The report can be accessed here.
The report provided a comprehensive picture of the justice journeys of Kenyan people, seeking to strengthen ties between formal and informal justice systems while making a case for encouraging, building and sustaining an ecosystem of justice innovation. The report and data presented struck a chord with the Judiciary in Kenya, which set up a Multi-Stakeholder Task Force on 29th February 2016 appointed by the former Hon. the Chief Justice of Kenya, Dr. Willy Mutunga.
Alternative Justice Systems Task Force The mandate of the Taskforce was to develop a policy to mainstream Alternative Justice Systems (AJS) to enhance access to and expedite justice delivery. The AJS Taskforce put together a Policy on Alternative Justice Systems, which relies heavily on the findings of the HiiL JNS (Page 9 of the Baseline Document, Page 3 of the Policy Framework).
Policy The AJS Policy provides far-reaching changes to promote and enhance the mainstreaming of emerging and cross-cutting issues in AJS legislation, policy and mechanisms. This includes procedural and substantive legislative changes while stressing the importance of innovative ways to integrate AJS with the traditional justice delivery mechanism.
Legal Hackaton To add to this synergy of research leading to transformation on the ground, HiiL’s work on justice innovation was furthered by a Legal Hackathon. Along with the launch of the Policy, Lawyers Hub Kenya was invited to organise a Legal Hackathon to inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship in justice delivery as well as to create and support new initiatives. Lawyers Hub is a technology-policy organisation and an active collaborator of the HiiL Justice Accelerator and its supported innovators in the region.
The winner of the Hackathon, Justice by Allan Mutuma and team, were supported by HiiL with a prize amount of 1.000 EUR. Their winning idea aims to facilitate the Alternative Justice System policy by linking disputants with village elders, local Church leaders and acknowledged conflict resolvers via a web based platform supported by a USSD code.
HiiL’s approach in action From organising the Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey to supporting the Hackathon to develop new justice innovations – HiiL’s approach of research, supporting justice leaders with data to bring transformation and forming part of the local ecosystem to inculcate innovation – came alive to further user-friendly justice.
Reflecting on past, current and future opportunities and challenges for enabling people-centred justice.
We are proud to support people-centered approaches tojustice innovation in Uganda and invite you to join our special event on 5 November 2020.
Uganda is one of the most active countries regarding justice innovation and has a great number of successes worth sharing. These successes will be supported by new data and research on formal and informal justice delivery in Uganda, which will also be presented during this event.
The event will feature research findings from a nation-wide study of problems, resolution and people-centred impacts, as well as findings on the three most pressing problems Land, Crime and Divorce and Separation.
We also proudly launch a new integration of our survey data with administrative and social media sources which offers one of the most uniquely comprehensive understanding of justice from multiple perspectives. Stories from thousands of people map out the complex navigation of how people seek to get justice.
On 5 November 2020, the event on Justice Innovation in Uganda will take place. If you would like to join the event and conversation about what is happening in Uganda to increase access to fair solutions, please register in advance through this link. Joining the online event is free.
Series of webinars: This event is a kick-off of a series of webinars intended to increase capacity across the country to measure justice, visualise justice data and use it for project proposals and programming. The webinar series aims to support grassroot organisations around the country. More information about these webinars will be shared later at www.hiil.org.
Kai is separating from his partner of 10 years. He is deeply concerned about being present in the lives of his daughters and ensuring that they don’t drift away from him. He and his partner need to divide their assets and come to an understanding about sharing the financial cost of raising the children. How can he get past the resentments and grudges that he has against his partner and come to an agreement that will take care of everybody’s needs?~ Kai
Like Kai, millions of people face family justice problems every year. People get into disputes over inheritance. They have marital problems leading to separation and division of assets. Women often become victims of domestic violence. The new ‘Family Justice’ page on the Dashboard gives an overview of the justice gap experienced by people when undergoing a family dispute and showcases solutions to bridge this gap. Through the voice of Kai, we take the reader through this journey to justice and turn a new page in life.
Justice Dashboard – Family Page Drawing on data collected by HiiL from 16 countries, the Family Justice page showcases the impact of family problems, their resolution rate, the people who assist in resolving the problems, and the kind of outcomes people ideally want. This data can be further broken down by age, gender, and geography to provide a granular and in-depth analysis. The data is visualised in an interactive and exploratory manner, such that it allows you ― the reader ― to interact with the data, formulate your own questions and look for interesting patterns and stories that emerge.
Informal justice systems Empirical data collected by HiiL shows that people are less likely to engage in formal justice systems such as the police or courts. In fact, only 22% of the people undergoing a family dispute relied on formal justice systems. Generally, people resolve the problem using informal channels such as their own social networks.
They want to be understood and have their feelings acknowledged by the other party. This is one of the clear findings of research on family disputes. It is also what justice workers apply as a good practice.
Recommendations On the dashboard, you will find recommendations that will help people in getting the outcomes they want. The recommendations have been developed by combining international literature and expert advice of persons working in the family justice field to resolve problems and mitigate complications arising out of disputes between partners. For instance, how much information should Kai and his partner reveal to their young children when explaining their reasons for separating? Should they lay bare all grievances that they have against each other? Or should they tell the children just enough for them to understand why their parents cannot be together? The recommendations address practical questions such as these and help families in coping with the pain of separation.
We modelled this method of developing recommendations from the medical sector. The medical sector has given standard guidelines that professionals can follow. We wanted to do the same ― identify evidence-based guidelines that justice workers can take as starting points while resolving a problem.
To that end, we identified interventions that address this problem and then selected two to three most effective ones. Then we evaluated each intervention by examining its pros and cons, compared it with other interventions, and graded the source of textual evidence using the GRADE method ― a scholarly benchmark given by the medical sector to evaluate the quality of evidence. In this way, we tried to build a rigorous way of developing recommendations that can be used by justice workers.
Innovations Last but not least, we bring to you innovations, many of which are technology-based, from across the world that help couples undergoing separation. They simplify the process of getting a divorce, dividing assets and responsibilities. They also address meeting the emotional needs of the couple as well as children and help them cope with stress.
All in all, we hope to provide useful information for social workers, lawyers, judges and other mediators who have a role to play in disputes such as divorce.
Please note: Since the publication of this blog post, we have updated the personas shown on the Justice Dashboard. As a result, the names and images of the personas mentioned in this blog may differ from those currently featured on the Dashboard. To view the most up-to-date personas, please visit the Justice Dashboard.
New data available on legal problems and the impact of Covid-19 for mSMEs in Ukraine
In 2020, Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), in cooperation HiiL, conducted research among 815 Ukrainian micro, small and medium enterprises (mSMEs) to explore the legal challenges they experienced in the past two years, and how they expect Covid-19 to impact their legal problems.
mSMEs in Ukraine mSMEs play a critical role in the Ukrainian economy. There are more than 1.5 million mSMEs in Ukraine, including micro-enterprises (0-9 employees), small enterprises (10-49 employees) and medium enterprises (50-250 employees). mSMEs employ 61% of the persons employed in business and constitute 99% of the country’s enterprises. Together, they contribute to 20% of the country’s GDP.
mSMEs most pressing legal problems A relatively small proportion of the mSMEs from the Justice Need and Satisfaction (JNS) survey sample — 16% — say that in the past 2 years they had to deal with legal problems. But the reported legal problems are very serious, impactful, and costly. Findings suggest that the most common problems are related to disputes with suppliers and clients (23%), business premises (17%) or corporate fraud (15%).
Impact on daily business The most common consequence of legal problems for all mSMEs is loss of market share (18%), followed by loss of clients (14%). Thirty-eight percent of mSMEs which report a problem, say that the most serious problem caused a considerable negative impact on the company’s finances.
Covid-19 pandemic OECD in its recent report highlights the impact of Covid-19 on mSMEs worldwide. It estimates that more than half of mSMEs world-wide suffer a fall in revenue and one third of the mSMEs anticipate being out of business without external assistance. In a study conducted by HiiL, thought leaders based in 20 countries across the world also predict that mSMEs are more likely to go bankrupt, and likely to face disputes with employees and suppliers as a result of the pandemic. They predicted an increase in disputes related to repayment of debt and regulatory compliance as well.
In Ukraine, mSMEs foresee primarily three types of problems to increase due to the pandemic: problems related to insolvency of clients or suppliers, compliance with health and safety requirements followed by their own insolvency.
Resolving legal problems Many mSMEs try to solve the issue, but do not manage to receive closure. Only one in four legal problems has been assessed as resolved. Almost half of the reported problems are in a process of resolution.
Another quarter of the problems are deemed to be unresolved despite the pledged efforts. mSMEs try to negotiate, involve third parties and public institutions but rarely manage to reach a fair solution. Filing complaints with justice or administrative institutions often do not resolve the problem.
To resolve existing legal problems, mSMEs actively pursue negotiations, but it is difficult to convince the other party to cooperate. This indicates the need for services that bring the parties together to meet, talk, negotiate, decide, and implement fair solutions.
Justice innovation needed for user-friendly justice Most of the legal problems of mSMEs remaining unresolved is a challenge but also an opportunity for the justice innovators in Ukraine. mSMEs are rather dissatisfied with the quality of procedures and results of justice processes. Justice workers, policy-makers, and innovators need to listen to the voices of mSMEs and focus their efforts on improving providing better access to justice.
The results of this survey suggest that justice services for mSMEs in Ukraine need to be further developed. Promising areas for innovation seems to be:
Solutions that conclusively resolve legal problems
Guided procedures that assist the parties in business disputes to meet, talk, negotiate, decide and implement fair solutions
Accessible, fair and quick online or offline procedures involving third parties who decide on the issue and help to implement the decision
One-stop shops for tailored advice, information and forms
Solutions which help public authorities to provide better services to mSMEs
Ukraine has a thriving startup ecosystem. Kyiv, the country’s capital, ranks 32nd in the world and first in emerging Europe for having the best ecosystem for start-ups. It may be well placed to play a role in providing solutions for mSMEs.
Innovators providing solutions In order to support justice startups from Ukraine, on 15 October 2020, a pitch event was held with the nine best innovators of the HiiL Innovating Justice Challenge 2020. These teams were showcasing their solutions for solving legal problems of mSMES and the Ukranian people. Please find here a video of the event.
15 October 2020, our CEO Sam Muller, moderated a panel discussion during the 2020 Annual Conference of Knowledge Platform for Security and Rule of Law (KPSRL).
“Let’s hope that at the end of Covid-19 crisis justice systems will be transformed. Just like governments are telling businesses we will support you if you become green, we should demand that justice systems come off the pandemic more people-centred.” – Sam Muller, HiiL
Sam Muller and Marriët Schuurman
People-centred justice The discussion emphasized on helping justice leaders from all sectors in finding innovative ways to meet challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The discussion highlighted how justice can catalyze the recovery, give people a fair chance in the economy, and help societies build back better.It laid focus on prioritizing people-centered justice in both response and recovery plans to combat the short, medium, and long-term effects of the pandemic.
“You cannot ask the fish to empty the pond.” – Marriet Schuurman, MFA Netherlands on making a power shift towards marginalised communities along with the paradigm shift. She urged, “Hold justice systems accountable and move from building capacity of institutions to enhancing responsiveness of institutions and addressing needs of the people.”
Key takeaways Key points that emerged from the discussion are:
Safeguard against formulaic approaches: shift the focus away from building capacity of institutions to addressing needs of people.
Creating a body of evidence to understand people’s experience of justice problems and services.
Support of international actors and donors to national governments and CSOs.
Not relying on state institutions to address all needs of the public but create partnerships between governments, CSOs, communities.
Maintaining independence of justice institutions and preventing politicians from taking advantage of the pandemic to undermine power of justice systems.
Utilising technology to share information about relief measures undertaken by the government and NGOs to combat covid-19 and the resulting justice problems.
“We need to create feedback loops between justice seekers and providers. For that justice needs and satisfaction surveys and mapping justice journeys of people is important.’’ – Andrew Soloman, USAID
Meet the Speakers
Sam Muller: Founding Director of The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL)
Diego García-Sayán: Director General of the Andean Commission of Jurists, member of Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague & Inter-American Dialogue
Gustavo Maurino: Professor at Law & Political Science & International Relationships at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
Andrew Solomon: Senior Rule of Law Advisor at USAID
Sara Hossain: Barrister at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in Constitutional, Public Interest & Family Law
Marriët Schuurman: Director of Stability & Humanitarian Aid at the Dutch MFA | Member of UN Peace Building Fund Advisory Group
Yevgen Poltenko: Executive Director, Legal Development Network, Ukraine
The speakers
Did you miss this session? You can watch the panel discussion here.
15 October 2020 a new justice strategy is launched transforming justice in Imo state, Nigeria, to be more user-friendly for citizens. This justice strategy has been developed by a coalition of leading stakeholders from the justice ecosystem in Imo state. This coalition reflected the multi-layered reality of the justice system in Nigeria and represented the government, civil society, and academia.
71% Imo people experienced one or more legal problems;
64% of Imo people find their legal problem completely resolved, that leaves 37% without a complete resolution or even anything;
The most pressing legal problems people face are related to: money, neighbour disputes, employment problems, crime, and housing;
87% of Imo people seek information and advice for their problems, mainly through their personal network, less than 20% of the people seeking help go to the formal justice system.
These findings were the fundament of realizing a real change ‘on the ground’. With the support of HiiL and REOS a Justice Transformation Lab was conducted in Imo state, Nigeria.
Transforming justice in Nigeria In two dialoguesa coalition of justice leaders worked on driving innovations that contribute in making justice accessible to all people facing legal problems in their daily lives.
The talks focused on common legal issues one by one, defining the challenges faced to citizens and the system. They define solutions and build credibility and trust with partners needed to make it successful. These solutions are called ‘innovations’ and strengthen the justice system in responding to citizens’ needs. The result of this Justice Transformation Lab is a justice transformation strategy for better ways to prevent or resolve justice problems in Imo state.
The new justice transformation strategy For Imo state five justice needs were identified. These were based both on nation-wide survey data, Nigerian Justice Need and Satisfaction Survey 2018 and the dialogues with representatives of the Nigerian justice ecosystem.
The five areas the strategy targets are: 1. Crime; 2. Money-related disputes; 3. Employment disputes; 4. Land disputes; and 5. Neighbours/Family disputes. For each of these justice areas, concrete improvements in the lives of citizens were formulated (justice transformation goals) and given smart targets. In addition to these plans, greater benefits for citizens is achieved by identifying innovations that might support more than one goal.
Representatives from the multi-layered justice ecosystem develop a new justice strategy together in the Justice Transformation Lab
Three justice transformation pathways Three of such justice transformation pathways were identified by the dialogues. The justice transformation pathways deliver people-centered justice through the use of innovative procedures that are realistic now and in the foreseeable future.
Thesethree justice transformation pathways for Imo people are:
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as the first port of call in the justice delivery process using “Imo Justice Movement” as the catchphrase;
Grassroots engagements to increase awareness of the justice delivery process and their rights;
Access to digitization of court proceedings, including virtual proceedings.
Embedded in these pathways are two game-changers (items 1 & 3, above) that create the greatest impact for improving the lives of citizens in Imo state.
All the above is done with the ultimate goal in mind: delivering people-centred justice for Imo state.
The next steps involve potentially finding the game-changers in Justice Innovation Labs. I look forward on sharing news on these developments.
More information about making people-centred justice happen in Nigeria:
In his presentation, the founder and CEO of HiiL set out the tremendous challenge that justice systems face in this time of crisis. Strong and effective justice systems are critical for an effective health response, ensuring that the burdens of the economic downturn are shared equitably, and for supporting a speedy economic recovery.
We now see that justice systems are asked to do more than ever at a time that resources are diminishing significantly. Therefore, the private sector needs to somehow be brought on board to meet SDG16. He called for the private sector to support Entrepreneurship For Justice.
The three elements of a partnership that HiiL initiated, were shared:
Contribute to the Covid-19 Justice Rescue Fund;
Support the HiiL Justice Accelerator;
Contribute to the HiiL Justice Innovation Growth Fund.
Here you can read Sam’s presentation about Entrepreneurship For Justice.
“I am seeking a divorce from my husband as he was abusive towards me. But I am worried about how it would affect my children, as they love their father and he loves them too. I need to build a cordial relationship with my soon to be ex-husband so that my children do not feel the absence of a parent in their life. At the same time, I want to ensure that child-care responsibilities, especially the finances, are distributed between both parents, such that neither of us one bears the brunt. I need help in recovering from this rough patch in my life and settle this dispute as amicably as possible.’’ – Kai (F, 35)
Today, in our world, there are more than 5 billion people who need justice. Much like Kai, they need justice to resolve day-to-day issues such as divorce, while others need help in dealing with crime, or land disagreements. Some are struggling and fighting for social justice, fundamental rights, and the rule of law.
To contribute to decreasing the justice gap and support the delivery of justice HiiL makes available the next iteration of the Justice Dashboard. In a nutshell, the Dashboard portrays the story of HiiL – how data, solutions, innovation, and transformation lead to justice that works for the people. A user-friendly justice. The primary audiences of the Justice Dashboard are justice workers such as judges, lawyers, paralegals, justice innovators, ministers and other decision-makers, and everyone else whose mission is to prevent and resolve justice problems. They are the main protagonists of the Justice Dashboard storyline. Our ambition is to support the dedicated justice workers from Nigeria, Yemen, Ukraine, Indonesia, the US, Lebanon… and everywhere else in the world.
This dynamic web interface portrays people’s justice journeys and the treatments that prevent or resolve problems. The Justice Dashboard is powered by a large volume of data from interviews with almost 100.000 randomly selected individuals from 17 countries. The data shows how people encounter justice problems and which journeys they take to achieve fair resolutions. It also shows how people evaluate their paths to justice. As a user of the Justice Dashboard, you can play with the data, formulate your questions, and pursue action-oriented answers.
Going beyond the justice problems, the Justice Dashboard delves into promising solutions that can solve people’s justice needs. Based on thorough desk research and analysis of good practices the Justice Dashboard displays the key building blocks of solving problems. Like Lego interlocking bricks these building blocks are containers of practical knowledge about resolving legal problems. The Justice Dashboard aspires to empower justice workers with tools that will make them more effective and efficient in the delivery of justice.
By design, the Justice Dashboard is an evolving story. In October 2020, HiiL is launching the Dashboard key infrastructure. In a matter of weeks, we will add more content. For instance, very soon we will expand with data from a recent survey with thousands of Ethiopian citizens as well as refugees, residing in the country. At the moment, there are building blocks dedicated to the mains steps of dispute resolution such as meeting, documenting, containing, deciding, understanding, and restoring. In the next months, we will make more building blocks available to the justice workers.
The story of the Justice Dashboard will continue in the direction of justice innovations and justice transformation. In a practical and easy to understand way, the Dashboard will show the game-changing innovations that have the potential to deliver justice to hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. Next, it will explore the question of how justice systems have to reform to live up to the growing needs. Some of the topics that will be discussed are: what are the creative ways to finance justice and how to adapt the regulatory framework to allow innovation.
In summary, the 2020 iteration of the Justice Dashboard is there to help in the pursuit of user-friendly justice. It contains large volumes of data about justice needs as well as actionable ideas about reaching fair solutions. Much more will come in the following weeks and months. Check out the Justice Dashboard regularly for updates.
People-centered justice is needed in Nigeria Musa in rural Kano state is a farmer, while Ngozi sells vegetables in a village in Imo state and Sola is a widow in a remote part of Ogun state. All three are Nigerians, but their experiences in access justice are different from Adamu the medical doctor in Abuja, Timipre the politician from Rivers State, or Hadiza the beauty mogul from Bauchi! Whether the difference is gender-based, location-driven, or socioeconomically influenced does not matter as much as it tells the story of unequal access to justice. 73% of Nigerians have unmet justice needs!
While we know we cannot have all 73% of a population of approximately 200 million people in a room, we had to capture the essence of the population by gathering custodians of the justice ecosystem to sit and have a dialogue about how we can make people-centered justice happen in Nigeria. Not gender-centered, not sociopolitical-centered, and certainly not location-centered justice as is the current reality in the country.
Making the meeting happen The Foundation Dialogue held on June 30th, 2020 in Abuja was successful. Not merely because the Core Convening Group (CCG) invited participated, but the event took place with clear determination on both the participants and HiiL that this would still occur amidst the Covid19 restrictions. It was a hybrid of people who participated virtually from the Hague, South Africa, Lagos, and Ogun all converging with participants and HiiL Nigeria team in a socially distanced meeting hall in Abuja. The mix of platforms did not prevent the quality of the discussions as they were meaningful, actionable, and real.
We had the following Nigeria justice ecosystem represented: Office of the Vice-President of Nigeria, Ministry of Justice, Nigerian Bar Association, Civil Society Organization (Legal Aid Council of Nigeria), Nigerian Police (Office of the Inspector General of the Police), Nigerian Correctional Service (Office of the Controller General of NCS), and a State Attorney General. A bit about the CCG: they will act as a national body providing guidance and buy-in for the process to move to State level stakeholder dialogues. The intention is that this group will help shape the country approach, identify which state(s) is to pilot a Justice Transformation Lab (JTL), and establish who should be in the Stakeholder Dialogues.
Nigeria justice eco-system represented Membership of the Core Convening Group is on a voluntary basis, each member is a volunteer, giving their time to the dialogue. The transformation of justice in Nigeria, towards more people-centred approaches, is premised on the understanding that there is a general interest in Nigeria to explore innovative approaches to change.
The group agreed on some actionable points during the Foundation Dialogue, including the need for special attention to be given to the justice needs of women, rural dwellers and the less privileged. It was equally agreed that the rights of citizens, affordability and efficacy must be considered with people-centered justice innovations. Noteworthy was emphasis on the need for the police to be involved as the nation-wide justice survey indicated that they are one of the stops that Nigerians rely on to resolve their justice needs. In criticism, the group opined that the survey sample size of 6150 people is not up to 1% of Nigeria’s population, so future surveys should have a large sample size.
What might enable or inhibit the Justice Transformation Lab objective in Nigeria? Varied responses were offered, ranging from collaboration and representation to innovation, transparency, and funding. The richness of the discussion demonstrated the deep engagement and interest of the members. Most importantly, the members of the CCG expressed their willingness to provide strategic support to the process.
« Where do we go from here », you’d asked? Having achieved our objectives for the Foundation Dialogue, there is now the momentum to start consulting and convening stakeholder teams in each state. The Core Convening Group will be updated with the progress made. There will be Strategy Launches for each state where the Justice Transformation Lab process occurs.
In that strategy document of actionable plans lies the hope for access, affordability, and user-friendliness of the justice system for Sola, Ngozi, Adamu, Musa, and all Nigerians irrespective of gender, location, or socioeconomic status.
Workers barricaded behind bars for protesting the poor working conditions.
In recent weeks, calls for justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have reverberated from all corners of the world. Against the backdrop of growing disapproval of the police, two U.S Supreme Court decisions protecting Americans from discrimination and sudden deportation have renewed many people’s faith in what is possible under the law. At the same time, many of the institutions we traditionally rely on for protection are struggling to keep their doors open. The COVID-19 crisis is only the most recent obstacle to justice delivery. Before it, chronic underfunding, outdated regulations, and a lack of investment in innovation had already limited access to justice to a fortunate few.
The value of healthcare and justice
The value of healthcare and justice for all has never been clearer. So why can’t we find the money to make these systems work when we need them most? In her recent book The Value of Everything, economist Mariana Mazzucato challenges conventional notions of value based on price, arguing that it is “only through an open debate about value…that we can help steer our economies in a direction that will produce more genuine innovation and less inequality » (2017, p. 18).
While Mazzucato and many other leading thinkers are looking into what is needed to steer the economy towards sustainable growth and innovation in the health sector, HiiL has been exploring a different moonshot: bridging the justice gap by stimulating new money flows into people-centred services, and bringing them to scale.
Monitoring outcomes to valuable justice interventions
In our 2020 SDG 16.3 report, Charging for Justice, we find that delivering universal justice care is possible with an outcomes-based approach to financing. This means designing justice budgets around the value that justice interventions deliver in people’s lives, not the line items of existing institutions. It also means making room for community-based and online justice services that are more accessible, sustainable, and effective at resolving people’s most pressing problems.
By measuring and monitoring the outcomes that these people-centred services deliver, the justice sector can attract new revenue streams. Public and private funders looking for evidence of social impact will be more inclined to invest. Justice users will be more willing to pay for higher quality services, and can be enabled to do so through smart fee systems that optimise who contributes to the costs of justice when.If we value justice as much as we say we do, we will take this radically new perspective as an opportunity to put our money where our mouth is. Charging for Justice starts with a moonshot: the inspiring goal of universal justice coverage. It ends with a people-centred justice sector that is an asset – not a cost or burden – to society.
The world was off-track to deliver the SDG justice targets before the Covid-19 crisis. The economic impact of coronavirus has set those long-term objectives back even further.
Covid-19’s economic impacts are sure to last longer than the public health emergency and will be a catalyst for a massive increase of justice problems.
The economic crisis will substantially increase the pressure on justice systems and widen the justice gap. As employment contracts are terminated and businesses go bankrupt, the demand for legal assistance will rise.
We propose seven strategies for how justice systems can help, not hinder economic recovery, and how justice leaders can take action to reshape justice systems and support more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient patterns of growth:
Anticipate demand — use existing and new data to understand the changing demand for justice and use triage to channel people to the most appropriate service
Invest in personal contact — reach out to people by phone or digitally to reduce workloads and deliver fairer outcomes.
Address problem clusters — tackle multiple problems at once to stop disputes from escalating and break vicious cycles.
Prioritise non-court solutions — use mediation and other dispute resolution mechanisms reducing pressure on formal institutions.
Focus on prevention — use legal empowerment, online services, ombuds’ institutes and other non-court services to nip disputes in the bud and address the structural roots of economic injustices.
Avoid making justice problems worse — modify or scrap laws and procedures that make disputes worse and exacerbate injustice.
Use justice to rebuild economies — put justice systems at the heart of ensuring fair distribution of recovery packages and use them to give marginalised people greater opportunities for economic participation.
The advent of Covid-19 breaths new life into(serious) talks of innovating people-centered justice services.
Why is that?
The spark that lit the Arab Spring was the death of the Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi. Ten years later, millions of people are marching to demand changes to the failures of the American justice system after the murder of George Floyd.
« Around the world, a cry for justice is echoing.«
A wave of protests has swept the U.S., Lebanon, Mali, and continues to spark conversations everywhere on why justice systems are not delivering what the people need and deserve.
This article, Justice in a Global Emergency, is authored by three justice leaders of the North America, South America and African continents. They urge justice ministers to listen to the cries from the people, and respond. Supporting justice leaders in doing this is paramount; the challenge is daunting.
Due to Covid-19, people will have more justice problems. This rise adds to an already precarious stack of social injustices. At the same time, the capacity of justice systems to respond is undermined by Covid-19. Justice workers fall sick, and courts and other such places of service provision are forced to close.
On top of this, the increase in demand for justice services and protection could not come at a worse time. Economies have been impacted, and will continue to be, by the emergency measures put in place to halt the pandemic.
We expect budgets to be strained. Justice leaders need to do more with less. But they should also look to do things differently.
This explains the emphasis on immediate innovation. In our recent survey, 270 justice leaders felt that the need to prioritise more innovation and smart ways of working (64%).
At the international level, there is a mobilisation that strives to turn hardship into opportunity. The Justice Leadership Group have issued a call to action for urgent and lasting change.
Justice leaders will not deliver access to justice with ‘outdated services and structures resistant to change‘.
The above article offers the practical steps for leaders. They take into consideration the changing times (and needs). They urge leaders to see what is at stake if we fail to safeguard justice during the pandemic: « trust and social cohesion will vanish, economies will fail to recover, and many people will die unnecessarily. »
The Justice Leadership Group, which was formed five years ago with the help of HiiL, have much to offer. Comprised of former attorney generals and senior judges, together we support those whose task it is to serve justice in their societies or internationally at the highest political level.
And that is hope.
For further information or to help take forward this this call to action, contact Sam Muller.
The articles shared come from a platform that hosts diverse voices in response to the protests catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd. Visit the Freedom and Justice Week series on globaldashboard.org/.
HiiL Covid 19 Survey:How did justice institutions adapt to the Covid-19 challenge, which justice problems are to be expected and what impact do these problems have?
Thought leaders in the justice sector are concerned about a looming wave of legal problems. They expect incidents of injustice to surge. This may lead to civil unrest in some countries. Business as usual – by courts and police enforcing laws, with legal services available for the few – is unlikely to work. Thought leaders we engage offered clear indications on how courts, ministers of justice and politicians should respond to guarantee peace and justice.
Survey
Two-hundred and seventy one justice leaders from more than 20 countries engaged in this dialogue via an online questionnaire. As a first step we asked them about their views on the impact of Covid-19 on the delivery of justice.
The respondents have significant experience. Sixty-eight percent have more than 10 years of professional experience and 18% more than 6 years. Twenty-six percent are lawyers, 19% work for NGOs, 13% judges or prosecutors, 9% are academics and 8% are justice innovators. Geographically, the thought leaders work mostly in Europe (35%), Sub-Saharan Africa (35%) and the Middle East and North Africa (22%).
Justice Institutions in the pandemic
In many countries, justice institutions were closed (May 2020). Video-conferencing solutions were widely implemented and rules of procedure were changed through emergency laws.
“Currently most justice systems are only applying technology to the same inaccessible systems instead of rethinking the entire justice delivery model. Part of the problem is the very rigid regulation that governs justice systems.”
Increase in number of conflicts and disputes
Far more disputes that are directly related to the global economic depression, including business problems, debt, and employment disputes, are expected. The justice leaders also anticipate that the economic crisis and the public health measures will put intense pressure on families and communities, leading to a significant increase in family disputes and domestic violence.
Other disputes, including (access to) welfare, health bills and insurance, tax, and housing issues are also expected to increase worldwide.
“The vulnerable will be hit hardest by the crisis. Interventions to increase access to justice should be targeted to address the needs of this group.”
Impact
Covid-19 related problems will cause loss of jobs and income. In countries with a large informal job market of weak employment protection legislation, this has already happened. Closures of businesses, stress-related illness, and damage to family relationships are already impacting people’s lives as well. In the MENA region and in Sub-Saharan Africa more than 60% of the respondents expect violence as a consequence of the new wave of justice problems.
“The major risk I envisage is that there will be higher imbalance between the justice demands of the society and the ability of justice institutions to respond to such demand.”
Due to Covid-19: a widening justice gap
Respondents are not optimistic about how this surge of additional justice problems will be resolved. 70% expect problems to escalate more often. Problems are expected to be resolved more often between the parties. Solutions are expected to be less fair and achieved less quickly. A large increase in the number of disputes, together with Covid-19-induced inefficiencies, will result in significant additional delays, particularly among low and middle income countries. In sum, the justice gap will widen.
Take-outs
Courts, police and other justice services will have to adapt their services, focusing on interventions that are most likely to resolve or prevent an additional wave of justice problems. Just rendering decisions and imposing sanctions is unlikely to work. The situation asks for a richer portfolio of interventions, delivered locally, in communities. Developing innovative service delivery models is seen as the main way forward. Seeing the sheer size of the challenges, it is not surprising that justice leaders are thought to benefit from new skills, relationships and coordination processes.
It would be of real value to us if you care to share your thoughts, views and ideas. Contact information: Dr. Martin Gramatikov, Director of Measuring Justice
Reflections on Talks with National Stakeholders in Abuja, Nigeria
Before we had to stay home from our normal routines and daily hustles, we had HiiL’s Forum on Making People-Centred Justice Happen in Nigeria. The lockdown and stay-at-home policy has given us an opportunity to look back at the March 5th 2020 event held in Abuja, Nigeria. It was a phenomenal opportunity for different stakeholders in the justice sector to know more about what we do here at HiiL and equally allow HiiL with its partner, REOS, to initiate the process of listening to leaders in the Nigerian justice sector interact with each other.
March Forum on Making People-Centred Justice Happen
The diversity of the people in the event created an atmosphere for real discussions about how to move justice closer to the people, in line with Sustainable Development Goal #16.3, equal access to justice for all. In attendance were people from the Ministry of Justice, Office of the Vice-President of Nigeria, Nigerian Police, Nigerian Correctional Services (formerly, Nigerian Prisons), Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), members of traditional institutions, private sector legal practitioners, and many more.
Honour the knowledge of local stakeholders
“Why is this mix important to the work HiiL does and specifically to Justice Transformation,” one may ask. Justice Transformation is born out of HiiL learning that data and innovation alone are not always enough to resolve justice problems at scale, system change is needed. This includes engagement from government and non-government entities, including innovators, to ensure ministries, the judiciary and other relevant actors will support and effectively pursue, adopt, and develop relevant measures. Innovators and justice leaders co-create a process which links data and innovation. Inherently, all hands are needed on deck for real change to occur so that people can have increased access to justice.
Safe spaces to talk about data and evidence
In this article, we talk about the importance of a method called Justice Dialogues: safe spaces where justice leaders can talk about how they can reinvent themselves to meet the tremendous access to justice challenge. This forum provided the opportunity for a safe beginning of a cross-sectional dialogue of issues as identified and highlighted first by the 2018 Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) Survey conducted by HiiL. The JNS was used to collect data from everyday people answering simple questions about their everyday problems. Here at HiiL, we are data-driven, hence most times we first start with gathering data as that would inform us of what justice needs people have, and where. It is the survey that would equally inform innovators about entrepreneurial opportunities that would serve needs uncovered by the data. The two, that is data and innovations, need the transformation piece that is driven by justice leaders to happen, hence the importance and value of the Forum. It served as a platform to kickstart the Justice Transformation process in Nigeria.
Where do we go next for more access to justice in Nigeria?
After a successful event like this, where do we go from here? The Justice Transformation Lab is our next stop. HiiL will provide a safe container that would allow leaders in the justice sector in Nigeria to chart a course for exactly how to make people-centred justice happen in Nigeria. We hope they would achieve this by ensuring that the diverse institutions involved in the justice sector are carried along in the journey and the people’s needs are addressed with the JNS as a data-based guide. Seeing the end from the beginning, we envision an actionable plan that would make a meaningful contribution to fulfilling the justice needs of the 73% of the people who currently do not have access to justice. A lofty goal for HiiL perhaps, but an achievable one, with Nigerians, for Nigeria. HiiL provides the safe container as a platform for Nigerians to own the process of Justice Transformation for themselves.
It is a strange time to look backwards. The current times has forced many of us to re-evaluate priorities, ways of working and mobilised many new responses to access to justice challenges.
Looking back is what accountable organisations do: we ask what did we set out to achieve, and what problems did we help resolve or prevent? Did we learn valuable things to carry forward into 2020?
The purpose of the annual report is to look at the relationship between our actions and our impact. Our mission aligns with SDG16 and specifcally sub-target 3, which is a universal target for access to justice. We put a number on our goal: we aims to prevent or resolve 150 million justice problems before 2030.
So 2019, did our actions lead us in the right direction towards our goals?
Deeper country engagements
In 2019, we continued to contribute to user friendly justice through our engagements in the countries in which we support peace and justice. Highlights include two new nation-wide Justice Needs and Satisfaction surveys in Mali and Uganda, collecting data for a new nation-wide survey Ethiopia, successfully concluding Justice Transformation Stakeholder Dialogues relating to justice for people in Syria, helping an impressive cohort of justice entrepreneurs scale in HiiL’s Justice Accelerator, and the investigative research that goes into the SDG 16.3 Trend Report.
In the 2019 annual report, we highlight the progress we and our partners have made in Syria, Mali, Uganda, Nigeria for user friendly justice.
We also put the spotlight on the developments in four hubs that support local justice innovation ecosystems (Local Justice Accelerators). We have grown these Hubs over many years to reach the point they are now: on the cusp of an exciting new chapter, social franchising.
Read about the impact the HiiL Justice Accelerator has had in Ukraine, West Africa, East Africa, and South Africa
Read more in the 2019 Annual Report
Partnerships remain a core element of our work for justice
We made waves internationally with an alliance of organisations working towards SDG16 targets. Under the guise of the Task Force on Justice, we shared data and analytical capacity to conclude that a massive 5,1 billion people do not have adequate access to justice.
Our work is ongoing. In response to the Covid-10 challenge, we have mobilised to produce Justice for All and the Public Health Emergency, building on the foundations we laid in 2019. HiiL launched a new data-gathering initiative for an evidence-based approach to targeted responses by justice leaders. All of us need to move. All of us need support in one form or another to protect peace and justice.
We need a more data-driven way of working. We need to open the sector up to innovation. We need to include prevention in what we do. This new paradigm shift was enshrined in The Hague Declaration on the Rule of Law and the final report of the Task Force, both products of this watershed year.
Read more about our key strategic and implementing country partners in the annual report.
What is new?
People’s voices make justice user-friendly
To date, we listened to people’s voices in nation-wide justice studies in 27 different countries. The tool we built to do it with was first created 8 years ago. Fast forward to now, the largest-we-have-ever-known, Justice Research and Development department develop more evidence-based guidelines, produce actionable data for policy makers, and publish leading SDG16 Trend Reports.
In 2019, we launched reports that made transparent the justice needs of the people of Morocco, Fiji and Mali. The new Justice Dashboard launches this year brings all the learnings collected over 15 years to come together in a tool that can support leaders, innovators, service providers and impact investors.
Local entrepreneurs make services user-friendly
The development of the Justice Accelerator model remains ongoing to help accelerate promising justice innovations along their journey. The acceleration programme is increasingly targeted, specific and networked. Search missions for the world’s most suitable solutions to local pressing justice needs from The Hague, have been replaced by sustainable local hubs. Justice innovation ecosystems generate a pipeline of innovations that increasingly are of higher-quality. Our methods of supporting and discerning them have improved and are guided more by country data.
Complex environments are ripe for rebuilding justice to be user-friendly for all people
The methods that we pursue our goals of preventing or resolving 150 million justice problems by 2030 are working well. Even in increasingly complex environments. The challenges involved with rebuilding and resuming usual justice system activities post-conflict is an area ripe for innovation. HiiL and Reos Partners have developed such a new approach
There is so much more to tell you…
Whether you are interested in user friendly justice in a specific region, evidence and data for justice needs and treatments, system-wide transformation processes, how our teams grew, the incredible events we hosted and contributed to, the annual report can entertain you.
Our future goals
2019 was predicted to be the year for equal access to justice for all, and in many ways it was. Here we present our 2019 learnings and impact with a sense of pride and also ambition for the furthering user friendly justice. Yet, we simply cannot acknowledge our impact without acknowledging you: Our partners, our donors, our staff, our supporters and clients. We hope you know how important to us you are in helping make user friendly justice happen.
Read more about our future goals based on 2019 learnings inside the annual report.
This article is a wrap up of the 2020 Innovating Justice Forum.
At a glance: We are so grateful to Wytze Veenstra @Visual Notes who did this superb visual recording of the event.
The Innovating Justice Forum is known across the world as being both a fun and prestigious justice event. This year, as you will see below, lived up to those expectations. Exceeded them, even, on account of having an additional 1.5 days in the programme!
For the tenth annual Innovating Justice Forum since we started with this beautiful and unique event, HiiL dedicated our programme to address a critical blockage for actors worldwide changing the status quo. Financing justice innovation.
How to finance SDG16.3?
The world set an ambitious target in 2015: that by 2030, every person should enjoy equal access to justice (United Nations sustainable development goal 16.3). Reliable research estimates the justice gap as two thirds of the global population. That is quite something. Unfortunately, there was no attachment to the momentous justice target on how to finance it.
Day 1: turn up the pressure and find a recipe to finance justice for all
Assembly of SDG16.3 stakeholders
Many stakeholders are affected by and interested in unlocking the bottlenecks in financing universal justice care. The convening of regulators, court workers and lawyers, innovators, the public sector and social impact investors is a unique opportunity to explore focussed topics. The formula: Break down a momentous challenge into smaller pieces and work in sprint teams.
On day one we held five ¨pressure cooker sessions¨ related to financing justice to drive at context-appropriate financial models. These five sessions repeated twice in the course of the day:
Explore the best innovations and ways to increase revenues
From stalemate to co-create: stretch your collaboration to optimise financing justice for all
Getting the most bang for your buck
Define measurable outcomes to make the case for investment
Potential of public/private partnerships to finance access to justice
The moderators of these sessions took stock of a wide variety of experiences and knowledge from the justice field. Real-talking and alchemy took the broad diversity of viewpoints and knowledge and turned them into a clear vision.
Financing access to justice work sprint outcomes
The participants and moderators were engaged which led to successful outcomes. IJF participants did not seem to mind in the least being invited to tackle head-on difficult questions. Far from it: there was an ambience of cheerfulness and energy. For the conclusions of these pressure cooker sessions, you can visit a summary report, I co-wrote with my team.
Each stakeholder group has their own needs and concerns and there is a stretch they need to make to unlock the stalemate.
Mille Bojer, Reos Partners
Involving the private sector in SDG16.3
What was new for me and exciting to see unfold was involving private investors (social impact investors, in particular). In previous years, the IJF consistently attracts justice workers, innovators and leaders. But to close the justice gap; our research shows a need for increased investments from the private sector. We mapped out a plan for engaging and attracting private investment with that key stakeholder: Develop consensual measures of justice outcomes, unlock monopolies, help innovators use data.
Do public/private partnerships erode public sector leadership in justice?
Critical reflections on the journey towards universal justice care for citizens.
One of the most poignant and persistent topics for me on this day was how to deliver more investment in the kinds of services that help the most vulnerable while protecting justice as a public good. I hope to see these conversations taking place broadly and without delay at the national level in 2020.
Unlocking the bottlenecks in financing universal justice care
Justice innovators are good at locking in value and focusing on high-quality services. They struggle with dependency on governments to increase revenues and be viable. Bolstered by the ability to prove the efficacy of their solutions, (e.g. user-data of good experiences), partnering with social impact investors for financial viability is possible. But for scale, the new solutions need to find a home in the justice system. Globally, justice sectors are struggling with the political will and appropriate regulation to open up to new solutions.
While it is very importnat to have political will, we must ensure that issue of access to justice does not become politicised.
– Allyson Maynard Gibson QC
Community justice funds paid by private actors can be a viable substitute until policymakers are able to align other priorities with increased access to justice funding. This work is accelerating thanks to the work of international organisations (OECD, World Bank, Task Force on Justice) that connect increased access to justice with other such goals of zero poverty, security, fair employment and gender equality.
Changing acceptance and mindsets takes more time and better communications on the evidence of what works and data from the supply and demand side. We need to help the justice sector change a number of fundamental things so that the best ideas to prevent or resolve justice problems can scale and help the 5.1 billion people in the world who lack meaningful access to justice.
HiiL´ s upcoming SDG16 report, Charging for Justice argues for an outcomes-focused approach for social change that considers the needs of each stakeholder group. Outcomes that focus on the beneficiaries are key to making the business case around financing justice. More on this to follow.
The Innovating Justice Challenge
Every year, the Innovating Justice Forum is where we host a dynamic pitch competition: the Innovating Justice Challenge. Each team is given just four minutes to tell a panel of judges why theirs is the solution worthy of being crowned the winner of the Innovating Justice Competition.
Fourteen teams of justice innovations from around the world, but mostly on the African continent, brought a lot of energy to the Innovating Justice Forum. These fourteen are all in the HiiL Justice Accelerator programme: our 2020 cohort.
In order of when they pitched:
Yunga (Uganda) is community-led security in crime hotspots.rAInbow (South Africa) is a digital companion for domestic abuse issues.ESS creative and legal foundation (Tanzania) offers legal assurance, and ease of mind when legal problems occur.Bankly gives security and access to fundamental financial services for (otherwise excluded) Nigerians. Easy Laws makes simple the laws in Lebanon and hopes to guide more citizens to solutions.Africlaim (Nigeria/Global) is out to change the odds for disgruntled flight passengers.Legal Hub (Uganda) is helping courts reduce backlogs by giving citizens other options for getting legal information. Vesicash (Nigeria) promotes smooth business transactions by providing a secure dispute resolution platform. Sharia Kiganjani (Tanzania) the name means “law in your palm” in Swahili. Law Basket (Zimbabwe) is enhancing consumer choice in Zimbabwe. Simba Mubvuma (pictured) is named by Forbes Africa as 30 under 30 in Technology.AirLaw.Pro (Ukraine) provides rightful compensation for delayed, cancelled or overbooked flights through the Ukrainian courts.Justice Bot (Uganda) provides Ugandans with knowledge of their legal rights and options. LegIT (Uganda) supports new business ventures with legal documents.Appruve (Ghana) ensures equal opportunities for financial services by providing verified identities.
The jury heard all fourteen pitches before choosing the top three. They then assessed the teams based solely on what they heard in the pitch, and the responses questions asked by jury members and a few from the audience. The jury (pictured below) chose the top 3 most promising innovations based on their potential impact, sustainability, scalability and team.
The best three justice innovations of 2020
At the end of the day, having heard all fourteen, the jury took time to deliberate. I actually unofficially listened in as I was working in the same room and it was interesting to hear! I was impressed by their application of knowledge about the justice ecosystems in which the innovations operate.
The audience erupted with cheers and even dancing! The support from the fellow justice innovators in the room was loud and palpable. The unity forged by shared struggles on the road to innovate justice is unique. The Innovating Justice Competition cultivates life-long friendship, a lifeline of support, shared journeys and hardship. Read more about it here.
Photos by Harmen de Jong
For a feature piece on the winner of 2020 Innovating Justice Challenge, visit this article once you have finished reading about Day 2.
Day 2: Let’s do this
In the official ¨home¨ of the justice sustainable development goal (SDG.16) – The Peace Palace – Day 2 saw representatives from governments, international organisations, business, civil society organisations, academia and think tanks came from different countries primed to work on building the business case to achieve SDG16.3.
How can we fund the ideas that will help the 5.1 billion people in the world who lack meaningful access to justice?
Looking into this room I see – and perhaps more importantly feel – an unstoppable force. An emerging brother- and sisterhood of justice that is smart, courageous, innovative, inspiring, and stubbornly entrepreneurial. The status quo won’t do.
– Sam Muller, CEO HiiL
Our research at HiiL shows that it is insufficient to say even louder how serious the problem is. We need to go further. The new emerging consensus is to put people and their legal needs at the centre of justice systems and re-design around good data on what they experience and need.
Funding justice is presently not often tied to performance or users outcomes. Adding more money would be a clean solution however, I can assure you, it would not work. Similarly, throwing more technology or infrastructure at the problem will not yield that outcomes people need. So Day 2 had to navigate through a lot of messy and complex streams to find what actually changes peoples lives.
We need to allow people to resolve their problems. The justice sector needs to be open to innovative and sustainable ideas, including innovative partnerships.
Marriet Schuurman, Director of Stabilisation and Huumanitarian Aid, Dutch MFA
Thinking out the box to increase revenues for justice
Analyses by experts suggest that stakeholders have to cooperate to increase the money flowing for justice. Citizens demand better services. Public justice services feel constrained to meet demand because of limited budgets. Governments are concerned with monitoring quality in the legal services markets. The sessions throughout the day sought to understand how to increase revenues in a coordinated way so more people can be served. Practical solutions that were found jointly:
Build a consolidated platform for aggregating data collected by various (public/private/grassroots) actors on the supply and demand side of justice
Form coalitions at a country-level that establish business incentive schemes to channel government funds to justice
Private investors will go where there is high potential (services that provide clear outcomes, standardised, scalable, exponential growth); use data and storytelling to prove the impact
Incentivise innovation by allowing the justice sector to keep extra revenues (to reinvest)
Charge for outcomes, allow citizens contributions to rise for what satisfies people´s needs
Why think in different SDG-silos? The SDGs has created a language with which different actors can talk to each other. Use it!
– Idsert Boersma
Finance modelling can be so fresh and innovative!
To reach a goal of 100% access to justice, the bottom-up/top-down paradigm needs a rethink (British politeness for throw it out). The way budgets are currently built compromises the opportunity for collaboration. We also know that SDG.16 is cross-cutting with many other fundable societal goals, such as opportunities for women. The new approach that emerged on Day 2 was to start budgeting processes from the needs of people and integrate consensual processes that build on areas of agreement. Trust from citizens is key and so growing leadership that conveys to people they are supported is an opportunity not to be missed.
A decade of action for Justice for All
HiiL was proud to support the launch of the Shared Strategy for Justice for All at the IJF. With a decade of action to reach justice for all, the strategy sets priorities, provides direction and builds on the data and evidence in the Justice for All report launched in 2019.
A new strategy to reach SDG16 presented by Liv Torres, Pathfinders for Peace and Justice.
The launch was facilitated by three fierce justice advocates: Liv Tørres, the director of the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, Allyson Maynard Gibson QC, Task Force member and Maaike de Langen, Head of Research for the Task Force on Justice. Together they emphasised the need for international cooperation to support national action. “Go alone, and you will go faster. Go together, and you will go further,” said Maaike de Langen, quoting an African proverb.
Don´ t look for money, but for what you want to acheive together.
-Albert Bonkenstijn, Dutch Fund for Climate and Development
Insights and evidence financing universal justice care
Maurits Barendrecht, the Director of Research at HiiL presented the yet to be published, Charging for Justice report. The report seeks to bring together insights on how to finance the solutions to close the justice gap. In a way that everybody gains: citizens, justice workers, courts, lawyers, volunteers, investors and providers of game-changing services. Ambitious? Yes.
People want solutions, help reaching out to the other party, fairness, to be listened to, and an end to the conflict, sometimes retribution, but mostly peace of mind. So why do we ¨sell¨ citizens what they do not ask for? The solution is to use evidence and justice needs data and shift the focus to outcomes. Outcomes that deliver peace and justice.
Upfront court fees and hourly lawyer fees are a stupid way to charge money.
Maurits Barendrecht, Director of Research at HiiL
Safeguarding the third branch
Everyone working in justice agrees on the importance of safeguarding core funding for courts and lawyers. Justice for families, land issues or crime is often a government service. Since we need innovative courts, new courts, new ways to regulate employment to meet demand, innovation should be able to enter the mandatory system.
Highlights from the upcoming SDG.16 trend report
Setting an inspiring goal of 100% access to justice for the most urgent and frequent justice problems. As the world has done for health, education and water.
Safeguarding core funding for the broad social goals of the justice system, followed by introducing smart fees: increasing contributions by beneficiaries and government agencies for effective services, whilst decreasing general subsidies.
Allowing justice sector organisations to reinvest extra revenues.
Regulatory space for developing well-defined, scalable, financially sustainable services for particular target groups. Courts, other current providers of services, and innovative newcomers should be allowed to develop gamechangers.
Attracting private and public investment into new services, such that they can become the default for particular categories of disputes and crimes. Ensuring these services are outcome-focused, evidence-based, scalable and financially sustainable.
Focusing on local delivery of solutions for the most urgent and frequent justice problems. Gradually delivering a basic package that is free at the point of service.
Supporting local delivery by world-class know-how. Investing in basic technologies that deliver fair outcomes and can be used worldwide,.
The new SDG16 trend report, Charging for Justice looks closely at four game-changers for delivering high-quality, basic justice in sustainable business models. Sign up here and you will receive the report once published in the coming weeks.
A national justice budget that delivers justice for all
Justice budgets are more often negotiated, rather than designed. But that is exactly what happened at the IJF. We used the steaming brainpower in the room to design an outcomes-focused (people-centred) justice budget. The challenge is funding the right services that deliver on peoples needs in a sustainable way. Generally, funding for justice has fallen both in national budgets and development aid. Far from exacerbating existing frustrations with budget processes, by opening it up we discovered it is possible to use the budget mechanism to advance collaboration between demands.
An outcomes-based approach to budgeting reveals areas of overlap which allows for greater institutional collaboration. What emerged was the need for greater public involvement and greater transparency in the process.
Proven justice innovations
We invited four game-changing innovators to share their stories and successes: what does it look like when an outcome-focused, high-quality solution breaks through?
War is the result of lack of access to justice.
– Soreiba Daffae, Crimesync and Innovating Justice Challenge winner 2019
Soreiba Daffae is the founder of Crimesync, an innovation that gave the prison system in Sierra Leone a desirable upgrade.Oleg Zaremba is the founder of Axdraft which is revolutionising how legal documents are consumed in Ukraine.Tunde Ididapo-Ope is the founder of LawPadi which is quickly becoming a favourite choice for legal information in Nigeria.Aniket Doegar is the founder of Haqdarshak that connects citizens to govnerment welfare schemes in India.
These four proven innovations were introduced by Tom Dunn of Clifford Chance with whom HiiL has global, multi-year partnership to promote equal access to justice for all. For more information on these justice innovations please contact Ronald Lenz: Ronald.Lenz@hiil.org
Are you the justice leader we need?
The IJF was also the occasion for the Dutch premiere of a unique screening. ¨The Justice Leaders¨ is a justice documentary that follows the lives of two courageous people striving for change in their country.
The idea for the film started with the question of what kind of leaders are needed to transform the justice system and deliver justice to all citizens? And also, what of the personal stakes when you choose to be a justice leader?
Five years ago, HiiL brought together eight justice leaders from all over the world, they formed The Justice Leadership Group. Each was leading or had led transformative justice programmes in their respecrtive countries. In a closed room we asked them the question: what is justice leadership?
What came out was that justice leadership is lonely. These positions are often isolating, the stakes are high. There are many vested interests to navigate, you have forces working against you at different levels and temptations you need to avoid. You are always being criticized, you have a strong moral compass to maintain.
In case you have not seen The Justice Leaders in either Kampala, The Hague or London, I won´t give much more away relating to the documentary. It will be coming to a city near you soon enough. What is worth stressing is this: the time to reframe the conversation about justice leadership is now. The challenge we have ahead is surmountable with courage, wits and a passion for everyday justice and peace from unlikely people. What kind of justice leader will you be?
A quick word of thanks to my brilliant colleagues (pictured below) who worked hard to bring this event to life.
A never-ending-flow of thanks to all the participants (most pictured below) for helping further our understanding on how to finance universal access to people-centred justice. Together we have chosen to take up the challenge to bridge the gap that currently exists and build a more inclusive, just and peaceful world.
A hub providing cash digitisation services to the informal unbanked sector in Oja Odan District, Southwest Nigeria.
Around the world, petty traders and micro-business owners remain unbanked and underserved. Bankly is a savings and cash digitisation platform that allows its customers to save. This can transform families or business owners outcomes in emergencies.
Why is it a justice problem if people in Nigeria cannot access formal banks? 56 million Nigerians lack access to basic financial services, which also limits their access to financial tools that enable financial freedom; such as savings, micro insurance, transfers and so on. Due to lack of documentation, these ¨thin-files¨, do not have the credentials asked of them when applying for credit, savings accounts or insurances. Instead, they must rely on informal thrift collection known as Ajo or Esusu. This leaves people vulnerable in case of illness or death, fraud or loss of records.
Bankly uses technology to help people in these communities to protect and grow their income. The easy-to-use application does not require you to have a mobile phone. Agents use the application and the clients go to them or send instructions about managing their funds via SMS or USSD. So what are the benefits of taking basically the same informal approach to banking and digitising it?
First, Bankly is secure. It reduces the incidence of fraud and theft prevalent among informal thrift savers. Second, Bankly helps its clients create a digital and financial identity to enable broader access to financial services. Clients can build up a credit score and one day be able to transition to the formal banking systems.
In Northern Nigeria, a Bankly agent delivering services to clients shows us the choice in services.
Bankly launched in July 2019, and to date have over 3000 agents delivering and over 17,000 customers. (That is very strong growth). But meeting their team, this is not at all surprising. The strong team comprises of the co-founder of Ping Express (a digital international remittances company), a partner of McKinsey & Co. (a management consulting company), a director of Interswitch (a payment processing company headquartered in Lagos) and two skilled tech entrepreneurs.
The network of Bankly agents enjoys an 80% national distribution.
One of these two successful entrepreneurs was invited to join the Justice Entrepreneurship School (JES). The CEO and founder of Bankly, Tomilola Adejana flew to The Hague to participate in the JES and Innovating Justice Competition final. A female-founder and CEO, she can captivate a room. She gave a strong pitch at the Innovating Justice Forum in front of a panel of international judges.
Tomilola Adejana, Bankly pitches at the Innovating Justice Forum.
Her pitch, followed by quick Q&A, was the only testimony the three judges had on which to assess this innovation. The three judges were:
Jackie Nagtegaal (Jury member) Managing Director, LIPCO – LAW FOR ALL
Duncan Onyango (Jury member) Non-Executive Director, TradeMark East Africa
Linda Bonyo (Jury member) Tech & Immigration Lawyer, Lawyers Hub Kenya
Innovating Justice Award presented to our proud winner by the former winner, CrimeSync, Haqdarsahk and the event moderator.
The room erupted with cheer on hearing the win was with Bankly. The next step, was pitching on an even bigger stage at The Peace Palace the following day. Tomilola Adejana did not miss the opportunity to address the Innovating Justice Forum audience from a stage usually dominated by men to remind the hall of the tremendous struggle women still face, and the often disgraceful treatment of women in boardrooms around the world.
For more information please visit Bankly Over the following twelve months, Bankly are in the cohort of the HiiL Justice Accelerator receiving grant-funding, mentorship, business development tools and other tailored support.
When HiiL Justice Accelerator brought together the most promising innovations and the most beautiful individuals
Kanan Dhru, Community Manager
Once a year, magic happens at HiiL. This January, the HiiL Justice Accelerator brought together some of the most promising justice innovations from across the world and turned them into allies under the auspices of the Justice Entrepreneurship School (JES).
Preparations began as early as June last year. The accelerator team put out its Call for Innovations inviting justice applications from across the world, with a special emphasis on Africa and Ukraine. Our local team of agents organised information sessions, hackathons, networking events and even varieties of training support – to encourage innovators to apply for this challenge. As hundreds of applications pour in, the accelerator team carefully read through each one of them, organized face-to-face interviews and selected the most promising innovations after competitive pitch competitions.
The prize coveted by the innovators is extensive. There is, of course, the admission into the one-year acceleration programme, up to 20,000 EUR in seed funding, training and mentorship support along with access to the extensive network of HiiL, and an invitation to participate in the JES.
So, this January, when we invited the final 14 justice innovations to the Hague for the JES, our excitement was through the roof.
Session in progress at the Justice Entrepreneurship School
Central ingredients of JES are the training modules designed to hone business development and leadership skills of the chosen innovators. Working closely with external experts, our team facilitated training on lean analytics, team development, marketing and exposed innovators to the vital components of entrepreneurship.
Discussions on impact measurement and engaging with the justice sector were led by members of the wider HiiL team. Pitch training sessions by the accelerator team found a lot of resonance, especially because the innovators have to make their pitch at the Innovating Justice Forum, that follows the JES.
Our innovators – from across Africa and Ukraine – were deeply engaged and courageously opened up with one another about their personal struggles and shared ideas on how to make innovations thrive. As time passed, the set-up of JES provided the “safe space” as the innovators called it – a community, which they collectively created.
Conversations and Connections at the JES
We, the justice accelerator team, constantly felt honoured to be witnessing these conversations and connections. You see guards coming down, trust being fostered and confidence getting harnessed in a group of individuals that started their journey together as strangers.
Those working in the space of justice innovation often wonder about how to scale justice innovations? How to make them financially sustainable, how to bring together great teams to work behind these start-ups and most importantly, how best to achieve maximum impact in preventing and resolving most pressing justice issues in the world?
Participants of the JES together with HiiL Team
We witnessed incredible justice innovators become fiercest critiques and yet, foremost champions of each other’s work at the JES. After seeing this transformation, I have no doubt in my mind to emphatically say, that if the lofty goal of addressing the pressing justice concerns has to be achieved, it will be through the power of collaboration and creating communities. It will be through developing more such platforms for them to come together and open up. It will be through inspiring support and undying strength in them for their light within to grow. A light, ready to become a powerful flame, melting the injustices away.
As preparations for the Innovating Justice Forum are in foot-on-the-gas-pedal mode, we are very proud and excited to announce the 14 innovators who be at the forum with their brilliance and passion for serving access to justice. Coming from 7 different countries across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, the Forum acts as a stage for their ideas to be the points of discussion amongst fellow innovators and legal professionals.
In 2019, these innovators put a lot of work in and put their access to justice solutions and scalability to the test. Five cities hosted five different Regional Finals. Here of the teams that were chosen to join the world stage of Justice Innovation in February 2020. Here they are! (in no particular order)
Meet the successful teams in the 2019 cohort of the HiiL Justice Accelerator
JusticeBot is an online platform that helps the public access justice in an inexpensive and timely manner by providing free legal information and connecting those in need of legal services to legal service providers. Justice Bot uses artificial intelligence technology, through a chatbot available 24/7 on facebook/messenger/website to answer thousands of people at a time
Legal Hub Uganda develops legal podcasts shared on SoundCloud to be accessed by various users through social media platforms and radio stations. The podcasts are currently being aired on Uganda Broadcasting Corporations (UBC), the national broadcaster with 4 TV stations and 11 radio stations
LegIT is a self-service platform that enables micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to generate legal documents conveniently, efficiently and affordably in three easy steps.
Yunga is a neighbourhood security network. Community members are organized into groups and each member (household) is connected to a Yunga network. With the press of a Yunga panic button, all households on the network are notified or alerted of an attack or emergency on a group member
Easy Law provides user-friendly information about justice issues and legal rights to people via a mobile app and a website. It has over 6000 downloads and over 35 lawyers referrals to date.
ESS offers a legal assurance scheme to meet the needs for the Tanzanian middle class. 700 people covered, 150 disputes resolved. Strong team, driven by 70% women.
Sheria Kiganjani enables users to access various legal information and services remotely from their devices. Sheria Kiganjani means “law in your palm” in Swahili. It is the first online legal digital platform in Tanzania. Female cofounder, a strong team of legal, tech and business.
Appruve is a financial identity infrastructure that enables financial services to verify and onboard the identities of individuals and businesses. 15K unique identities confirmed by this strong team with finance and tech backgrounds.
Vesicash is an escrow platform that prevents disputes and uses its digital dispute resolution mechanism to resolve digital transaction dispute in less than 72hrs. Made 500+ transactions in the last quarter. The platform creates an escrow transaction in 30 seconds.
Bankly is a savings and cash digitisation platform that allows its customers to save up for emergencies using vouchers and an agent network. Recorded 500+ USD in revenues. This fast-growing team is led by a woman founder and a network of agents across Nigeria.
Africlaim specializes in securing financial and non-financial compensation for African airline passengers involved in flight disruptions including cancellations, delays, and overbooking. Helped 2.5+ passengers across the continent since 2017. Solves flight disruption issues 5x faster.
LawBasket integrates general-insurance with add-on legal protection insurance and mitigates legal risk by instantly delivering legal services through an online platform of freelance lawyers worldwide. It has 720+ participants in 4 clinics (in last 6 months)
Just in time justice delivery for flight passengers. Tech innovation and proactivity dramatically increase customer satisfaction. Handled 10 court cases and worked on 12k compensation cases in 3 months.
rAInbow is a digital companion, designed to reach millions who are in abusive and controlling relationships. It provides non-judgemental support to victims of domestic abuse. The platform has 17k users and has facilitated 880k conversations to date.
If you are as curious as us to hear from these teams directly, come join us at the Innovating Justice Forum! Click here to get your ticket.
´What Works to Improve A2J´ is a three-part blog series on delivering equal access to justice for all written by Professor Maurits Barendrecht, Research Director at HiIL, author of the NYP, Charging for Justice.
What Works to Improve A2J 3. Justice for all can be achieved by shifting focus.
This third blog post in the series draws on correlations evident in data to indicate how to transform justice processes.
Beyond lawyers and courts: the process of fair resolution
In the first two blogs in this series (here and here) we looked at positive contributions to access to justice. The World Justice Project (WJP) data suggest that governments and civil society should focus on assisting people to agree and comply, through fair processes that make resolution easy. Just sending more people to lawyers and courts is unlikely to help, or even has a negative effect. Courts can have a positive contribution where people experience more hardship from legal problems.
Power and access issues correlate negatively with A2J
Now I turn to survey answers that correlate negatively with A2J. The Table below summarises the data. Few people in most countries mention power issues or access barriers. But if more people mention such factors, this correlates rather strongly with low country A2J. Many people found the process slow or expensive, which also predicts low A2J. The more people experience hardship because of a problem, the lower the A2J score.
Just take a look at this Table for yourself
Access to justice barriers suggest how A2J processes should be improved
The access to justice barriers that people mention worldwide sound very familiar. Cost, distance, confusion, power, distrust, hardship and slow procedures. Interestingly, few people mention such barriers. These barriers are not that common. But, if more people mention these factors, A2J tends to be worse in their country. So these factors are still indicators of injustice. The data still suggest we need to make A2J processes cheaper, closer, easier, more equal and more trustworthy.
A2J is not equal to access to courts or access to (legal) advice
But again, sending more people to current procedures has little effect. This is true for:
Having more people go to an authority to adjudicate, mediate or solve the problem (Pearson* correlation -0.04)
Having more people turning to a court or tribunal (-.0.15).
Having more people going to a lawyer or seeking professional help (-0.07).
Having more people going to a government legal aid office (-0.06).
Focus on people, their problems and their outcomes, not on institutions
We need more focus on avoiding negative outcomes and more speed of resolution. Whilst making people agree, comply and open up courts for the hardest cases. This is what the Task Force on Justice and the OECD are recommending. Justice for all can be achieved by shifting focus. The OECD advises countries to redesign their access to justice processes. The Task Force urges countries to empower people, develop people centred justice services and focus on fair outcomes.
Justice sector needs to acquire new skills, new tech and new partnerships
This has huge implications. Deep innovation is needed. Far beyond current court procedures and legal advice, which are so similar everywhere. Money will have to be allocated to user centred design and a next generation procedures, focusing on making people agree. Which requires new skills, new technologies and new partnerships. If data are taken. seriously, the justice sector is in for a huge transformation.
So what ?
Time for reflection. First, let us be cautious. Correlation is not causation. Second, we are on to something. Let’s share these results and mobilise more analysis. Because data show the way.
* Peasons correlation measures the linear correlation between two variables. (Wiki page).
´What Works to Improve A2J´ is a three-part blog series on delivering equal access to justice for all written by Professor Maurits Barendrecht, Research Director at HiIL, author of the NYP, Charging for Justice.
What Works to Improve A2J 2. Not just more legal advice and access to courts.
This second blog post in the series considers how we should respond to evidence that just improving access to lawyers and courts is unlikely to improve A2J.
The effects of using justice sector institutions
In the first blog in this series, an A2J variable was constructed and I began analyzing the World Justice Project (WJP) dataset for 101 countries. We found: (1) Making more people agree seems to be a promising strategy to bridge the justice gap. (2) People doing what other people ask for also resolves a huge number of justice problems, but increasing this number requires more thought. We now turn to self help, taking advice, assistance from lawyers and going to court.
Few people take advice
In most countries, only a few people ask for advice (28% average country score). If they take advice, they often get it from friends/family (52%). Lawyers or professional advice services (29%), government advice services (10%) and court/government body/the police also deliver advice (10%).
More people getting (legal) advice does not correlate with better A2J
Does getting advice help? Many access to justice policies, such as civil legal aid, are based on this premise. Strangely enough, countries with more people seeking advice do not have better A2J (corr. -0.02). Whether more people go to lawyers or professional advisers, does not make a difference either. The positive correlation with A2J is still not there (-0.07). The same is true for more people going to a government legal aid office (-0.06). More people getting legal advice does not seem to lead to more people getting fair solutions. What is going on here?
More people going to courts for decisions does not increase the A2J score
Then what about courts. Problems that are done with are seldom settled by a decision or intervention by a court or a formal authority. The country average is 3.1% (P20=1.7%; P80=4.4%). A2J is not better in countries having more people settle their problem through a court or tribunal (corr. – 0.15). A strategy of having more people address the court is also not recommended by the data. Countries having more people who at some stage address an authority to adjudicate, mediate or solve the problem have no higher score on A2J (-0.04). These are really troublesome results, given that most justice money is spent on court procedures or navigating them (legal aid).
A revisit of the 2018 trend report, The Elephant in the Courtroom
Some lawyers and courts may still be very helpful
If there is no correlation, this is not so good, but effects may cancel out. Some people may be helped to solve their problem, because of legal advice or a judgment. Others may end up in a more complicated process, or a more strained relationship. Lawyers and courts may also be involved in problems that are more difficult to solve anyhow. A rough multivariate analysis of this suggests that in countries where hardship is common, more people in court may increase A2J. But in countries where hardship is less common, more people in courts may even have a detrimental effect.
Reasons why people do not get advice or decisions should make us think
The reasons why people do not take advice or ask for decisions are revealing. Most people not taking advice did not think the problem was difficult (58%). People do not go to judges, mediators or authorities because the problem was not important enough or easy to resolve (30%). Or because they were confident they could resolve the problem by themselves (26%).
Easy to resolve and confidence correlate with A2J
You may think people are overly confident. Do they really understand what they are doing?
Interestingly, when many people find the problem easy, A2J is better (correlation 0.50). Not important or easy to resolve (0.41) and confidence (0.25) correlate moderately with A2J.
So the intuition of some politicians to improve self-help is supported by this data. Which of course doesn’t say everybody is capable to solve problems by themselves.
Just improving access to lawyers and courts is unlikely to work
Empowering people, whatever their capabilities, does seem to be a way forward. In particular, making them agree. “The process was fair” also correlates with A2J (0.41). So empowering people to agree through a fair and easy process is an attractive option.
Just improving access to lawyers and courts, without looking at how they work and on what type of cases, is unlikely to improve A2J. In a world where most public access to justice money is spent on courts, prosecution, legal aid and government legal advice offices, these results are troubling. There is indeed an elephant in the court room.
Access to justice needs a fundamental redesign
Reports by the OECD, the Task Force on Justice and HiiL call for a fundamental redesign. Focus on problems as people experience them, map current processes, redesign the procedures so they become more user-friendly, work evidence-based and monitor outcomes. That is at the core of their recommendations. The new data point in the same direction. In the next blog, we turn to the barriers to access to justice as experienced by people seeking access to justice. What can we learn from them?
´What Works to Improve A2J´ is a three-part blog series on delivering equal access to justice for all written by Professor Maurits Barendrecht, Research Director at HiIL, author of the NYP, Charging for Justice.
What Works to Improve A2J 1. Making people agree … and comply, perhaps.
This first blog post in the series takes stock of the data we have now and tests commonly held assumptions about improving access to justice against those data
We now have data
New datasets offer unique opportunities to test assumptions. Whether investing in courts is helpful. Or money should go to legal aid and government legal advice centres. Empowering citizens to solve their own problems is also an option. Data can now inform such policies.
We can look for patterns
The OECD has published a standard for country-wide legal needs surveys. It is building on 25 years of experience, including HiiL’s extensive justice needs surveys, which surveys have been applied in 17 countries and counting: Fiji just went live. The United States and Ethiopia will follow next year. In May, the World Justice Project (WJP) published country indicators from surveys in 101 countries. These are the justice problems people have to deal with in the average country over the past 2 years. The graph also illustrates how the number of problems varies between countries, by indicating the range between country nr. 20 and 81.
Satisfaction with solutions and satisfaction with process sofar is a measure for A2J
In the WJP dataset of country indicators, I constructed a variable which summarises access to justice (A2J). I multiplied the % of problems resolved by the % of problem owners satisfied with the outcome. Because many problems are still ongoing, I also took them into account.
So I added the % of problems ongoing, multiplied by the % satisfied with the process so far.
In this way, we obtain a good measure of the % of problems on track to a satisfactory solution.
Justice for all is still far away
Countries typically score between 38% (20th percentile) and 51% (80th) on my A2J variable. So 100% access to justice is still far away (see HiiL country reports and analysis of the worldwide Justice Gap by WJP). Because of this, Justice for All is now the mantra. The data contain valuable suggestions on how to achieve this mission. This kind of analysis is at an early stage, but let me share some results.
Countries that excel at making citizens agree score high on A2J
Agreeing is the most common way to get problems done with (average country score 34%).
High % agreed solutions come with high scores on A2J (correlation 0.43). A multivariate analysis executed by my colleague Rodrigo Nunez suggests the same. Even when we control for average hardship (a measure in the WJP data gauging the impact of a justice problem on people’s lives) the relationship holds. So helping people with justice problems to settle or agree, may work to improve A2J.
Many people comply
Still, only one-third of the problems that are done are resolved by agreement. So what happens to the other problems? Next on the list of ways to get problems done with are “problem sorting out itself” (16%) and “other party doing what I wanted” (11%). Some respondents also say they independently did what the other party asked (7%). These answer categories more or less capture the “shadow of the law”.
More people doing what other people ask does not correlate with A2J score
Social norms, and the option to involve an authority, may cause people to comply, do what another person asks for and adjust their behavior. But interestingly, being better at this, is not correlated in a meaningful way with the country A2J score. More compliance may work to get the problem out of the way, but seems to come at the expense of satisfaction with the outcome. Perhaps compliance with requests and norms does not create effective solutions for problems as people experience them. Or people lack a feeling of procedural justice (voice, participation) when they give in.
Agreeing seems to work, now what about self help, (legal) advice and court decisions?So facilitating agreements as a way to resolve justice problems may be a good way to increase A2J. As many would perhaps expect. In our 2018 trend report, Understanding Justice Needs, we already looked into this as an option, investigating a number of ways to support agreements. In the next blog we will explore what the data tell us about the relationship between A2J and legal system interventions such as advice and court interventions. Is A2J really improved by better access to current justice institutions?
This report is about the Justice Innovation and Leadership Conference held on Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th November in Kampala, Uganda. The event was sponsored by Sida and was co-facilitated by the Justice Law and Order Sector and HiiL.
¨The sustainable development goal 16 is not a ¨nice to do¨, it is a promise, and one that we in this room can hold member states accountable to fulfill.¨ – Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL
The Justice Innovations and Leadership Conference in Uganda (JILC) was convened to bring the leadership, innovative solutions, and front line justice providers together to most towards fulfilling the promise.
The challenges that individuals face to get justice in their lives – especially women and vulnerable groups – were approached during interactive discussions with realism, a dedication to be evidence-based, and vulnerable conversations on individual leadership that works for the people.
Key stakeholders in Uganda participated in the event as an opportunity for Uganda to be at the forefront of implementing innovative solutions globally.
Hon. Deputy Chief Justice gives a speech on behalf of the Chief Justice, ¨[This] Conference is about ownership and cooperation to reach our goals.¨
With those in attendance fully aware of the challenges in seeking to create a justice system that works for everyone, the JILC was about finding the solutions and the leadership to implement them to deliver on equal access to justice for all Ugandans.
Uganda is a global hotspot for innovation
Uganda is a global hotspot for justice innovation, such were the words of the Chief Justice spoken by his deputy to open the event. Throughout the day, we heard the examples of inspired innovation and leadership byinstitutions, grassroots civil society actors and the private sector.
We heard from high-quality innovations that solve urgent problems. The solutions ranged from prevention of injustice, legal information and alternate pathways to justice.
The winning Ugandan teams found through the annual Innovating Justice Challenge presented their ideas to the audience. The challenge is designed in such a way as to find the innovative solutions that address the key problems that emerge from the data.
Pitches: Yunga prevents home break-ins. ¨It connects neighbour with neighbours and neighbours with the police. Any signal from the phone or other device goes to the Yuma machine, ensuring a quick response by police services and by the neighbourhood.¨
Pitches: FIDA Kiosk provides much sought legal information digitally. ¨Already the traction of one kiosk has been 936 persons helped. There is a need for information: information is power.¨
Pitches: Evidence and Methods Lab promotes access to simplified information on land rights. ¨Forced eviction is a major problem. Our information is user-friendly: it is pictorial, can be adapted to any language and is not limited to digital spaces¨.
Pitches: Legal Hub Uganda reduces ignorance of the law. ¨Land problems are prevalent and serious. Widows are particularly affected. We conducted a needs assessment and found a solution. Now, we have wider distribution mechanisms that are cost-effective and convenient- we have 500,000 listeners weekly!¨
The Justice Law and Order Sector expressed a wish to deepen ties with the innovators, referencing positive previous experiences with HiiL innovators. While innovations most often address the justice gap they can often be dependent on public institutions to some degree. Therefore a government that is open to and fosters justice innovation is a boon to these initiatives creating more impact.
The next opportunity for Ugandan teams to apply to the Justice Accelerator program is Spring 2020.
¨Justice is expensive and difficult, but once justice actors are able to see beyond the law we can get interesting solutions¨ – Theodora Webale, Uganda Law Society Legal Aid Project.
Data that ensures a justice journey which takes care of each person´s particular needs
This also speaks to Uganda being one of the countries whose leadership is most willing to engage with justice data based on the actual needs of its citizens. JLOS and HiiL are developing a Ugandan Justice Dashboard that will go live next year.
Edgar Kuhimbisa, JLOS introduces the Uganda Justice Dashboard, ¨The Key focus of dashboard is to capture a sense of how people feel about justice. Capturing trends is important to define a media strategy.¨
Peacebuilding processes are in need of data. By combining different sources of data; government statistics and people-centred data such as that by SEMA and HiiL, we capture a sense of how people feel about justice. – Edgar Kuhimbisa
¨Women are affected by the most pressing justice problems. Women haven’t been a part of decision-making processes and that’s why processes are not really helping them. Only the data can lead the decision-makers to the real problems.¨ – Linda Alinda Ikanza, lawyer, educator and innovator.
Justice Data as a Foundation for Innovation and Leadership
Dr. Rodrigo Nunez introduced the second nation-wide survey, the Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey. We first collected people´s experiences in 2016, from which we were able to prioritize interventions. The process was described as: research problem, analyse and find solutions that expand access to justice. Because, in the end, data is about people-centred justice. It enables providers of justice to listen to people, know the kind of problems we can prevent, and with leadership that uses the data ultimately access to justice will improve.
¨The main reason for conducting the JNS is humans; people and relationships are harmed. If we know the problems we can also prevent. We need justice data in order to do that.¨ – Dr. Rodrigo Nunez, Justice Sector Adviser, HiiL
The Justice Needs and Satisfaction study will be published next year. It included an in-depth exploration of the problems faced by women.
World premiere of The Justice Leaders
A highlight of the event was screening the documentary, The Justice Leaders which had a profound impact on participants. The audience was deeply moved by these profoundly sincere examples of people-centred leadership.
The two examples of justice leadership exhibited in the documentary inspired both the audience and panel members to delve into their own experiences and share their dreams for how to achieve humane and dignified justice for all.
The documentary gave a new perspective. As I was watching, I realized that Arinda is a true justice leader. A fair justice system should provide help for the marginalized. She went back to her roots and into the community. Such people who question the way of working and ask, ´what has gone so wrong?´ are examples of leaders. Perhaps this is me admitting vulnerability: I learned. – Hon. Lady Justice Lillian Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza Judge of the Supreme Court of Uganda.
This is not to say that discussions were devoid of criticism of the justice sector. Indeed, criticising leadership openly is not something particularly common in such spaces, but with due respect, the participants were able to discuss the areas in which leadership can – and needs to – be most connected to the people.
¨We respect our justice leaders but the honest truth is that there is a distance. We need a more asserting society. Once we get a justice sector that is more accepting and is homegrown -without looking externally- that is when the justice sector [will change]¨ – Arinda Daphine, public interest layer and star of The Justice Leaders
At the same time, we were able to recognise where leadership making strides towards delivering fair outcomes to the people.
The consensus that emerged from these discussions was to collectively work towards having strong leadership in Uganda, ultimately independent of foreign support, and one that is accessible to people.
Building a Sustainable Justice Innovation Ecosystem with Pheona Wall (Vice President of Uganda Law Society), Linda Alinda Ikanza (CEO, Nkola App), Kenneth Muhangi (Partner at KTA advocates) and Mark Beer, OBE (former President of the International Association for Court Administration).
¨Trust and reputation are the core of the justice system¨– Mark Beer OBE
Put the Data to Work: A Solution for Family Justice
The Justice Innovation and Leadership, Conference was also a great occasion to cement innovations HiiL has been developing supported by Sida, into the wider justice ecosystem, having developed them with pockets of the sector over the past years.
Samantha [centre] holds the prototype of the Family Justice Catalogue.
One such innovation was the Family Justice Catalogue. It was encouraging to hear the early response to the tool is that it is useful and needed. Divorce and separation is not perceived well in Uganda. Families, and in particular the rural poor, are in need of fair outcomes. The catalogue is in a series of guidelines for various situations relating to family justice that commonly arise; how to best protect the interests of children, how best to delineate obligations and how best to communicate on these matters. For the two versions of the catalogue, you can download them both here.
¨One can translate text-heavy document(s) into an easy to understand document with illustrations, organised in such a way it is easy to read.¨ – Michael Katagaya, Director of Evidence and Methods Lab.¨The concept of this catalogue was proposed by HiiL. They are challenging us to think outside the box. We can give roadmaps on how to handle issue-specific situations/conflicts.¨ – Florence Nakachwa Dollo, Deputy Director, Law Development Centre. [Pictured left]
Closed sessions: The JLOS Leadership Forum
On the second day, we facilitated the JLOS Leadership Forum. It was a distinctive occasion whereby all of the leadership of the various components of Uganda´s justice sector was in one room.
A justice journey can be viewed as one continuous pipeline. To approach improving that journey from the perspective of the user of the justice system, every stage must be accounted for.
As the Honourable Chief Justice, Bart Katureebe said: ‘You are together now, as the leaders of the justice system of Uganda. The citizens have spoken. The goal is one we all share: equal access to justice for all by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals Uganda subscribed to.¨ With the mission to make the justice system more people-centred and more accessible, the top officials worked on coming up with recommendations, solutions and innovations. The room was action-orientated with the Chief Justice´s words framing the meeting: ‘It cannot be ´just talk´, there needs to be follow up.’
With special thanks to
The Sida team, represented on the day by Ola Hällgren. Hällgren shared that for Sweden, the focus is to help the most poor and vulnerable, knowing the justice system is key to that end.Our MC´s: Rita Ngenzi and Michael Katagaya for keeping us on time and in the right place throughout the event
Cet article a été publié en ligne pour la première fois sur le site web deSlaw.
Peu de mes amis connaissaient le Niger. Quand je disais Niger, la plupart d´entre eux pensaient que j’avais mal prononcé. « Vous voulez dire le Nigeria? ». Ceux qui en avaient entendu parler se demandaient pourquoi je voulais me rendre dans un pays plein de djihadistes, de trafiquants d’armes et d’êtres humains. Evidemment, ils n’ont jamais vu l’aéroport Diori Hamani de Niamey, la capitale du pays. Il est flambant neuf et reflète la détermination. Ses premiers visiteurs avaient été les chefs d’État de l’Union africaine lors de leur sommet de juillet. Maintenant, j’en étais le énième visiteur.
Liman, l’agent du protocole, se tenait derrière la douane avec une pancarte portant mon nom. «Bienvenue au Niger!», m´a-t-il souri en me faisant passer la douane. A notre sortie du bâtiment, Oumar nous attendait dans une voiture. Le seul endroit où j’avais été aussi bien accueilli était à Dubaï, lors du sommet du Forum économique mondial. Le PIB du Niger est de 8 milliards de dollars par an. Celui de Dubaï est 102 milliards de dollars.
Le Niger est un pays très vaste: environ 1,26 million de kilomètres carrés; presque deux fois la superficie de la France ou du Texas. Les quatre cinquièmes de ce terirroire sont constitues par le dessert et le pays abitre un peu moins de 20 millions de personnes. Son indice de développement humain est le plus bas et son taux de fécondité est l’un des plus élevés au monde. Le PIB par habitant ne pourrait decendre plus vas sur la planète Terre. Le fait d’être une enclave ne fait qu’aggraver la situation. Le pays a adopté en 2010 un constitution assez moderne et robuste. Le président Issoufou en est à son deuxième et dernier mandat en tant que président. Des élections sont prévues pour 2021.
Le ministre de la Justice du Niger, Monsieur Marou Amadou, m’a invité à visiter son pays pour mieux en connaître le système judiciaire. Ensemble avec Mamadou, notre représentant au Mali et au Sahel, nous avons eu droit à quatre journées intenses de conversations ouvertes et riches avec des responsables de la justice de tout le système.
Mamadou Ba, HiiL representative to Mali and the Sahel and myself.
Niamey est une ville plutôt agréable. Relativement petite, elle compte environ 1 million d’habitants. Propre et bien organisée, ce n´est pas le genre de ville infestée d’ordures et plein d’embouteillage que je connais dans beaucoup d’autres pays africains. L´air y est assez bon pour respirer, les rues sont assez sûres pour y marcher et les feux de circulation fonctionnent parfaitement.
Pour ce qui est des djihadistes, des trafiquants d’armes et d’êtres humains, l’idée ne tombe pas du ciel. Le Niger est en effet un pays où des gens courageux se battent dans l’une des grandes batailles de notre temps : celle contre le terrorisme islamique violent. Il s´agit d´une bataille sur l´organisation du vivre ensemble et pour le développement et le partage équitable des ressources, aussi bien au Niger que dans les pays riches de l´Occident. Le Niger fait partie de la ligne de front, importante dans la lutte pour nous tenir relativement en sécurité en Occident. Si les soldats, les prestataires de soins de santé, les bâtisseurs d’État, les artisans de la paix et les prestataires de justice devaient perdre cette bataille, nous en Europe serons confrontés à un sérieux problème. Le dragon contre lequel ils se battent a au moins trois têtes : Boko Haram, l’EI et Al Qaeda. Dans le sud du pays, le long de la frontière avec le Nigeria, les militants de Boko Haram entrent et sortent comme si le Niger était leur foyer. Au Sud-Est, la violence éclate à la frontière avec le Burkina Faso. Plus à l’Est, le Mali retombe dans l’instabilité, ce qui crée des problèmes pour le Niger. Pour couronner le tout, le nord du pays fait frontière avec la Libye, que l’Occident a bombardée et a laissée se désintégrer. Ces menaces ont uni les trois pays, qui, ensemble avec le Tchad et la Mauritanie, ont mis en place en 2014 un mécanisme de coordination conjoint appelé G5 Sahel. Son objectif est de coordonner au niveau régional aussi bien la sécurité que le développement économique (considérés comme la cause principale du problème). La France et l’Allemagne fournissent une importante force militaire de lutte contre le terrorisme, l’UE et d’autres pays apportent des fonds et toute l’action est autorisée par le Conseil de sécurité. Fait remarquable toutefois, les documents et les efforts du G5 ne mentionnent que très peu la justice, même si j’entends souvent que le manque de justice est l’un des principaux défis de la région. Il s´agit là d´un oubli grave. La récente enquête sur les besoins en matière de justice menée par HiiL au Mali montre qu’un peu plus de 50% des personnes faisant face à un problème de justice sont incapables de le résoudre. Les principaux problèmes de justice sont liés à la terre, aux crimes/délits et à la famille. Les populations signalent très peu de mécanismes de justice très utilisés et très utiles. Pour presque la moitié des personnes interrogées, l’impact des problèmes de justice pouvait être classé dans la catégorie «problème grave». Nous n’avons pas de données pour le Niger, mais ces chiffres du Mali peuvent être considérés comme assez éloquents.
Les Nigériens avec qui j’ai parlé ont déjà commencé à renforcer leur système judiciaire. Les défis qu’ils ont partagés avec moi sont énormes. Le terrorisme et les migrations exercent une énorme pression sur le système, ce qui crée des distorsions (également de la part des bailleurs de fonds) pour concentrer les ressources limitées sur la justice pénale et la sécurité au détriment des questions civiles et administratives. Et pourtant, comme dans n´importe quel autre pays, les problèmes de justice les plus pressants des populations au Niger concernent les deux derniers domaines. Le Niger est un pays tellement vaste que l’on est en droit de se demander comment rendre justice dans les zones à faible densité de population, qui sont également les plus proches des zones de conflit? Les défis sont nombreux. Il y a le manque de budget : seulement 0,6% du budget national limité est consacré à la justice. Environ 70% de cette somme est consacré aux salaires des juges, des procureurs, du personnel pénitentiaire et des fonctionnaires travaillant pour le ministère de la justice. Il y a le manque d’infrastructure : les palais de justice, les ordinateurs et systèmes informatiques intégrés. Mais aussi en termes de ressources humaines, il existe de graves lacunes : manque de magistrats, capacité limitée de recrutement et de formation. Les avocats et notaires sont presque exclusivement concentrés à Niamey. Pour beaucoup de Nigériens, le système juridique basé sur le système français ressemblerait plutôt au droit venant de l’espace. Un bon ami à moi, originaire du Mali, rappelait la nécessité de résoudre cet héritage occidental comme « la deuxième décolonisation ». En effet, le challenge est le suivant : comment faire en sorte que le droit soit connu, compris, et digne de confiance?
un cas humble de terrorisme à Niger
Lorsque, assis dans tribunal, nous avons assisté à une audience publique, beaucoup de ces défis étaient brusquement très palpables. Au début, nous pensions qu’il s’agissait d´une affaire de famille. Nous n’avions pas remarqué de mesures de sécurité spéciales. Puis, nous réalisions finalement qu’il s’agissait d’un cas de terrorisme. Sur un banc, il y avait trois juges en robe noire, assis avec autorité derrière un haut pupitre. En face d´eux se tenaient deux hommes âgés, venus d’un village éloigné situé à des centaines de kilomètres de Niamey. Il était difficile de dire s’ils étaient des témoins ou des accusés. À droite se trouvait la greffière. Elle était munie d´un bloc-notes et un stylo et était très concentrée à prendre notes. Il n’y avait aucune trace d´ordinateur dans la salle. À sa droite se trouvait l’avocat général. Comme il faisait chaud, des ventilateurs à hélices essayaient de rafraichir tant bien que mal la salle d’audience. Le président du tribunal interrogeait les hommes en français, la langue officielle. Comme les deux hommes âgés ne parlaient pas cette langue, un interprète assurait la traduction. Les avocats des deux hommes – un homme et une femme – étaient également vêtus de robes noires. Ils gravitaient autour des deux, de près. Les hommes étaient interrogés par rapport à un terroriste qui aurait été signalé dans leur village. Il était évident que l’environnement dans lequel ils se trouvaient – dans une ville, entourés d’avocats en robe noire, devant des juges en robe noire, dans une salle d’audience, selon une procédure de droit romain – était loin de tout ce auquel ils sont habitués.
Que faites-vous quand vous êtes pauvre et que vous affrontez un terrible dragon? Vous savez que vous ne pouvez pas le corrompre avec de l’argent. Vous savez que perdre le combat n’est pas une option. Donc, tout ce qu´il vous reste, c’est de passer par une autre voie : celle de la créativité. En d’autres termes : vous attachez votre ceinture, renforcez votre motivation et innovez. C’est ce que nous avons vu au Niger. Voici quelques cas de créativité que nous avons vus.
Tribunal de grande instance hors classe de Niamey
Ce qui nous a le plus impressionné, ce sont les États généraux de la justice : un rassemblement périodique des principaux acteurs de la justice (environ 500 personnes), inscrit dans la loi. Il réunit le pouvoir judiciaire, le barreau, les notaires, la police, le service pénitentiaire, le ministère, des universitaires et des ONG. Ils se réunissent pour discuter des voies et moyens pour renforcer et améliorer le système judiciaire. La rencontre constitutive de 2012 a jeté les bases de la stratégie de la justice nationale. Les États Généraux disposent également d’un comité de suivi indépendant qui se réunit régulièrement pour évaluer les progrès accomplis. Nous avons rencontré son président, le formidable professeur Tidjani (le plus impressionnant, c´est qu´il n´est pas juriste). Le comité ordonne des enquêtes et des études périodiques et travaille actuellement sur un tableau de bord avec des indicateurs. Je n´ai jamais entendu parler d’un tel organe dans un autre pays.
Le processus des États généraux a notamment abouti à la décision de créer une école spécialisée dans la formation des magistrats (juges et procureurs), des greffiers, des administrateurs de justice et des responsables pénitentiaires. Jusqu’à une date récente, ces derniers étaient tous formés à l’École Nationale d’Administration, avec la plupart des autres fonctionnaires. La nouvelle École de Formation Judiciaire travaille sur un programme pour un meilleur prestataire de service en matière de justice.
Le Niger dispose d’une agence nationale pour la modernisation de l’État, dont le chef, le remarquable Amadou Oumarou, a rang de ministre. Il aiguillonne, pousse, interroge, recueille des données et rassemble les gens à travers le gouvernement, afin d´améliorer lentement l’efficacité de l’État. «Je pousse là où ça bouge», a-t-il déclaré. Lorsque nous l’avons rencontré, il était sur le point de participer à une série d’ateliers avec le gouvernement et l’industrie de la viande. La justice était plus difficile, nous dit-il en souriant. Il nous a parlé du Service Public Ambulant : des «unités gouvernementales mobiles» qui se rendent dans les régions éloignées pour gérer des questions légales comme le mariage, l’enregistrement des naissances et la délivrance de documents d´identité. Il sortit son téléphone portable pour nous montrer une vidéo dans laquelle une procédure administrative est expliquée aux citoyens dans un langage qu’ils comprennent. “Nous développons encore plus!”.
Imaginez une prison remplie de terroristes présumés, jeunes et vieux. «Les prisons n’ont jamais fait partie de notre culture », nous explique le directeur de cabinet du ministre. «Nous cherchons des moyens d’accorder le pardon au moins à certains d’entre eux s’ils se repentent». Les mettre tous en prison pendant de longues périodes coûte cher et ne constitue pas toujours une solution au problème. Les jeunes représentent un défi particulier : quel est le meilleur processus pour un mineur pris dans le piège du terrorisme? Il nous expliquera ensuite qu’il n’était pas facile de parvenir à un consensus sur la meilleure façon de procéder, mais que des solutions émergeaient.
Une bonne base pour tout cela réside dans la qualité des agents. Nous avons vu beaucoup de cela : curieux, efficaces, ouverts, sûrs d´eux. Là aussi, le Niger est un exemple : les dirigeants du pays ont clairement été en mesure de mettre en place une masse critique de personnes de qualité et de créer un climat propice à la créativité. Ce qui est également important, c’est la manière dont les conditions de partenariat sont définies. Le ministre Amadou est un homme que j’apprécie beaucoup. Il a été très clair : «nous n’acceptons pas d’aide verticale. Nous ne traitons pas avec des partenaires qui viennent avec des idées et des recettes prédéfinies. Nous travaillons uniquement avec ceux qui écoutent.»C’est justement ce que nous devrions faire. L’innovation en matière de justice se produit au Niger, et cela à plusieurs niveaux, beaucoup plus que ce que j’ai vu dans de nombreux pays riches. Le Niger est déterminé. L’importance d’un bon système judiciaire est reconnue. Le pays comprend l’idée que l’innovation en matière de justice est nécessaire à plus d’un titre. Le gouvernement a déjà pris des mesures audacieuses pour y arriver; des mesures plus audacieuses que ce que j’ai vu dans beaucoup de pays riches.
One of HiiL’s approaches to create user-friendly justice is to invite entrepreneurs to make themselves heard with their service or product that prevents or resolves pressing justice problems.
This year we held 5 Regional Finals of our innovation challenge in Kyiv, Kampala, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Lagos. Great ideas, relevant for people who lack access to justice, are pitched. And we are very happy to see that an increasing number of female entrepreneurs are joining the justice domain.
The government of Ukraine is taking strides to support justice innovations. We are pleased to work with the government in this endeavor and were pleased to welocme the (newly created!) Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine as a jury member.
Alongside his fellow jurers, they selected AirLaw.Pro to take the trophy. I can’t tell what they do better, so I’ll just cite the first slide of their pitch deck “AirLaw.Pro provides just in time justice delivery for passengers of airlines.” Second place went to StaffBot, the tool for legally contracting temporary staff electronically. Third place went to Dumka.ua, which is a chatbot that allows ministries to poll public opinion on urgent issues and citizens to express their position in a convenient way.
It is interesting to note that the startups who won the first two places provide solutions for the top two problems according to the HiiL Justice Needs Survey; consumer and employment issues. And, as indicated by three of the finalists (out of seven), we can see that the chatbot trend is still very strong.
Women´s issues emerged as the accidental but welcome theme as noted by keynote speakers, South Africa’s Deputy Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development, Mr. John Jeffery, and His Excellency the Ambassador for the Kingdom of The Netherlands in South Africa, Mr. Han Peters. Out of nine finalists, seven organisations were created by women, as were two of our three winners there. This is even more significant when considering the challenges these teams address disproportionately affect women; issues such as gender-based violence and employment issues.
The first-place prize was awarded to rAInbow. The team believes in the power of AI for social good. Their mission is creating a safe digital space for women who feel they may be in an abusive relationship can discuss their problems, read stories, learn to recognise signs and ask questions. rAInbow has already had 720,000 conversations with women from all over South Africa. The team Second and third place went to Zimbabwe’s Lawbasket and Cape Town’s, ´For the children’s sake´.
The pitch sessions by the finalists, where FIDA, Legal Hub, LegIT, WeResolve, My Guardian, Bataka Court Model, Digital Land Forum and Wang-oo impressed the crowd. After an intense deliberation session from the jury, which took longer than expected due to the tough task of selecting this year’s winners, and a lot of excitement from the crowd, Legal Hub Uganda were crowned the winners of the 2019 regional finals with LegIT and Bataka court model coming in second and third place respectively.
The Deputy senior technical advisor of JLOS, Mr. Sam Wairagala, gave the closing speech of the day and invited collaborations between JLOS and the innovators, ‘There is definitely a need for collaboration between JLOS and innovators, we have worked with HiiL innovators in the past and are in continued discussions with others’.
The sky is wide enough for birds to fly without them hitting themselves
How does one pick three let alone one out of seven inspiring innovations that all have potential to impact millions of lives massively? That was the task I and 4 other jurors were given and it was no mean feat deciding the three winners of the Regional Finals of the West Africa Innovating Justice Challenge.
After intense deliberations, Appruve was announced the winner. Appruve is a Ghanaian startup that provides identity management as a means to widen the financial inclusion bracket.
Second place was awarded to Africlaim from Nigeria. Africlaim helps Africans get compensated for delayed flights. Third place was awarded to The Flemer Project from Nigeria. This team promotes prison decongestion.
The Regional Finals featured engaging panels with a very interactive audience. Oo Nwoye, founder of TechCircle and one of the Regional Finals Jury asked the panel of senior lawyers discussing Justice Reform what the bar’s approach was to open-sourcing of methods and processes? Yemi Candide-Johnson, (Senior Advocate of Nigeria) in response used the Yoruba proverb « The sky is wide enough for birds to fly without them hitting themselves » – it is in the interest of the profession to open-source, and in doing so shows great leadership.
The Chair of the Lagos State Judiciary Small Claims Court, Justice Yetunde Adesanya, addressed in her keynote speech the impact of justice innovation on how Nigeria has come to be considered one of the most improved economies globally.
The evening ended with a panel concluding: impact investing is a tool to promote justice, and innovators need a good grasp of metrics to promote impact investing in justice innovations.
The first part of the event we hosted a panel discussion about financing justice innovations towards access to justice. The key insight was that affordability remains the key impediment to providing access to justice to millions of citizens. This gap can definitely be breached by more innovations in the justice sector. However, from an investor perspective, justice innovators and leaders need to reframe the conversation from providing access to justice to building investable businesses that have cross cutting impact in society. A good case practice is to look at the Solar energy industry which transformed the narrative from selling solar panels to providing energy access to marginalised communities and in doing so bring a lot of people out of poverty. Intersectionality with other sectors and putting the user at the center of the work is crucial in driving investor interests and building a thriving community of justice innovators.
From more than 90 applications in East Africa, we whittled down to the final 7 startups. The final 7 are a mixed bunch: 3 from Tanzania, 3 from Kenya and 1 from Somaliland. We spent the last 3 days with them, challenging and learning from each other.
All do an amazing job pitching, and it is gratifying to see that they have incorporated learnings of the past days’ JES sessions. Once the pitches are done the jury retires. I had expected their discussions to be fraught, but surprisingly enough there is a general consensus.
Essential Social Services (ESS) comes out on top and is awarded the winner of the 2019 Nairobi Regional Finals. EES provides legal assurance to the 80% of Tanzanians that cannot afford legal representation, but also are not eligible for free legal aid, ensuring they always have access to justice.
In second place is Sheria Kiganjani, a startup from Tanzania which enables users to access various legal information and services remotely from their devices. Third place is awarded to Tenrent from Kenya, which helps resolve any disputes between tenants and landlords.
HiiL has made the final selection for our cohort of 2020. Curious to find out which other justice innovations were selected for the Justice Accelerator? And which other innovations will come to the Forum? Keep an eye on our social media and website!
Together JLOS, HiiL, and Sida share the same vision: To enhance access to justice in Uganda.
Here we showcase our solutions to challenges relating to the accessibility and effectiveness of justice delivery in Uganda.
How Fair is Justice if it Doesn’t Really Protect You?
To fix something, we need to know what is broken and what may work to repair it.
Mapping what is broken, is what we at HiiL do through gathering personal experiences and turning these into data through tested methods. In 2016, we asked the people of Uganda to let us hear their voice.
What we learned was that almost 90% of the people of Uganda experience one or more serious justice needs. The data shows that they find getting help difficult. One third take no action at all to resolve their problem. The poor, women and vulnerable people are disproportionately in that segment. We call that the justice gap.
Starting from data and technology, we co-create people-centered, high-quality justice based on what people need now. To build the solutions, we bring together decision-makers, innovators and users, with the ideas for change and knowledge on what works. That process, funded by Sida in Uganda, provides the solutions listed below. We describe them for you along with who these are for and where to find them.
DATA
People’s Actual Experiences as the evidence base for action
With a diverse group of Ugandan stakeholders, we identified three priority target areas where people need relief back in 2016. Supported by knowledge and qualitative interviews, we produced drafts reports that explore in detail Crime, Land and Separation across the country.
Armi Korhonen, Justice Sector Advisor authored the content of these in-depth studies based on data of the 2019 quantitative survey, 2018 qualitative interviews and desk research
These Deep Dive reports are intended for policy-makers, front-line justice providers in the respective fields. The data and recommendations entailed can support them making decisions that deliver what people actually need.
At the Justice Innovation and Leadership Conference in Kampala, Uganda, we are seeking the feedback of multiple justice service providers and institutions in Uganda to validate the data: what does it mean? and, where do we go from here? Information will be updated on the project page here.
The studies are based on over 6000 voices and combines both qualitative and quantitative data sources.
Accountable Justice For All Through Data Visualisation
In 2020, HiiL will publish the second nation-wide justice needs and satisfaction survey (JNS). The data combines qualitative data and quantitative data of the experiences of Ugandan people, and as an improvement on the approach taken in 2016, includes experiences of justice service providers.
Who is the JNS for? The data we collect is made available on an official interactive website that provides the viewer scope to explore the data: the Justice Dashboard. Social science scholars, justice practitioners, leaders, change-makers or innovators all find the evidence-base essential for their respective projects. Having openly available justice data based on how people perceive justice helps make the system accountable.
Where to find it? The Justice Dashboard goes live in 2020. The site is hosted by JLOS. We at HiiL provide the data analysis and some technical support.
PEOPLE-CENTRED SOLUTIONS
With a group of diverse Ugandan professionals, we designed another tool, the Family Justice Catalogue.
Two versions of the Family Justice Catalogue: for users and for practitioners. Images were designed by justice innovation, Evidence and Methods Lab.
When family justice works, it plays an instrumental role in people’s lives, especially those of children.
The Family Justice Catalogue prototype is an evidence-based guideline containing recommendations and best-practices that help people and professionals who are dealing with family problems. The methodology combines practice-based evidence (recommendations from practitioners across Uganda) and evidence-based practice (recommendations from international studies). This prototype is a living document. That means with new information, responses from practititoners and user, we can continually improve upon it.
Who is it for? We made two versions: one for family justice practitioners (lawyers, paralegals, social workers etc.) and one for ordinary people with family justice needs. Together with local family justice experts who made it possible, we launch this project at the Justice Innovation and Leadership Conference in Kampala on 19th November. Both versions are available to download for free here.
Do you have feedback or questions? Please email Justice Sector Advisor, Tim Verheij at Tim.Verheij@hiil.org. Share them with people you think would like to engage with them.
Justice Entrepreneurs Speed Up Closing the Justice Gap
Over the years of our engagement, we met many justice entrepreneurs in Uganda who have thought of new and better ways to get justice to people. They take problems head-on and create the opportunities to make justice more user-friendly in the lives of ordinary people. Justice innovations can speed up access to justice, legal sensitisation, and prevention of justice problems. However, these innovations need encouragement and resources. They need the HiiL Justice Accelerator.
Hundreds of justice innovators have applied to our Innovating Justice Challenge in Uganda. A thorough vetting process selects between 10 to 20 innovations each year, all with their own merits. Out of these, 1 or 2 turn out to be the much sought after help for millions of people. Over 24 justice innovators received our training at the regional mini-justice entrepreneurship school, followed by the Regional Finals.
County Director, Emmanuel Elau hears the team have won the Uganda Regional Finals of the Innovating Justice Challenge 2019.
Legal Hub Uganda took part in the Justice Entrepreneurship School along with other finalists. As the 2019 winners, they receive the prize money of 20,000 EUR as well as tailored business development from local and international experts. The team will pitch their justice innovation again at the Innovating Justice Forum in the Peace Palace on 4th and 5th February 2020 alongside teams selected world-wide.
Their model provides much-needed access to Legal information in areas where other platforms suffer from somewhat limited communications infrastructures, especially in rural areas and semi-rural areas.
¨We believe in taking the law to the last mile. No woman, child, peasant, orphan, elder should face injustice because he or she lacks information on how to protect and enforce their land rights.¨ – Legal Hub Uganda
Reach out to our Justice Accelerator Hub based in Kampala by sending your question to racheal.ampaire@hiil.org.
LEADERSHIP THAT IS TRANSFORMATIONAL FROM THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE
It is people-centred, effective leadership that drives meaningful change. Recognized that, allows us to reproduce it.
The documentary, The Justice Leaders follows the journey of two Ugandans working on change, yet in different environments: the Honorable Chief Justice Bart Magunda Katureebe and Arinda Daphine, a grass-roots justice activist.
The world premiere of this documentary takes place at the Justice Innovation and Leadership Conference on the 19th of November 2019 in Kampala. The trailer can be viewed here.
Independent film producer, Janina Pigaht directed The Justice Leaders
If you would like to arrange an educational-screening then please contact Angelica.Krouwer@hiil.org. Arinda Daphine is living in Uganda and can be contacted to perform her poetry. Inquiries about her contact information can similarly be found through Angelica Krouwer.
For inquiries relating to the Justice Leadership Group, emails can be sent to Director of the Justice Leadership Group, Tobijn de Graauw via Tobijn.DeGraauw@justiceleaders.org.
Do you have any questions about the Justice Innovation in Uganda program? Make contact with the Senior Project Manager, Mascha Matthews at Mascha.Matthews@hiil.org
New approaches are needed to close the gap in global access to justice. This is something that global leaders committed to by adopting Agenda 2030—in particular Sustainable Development Goal 16.3: “Equal access to justice for all.” HiiL and Reos Partners have developed justice transformation labs to fill this need. These labs help justice leaders develop evidence-based justice innovation strategies and empowered coalitions to implement them.
A landmark report
In July 2019, a landmark report was published by The Task Force on Justice, convened by the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just, and Inclusive Societies. The report points out that today’s justice systems are not helping people to solve their justice problems. At any one time, 1.5 billion people can’t resolve their justice problems, 4.5 billion people live excluded from the law, and 253 million live in conditions of extreme injustice. Half of women find it pointless to report a case of sexual harassment.
Globally, this access to justice gap affects more people than diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. It has a high impact on individual lives and on society: from seriously damaged relationships and business conflicts to violence. It impacts our essential needs to be safe, to have a family, to earn a living, to plan, to be healthy, and to be a true community.
Task Force on Justice is an initiative of the Pathfinders. Learn more: https://sdg16.plus
The transformation needed
Through our work and research, we have found that business-as-usual approaches – including more courts, more lawyers, and more litigation – cannot provide enough capacity to reach SDG target 16.3.
Providing equal access to justice for all will require new leadership, innovation, resources, and overall a transformation to a people-centred approach.
Starts with an understanding of people’s justice needs and aims to solve the justice problems that matter most to them.
Empowers people to seek solutions and provides them with quality services throughout their justice journey.
Builds a justice system that is open and inclusive and works in collaboration with other sectors such as health, education, housing, and employment.
Aims to tackle root causes and prevent injustices from occurring, not just to solve them when they do.
Creates opportunities for people to participate fully.
Reaches the furthest behind (women, children, minorities, migrants, people with disabilities, LGBTI+)
But how do we do this?
The Justice Transformation Lab
HiiL and Reos Partners have partnered to offer an innovative strategy to deepen and accelerate the transformation to people-centered justice, called justice transformation labs. Justice transformation labs take a systemic, collaborative, and experimental approach to justice, combining evidence-based and stakeholder-driven approaches. These labs can be implemented at country level, in partnership with leading national stakeholders, or at sub-national or multi-local levels.
Justice transformation is needed across the world, in the “Global North” as well as in the “Global South,” in situations of peace and stability as well as in situations of fragility and protracted conflict. Transformation labs are relevant across all these different contexts, though they look different and need to be adapted to each situation.
The key elements of transformation labs include:
1. Knowledge gathering on justice needs, trends, and existing solutions
The Justice Task Force report emphasizes the need to nurture a culture and build a system that can learn from data about justice problems and evidence about ´what works´, while eliciting and responding to feedback from users and being accountable for quality and fairness.
In the justice transformation lab, data is collected early in the process about the everyday justice problems that matter most to people. This data offers a crucial evidence base to orient strategy development, decision-making, and prioritization. In addition, knowledge is gathered on the justice landscape, trends, and existing solutions, as well as mapping other justice innovation/transformation processes underway that the lab needs to complement, build on, and feed into. Local stakeholders are engaged in data collection in a participatory manner, so they feel more ownership of the results and are able to support the process as it evolves.
2. Supporting capacities of justice leaders
The Justice Task Force report emphasizes the need to increase justice leadership by building skills in active listening, conflict management, data gathering, and the ability to think and plan collectively.
Participating in the justice transformation lab is inevitably a leadership development journey. Justice leadership is not defined only by Ministers and Attorneys-general, but something that is present and shared across the entire justice workforce. Stakeholders in the process build their understanding of evidence-based and people-centred approaches, while expanding their capacity for creativity, innovation, dialogue, collaboration, and conflict transformation moving beyond adversarial dynamics. Further, they are the owners of all the outputs and the agents of the transformation.
3. Multi-stakeholder engagement and ownership
The Justice Task Force report emphasizes the importance of a diverse and inclusive justice system that draws on the strengths of a broadly defined justice “workforce,” including justice leaders, justice professionals, other formal service providers, informal or volunteer justice actors, justice innovators and defenders, and other sectors.
While there is no single institution that leads and coordinates this entire multi-faceted justice workforce, justice transformation labs offer a space where the necessary diversity of actors can come together to learn, familiarize themselves with the data, set goals, design and pilot innovative strategies, and build collaborative partnerships. The diversity of participation in the labs is not only sectoral and gender-balanced, but also multi-level, bringing community-level stakeholders together with national-level actors. These diverse groups of stakeholders, entitled “stakeholder teams” come together, not in standalone events, but rather in a series of workshops over time, structured with a participative methodology and guided by experienced facilitators.
4. A strategic approach
A central message of the Justice Task Force report is that justice providers need to move from firefighting to a model where they develop strategies to achieve long-term goals.
Justice transformation labs offer stakeholders an opportunity to build on evidence to set strategic goals and to work with foresight methods and system mapping to build a long-term, systemic perspective. This builds their capacity for taking a strategic and cross-sectoral approach, enables them to consider root causes and key leverage points, and helps them to think and plan collaboratively. The strategic outputs of the labs (systems maps, goals, scenarios and/or pathways and prototypes) feed into strategies and plans of individual institutions as well as into the design of feasible, collaborative, and scalable innovation initiatives.
5. Support and incubation of innovations
Unlocking the transformative power of innovation is one of the key levers of Justice Reform presented in the Justice Task Force Report. The report points out that for countries to benefit from justice innovation they need to make space for it to happen, and that the best innovations draw on a wide range of disciplines and perspectives—including the perspective of users themselves.
Innovation is encouraged in justice transformation labs, in multiple ways. They offer a structured method for multi-stakeholder innovation teams, focused on specific goals and targets, to iteratively design and prototype innovations in collaboration with justice users. They bring these innovators together with influencers who can support the scaling and institutionalization of the innovations. In addition, they scout for, resource, and accelerate innovations that are already happening.
6. Building networks
The Justice Task Force report points out that international and national networks accelerate the dissemination of new ideas and approaches and that a new culture of collaboration is needed.
Justice transformation labs develop relationships across traditional silos, leading to the development of justice leadership communities, and accelerating the sharing of ideas and approaches. Stakeholders from different sectors and backgrounds, with different networks and spheres of influence, get to know each other closely over the course of working together on common tasks in the lab. Sometimes this leads to productive implementing partnerships, other times it leads to being able to access each other easily when questions or opportunities to support each other arise. And sometimes it just allows stakeholders to be more familiar with the concerns and needs of other parts of the system and enables them to act and lead with this perspective in mind.
The partnership
HiiL and Reos Partners developed the justice transformation lab approach together, building on the strengths and experiences of the two organizations. Our most recent justice transformation lab focused on Syria. We are now also engaged in a Lab in Mali. Much of the work is confidential and outside the limelight.
Roes Partners is an international social enterprise that designs and facilitates systemic, collaborative, and experimental processes gathering diverse actors to address a complex change together. They apply a set of methods for systems change, multi-stakeholder innovation and foresight that have been tried and tested for over 25 years and are at the same time constantly evolving. Founded in 2007 in South Africa, the team today operates both globally and locally, with offices in Cambridge (Massachusetts), Geneva, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Montréal, and São Paulo.
Marianne Mille Bojer is one of the founding directors of RoesPartners.
Looking back over the last 12 months of justice innovation in South Africa, one of my major highlights has been the opportunity to work with the regional winner of the Innovating Justice Challenge 2018, Baobab Connect.
HiiLs Global Legal Hackathon in South Africa
Baobab is a true product of HiiL’s processes to help entrepreneurs develop innovative answers to pressing justice needs. It was first created in February 2018, by a team at our Global Legal Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa. Led by co-founders Guy Stern and Khokela Daula, the Baobab team threw themselves into the challenge. Their vision was to put ‘self-help’ legal videos into the hands of ordinary South African citizens. This simple concept, they felt, could inform tens of thousands of South African’s struggling with common and confusing legal problems. At that time, they didn’t win although the judges were impressed with their prototype application.
Baobab joins our cohort
After the Global Legal Hackathon, Baobab continued to develop its multilingual product. They applied to the Innovating Justice Challenge in 2018, where they quickly progressed to the regional finals. Once again judges were so impressed by the team, their vision and ambition, that Baobab was declared the overall winners in Southern Africa. And so, Baobab was accepted into the HiiL Justice Accelerator.
The successful Baobab team with Ellen Tacoma, Director of the HiiL Justice Accelerator at the Johanessburg Regional Finals
User-centred design iteration
We want innovations like Baobab to reach their full potential as dependable justice services in society. With my colleagues who run the HiiL Justice Accelerator, both in South Africa and in The Hague, we provide entrepreneurs and innovators with access to seed funding and business support. We get innovators to refine their ideas. We especially emphasise and demonstrate incorporating user feedback quickly into product design. For Baobab, this methodology led to dramatic results.
Evidence-based justice innovation
Today, Baobab is a very different proposition to the design that won the Innovating Justice Challenge. Using HiiL’s methodology, the Baobab team were looking beyond simple metrics such as video views, and asking tough questions about whether or not their materials were helping people to prevent or resolve their justice needs. After several months spent sitting down with people as they watched the video content and analysing their reactions, Baobab made a tough decision to change direction entirely. In early 2018 that the Baobab team established that the videos alone were not working. People needed more than a tutorial: they also needed personal advice to resolve their problems.
“Field testing the videos made us realise that most people wanted to be connected with someone,” explains Guy, “We had already built something to help clients communicate with lawyers with a company called Legal Connection but had found no real traction for it at the time. When we applied it to the people we were exposed to in the access to justice community, we found the product-market fit.”
A Community Paralegal at work collecting files from parents to document undocumented children in Eastern Cape
Pivoting based on user feedback
The core product is now Baobab Connect which is a case management platform for community paralegals that help them to work more efficiently than was previously possible.
Baobab Connect uses an intuitive, user-friendly interface to connect paralegals with NGOs and pro-bono lawyers, capturing documents and court-admissible materials without adding to the paralegal’s workload.
The role of paralegals in South Africa
In South Africa, people in rural or township areas with justice problems are likely to enlist the help of those at the frontline of justice provision: a patchwork of informal and unregulated paralegals known as Community Advice Officers (CAOs).
Much of the work CAO´s do is manual: filling out forms or writing letters to pro-bono lawyers or one of the civil society organisations which fund and support their offices. It’s widely understood that this is inefficient, and makes it very hard to collect good quality data about their work. For example, simple questions between CAOs and their legal advisors can take days or weeks to answer. A better understanding of where CAO’s time is spent could improve the quality of training and resources available to them.
Fieldwork with human rights org, SCAT to document undocumented children.
While there have been attempts to digitise CAOs’ work and capture more information about their cases, the challenge is to be “user-friendly”. A working solution that adds to CAO´s already stretched workload will not be readily adopted. This was the gap that Guy spotted, which he believed Legal Connection’s technology could fill.
Tech and data that is easy to use
What made the technology compelling is that it featured a full case management system, but one that is built around a simple chat interface which is instantly familiar and easy-to-use. When documents and information are shared between parties, they are automatically collected and stored in a digital case file. Details of the types of cases and whether or not they get resolved are being recorded intuitively, providing rich data for future interventions in the sector.
Best of all, Baobab Connect is a true “platform”. It’s designed in such a way that other organisations can deliver complementary services into the same interface. For example, if CAOs or their legal contacts need to create a Protection Order using a service such as JusDraft, they can create it in the same interface.
Financial sustainability for startups
HiiL has worked closely with Guy to bring Baobab to the attention of key stakeholders who work with paralegals, and those who could offer services on the platform, and so far the pivot seems to be working. The platform has been well received by those who work with CAOs, and trials are ongoing with the CAOs themselves to make the interface easier and more intuitive to use. There are challenges – while many organisations can see how it would deliver a return on any investment, it takes time to complete procurements in the sector and to secure the funding required. Baobab is low cost, it can’t, unfortunately, be free and remain sustainable in the long term. My colleagues and I are determined to help the innovators in our program build business models that work and can scale.
Impact at scale
One of the most mature relationships Guy has nurtured is with The Children’s Institute at the University of South Africa. As part of its work, The Children’s Institute addresses the problems that around 500,000 undocumented children in South Africa face every day. Without documents, it is difficult to access social grants, education services, health services or child support payments from absent parents. Baobab helps outreach workers to log cases, communicate with lawyers and, ultimately, resolve this pressing justice need.
It’s still early days for Guy, but what he’s built from nothing in just 18 months is beyond impressive. His journey reflects the benefits of an environment which supports experimentation and user validation, and is 100% focussed on positive impact for citizens in need. As he graduates from the Justice Accelerator, we are enormously proud of his work, and will continue to offer the support we can to help Baobab grow and improve. He will remain part of our global community of justice innovators for life.
Jacquelien Bunt, Deputy Director of Charities of NPL and the HiiL Justice Accelerator team fueling up after meetings on scaling the sustainable hub in Johanessburg.
The next chance to scout and support more talents like Guy and his team is coming up. On 7th November we are hosting the Regional Finals of 2019 in Johannesburg. We have invited 9 different justice innovations; some solve justice needs relating to domestic violence and gender-based violence, others to family justice, SME´s, employment disputes, and crime. More updates to come.
If you have any questions about this event, please contact adam.oxford@hiil.org.
To connect with the founder of Baobab Connect, Guy Stern please contact him on LinkedIn.
There was a really big meeting in New York last week. The UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) under the auspices of the UN General Assembly. Makers and doers of the world met at the UN to discuss how close (or how far, depending on your view) we are from reaching the world’s sustainable development goals. I will fill you in on what we were doing there.
Put People at the center justice systems
First, we were there to state our commitment and the dedication of our work to reaching SDG 16, the justice goal. We have a uniquely people-centred vision for justice systems around the world. Justice that is easy to access, use and understandable. The accelerated action is described in detail on a UN dashboard. The name of our commitment is ‘People at the center justice systems’.
Increasing access to justice on a global scale
Speaking at the UN General Assembley, His Honorable, King Willem-Alexander quotes the TaskForce on Justice report: Justice For All.
King Willem of the Kingdom of the Netherlands beseeched other leaders to join the people-centred justice movement, ¨ We encourage others to join us¨ he said to the assembley. Quoting the landmark report published in July he said, “¨Everyone in the world needs to be able to exercise their rights. Today, 5.1 billion people are vulnerable because they lack access to justice.” The movement grows as increasingly counties pledge their support.
Removing bottlenecks in justice innovation
Jeroen Ouwehand, global senior partner at international law firm Clifford Chance LLP announced a multiyear partnership with HiiL.
At a Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies side-event, we announced an exciting partnership with Clifford Chance. A global law firm, Clifford Chance is helping the HiiL Justice Accelerator support more justice innovations – with a special focus on Africa.
Opportunities for people to participate in building inclusive justice systems
We also launched something that has been in the pipelines for a while: Justice Transformation Labs. Do you remember the Elephant in the Courtroom report? Business-as-usual approaches, including more courts, more lawyers and more litigation cannot provide enough capacity to reach SDG target 16.3. To increase the resolution rate for the most urgent justice needs, we need innovative strategies and policies adopted and implemented by significant institutions at scale. Through JTL’s, we combine the evidence-based and stakeholder-driven approaches refined over the last 15 years to get there.
Where to find the money for justice?
The 10th Innovating Justice Forum ambition is to increase the money pie for justice
Over the course of the SDG Summit, our path forward became very clear. Both the private and public sector is needed to realise the SDGs. How will these partnerships take shape? For SDG16 specifically, that is the question drawing together financial sectors, philanthropists, government, civil society and entrepreneurs at the Innovating Justice Forum 2020.
At this moment in time, the justice sector has a huge potential to use actionable data on people’s justice needs and their experiences with the legal system.
Following the nation-wide Justice Needs and Satisfaction studies completed in Morocco and for the second time in Mali, the findings are available to explore on our interactive dashboard!
Access to Justice means Access to Information
Many countries do not have data on people’s actual legal problems, experiences and access to justice. We have completed 18 of these studies to date. The World Justice Project has also just released a massive dataset and map which digs into justice pain points around the world.
Explore national justice data
¨I recently added the Mali and Morocco data to the Justice Dashboard.¨ tells Rupinder Kaur. ¨We have high goals for this dashboard. We want to make it easy for people to explore the problems everyday people encounter and understand what action people take – or don´t take – and why. All at your fingertips.¨
The key indicators from these Justice Needs and Satisfaction Surveys, are presented on the Justice Dashboard in the form of interactive and easy to understand visualizations.
The data visualisation tool built by HiiL: the Justice Dashboard has over 18 countries´ data.
10 interesting findings from Mali and Morocco studies
Crime is the most serious legal problem in Morocco but in Mali, it is land disputes.
9 out of 20 Moroccans and 4 out of 10 Malians have experienced one or more legal problems in the last 4 years.
Of those who experienced a legal problem, how many completely resolved it? 27% of Moroccans and 38% of people in Mali managed.
Majority of Moroccans said that self-action (31%) and courts and lawyers (30%) were the most helpful mechanisms in resolving their legal problems. In Mali, personal network (39%) and courts and lawyers (21%) were the most helpful mechanisms.
In both Morocco and Mali, ´personal networks´ is the most commonly used source of legal advice.
The majority of people did not use public sources for legal information,
Of the public sources, the internet is the most frequently used in Morocco (8%) whereas radio is the most popular source of information among Malians (11%).
72% Moroccans and 87% Malians took action to resolve their legal problem.
The most common expectation in resolving a problem is to have certain rights or entitlements realised for both Mali and Morocco respondents
The most important reason why did people not take action to resolve their legal problem was that they did not expect a positive result.
The platform attracts justice sector professionals as well as justice innovators, researchers, NGOs and justice ministries and policymakers. We provide this justice data on our platform free of charge to anyone without restriction on its use.
How open is Justice Data?
In many countries, governments do not produce these data points. In fact, many governments do not even share legal information freely. Only about 60 countries around the world have made large volumes of legal information freely available on the internet. It is common for legal information to be only available through paid subscriptions or in hard-to-access, hard-copy-only formats. You have to be especially motivated under these circumstances to access information. Many will not have time and resources.
Research shows that open justice data leads to a much better understanding of the law, which is very good. This is the modern foundation of legal empowerment. As the number of people who can access the internet cheaply and easily increases, it is an opportune moment to invest in open legal information.
Access to information can prevent conflicts
We learned in Mali, land disputes are the most frequently occurring legal problems for people. The specific problems vary according to rural and urban areas. Common to both rural and urban communities is the multiple ownership of parcels and the illegal sale of land by brokers. Perceptions of rampant corruption further complicates the problems as a sense of impunity grows. Six out of 10 Malians perceive corruption as very high. As one respondent told us, « Today, people are not afraid of justice. They rely on their fortune to commit crimes. They tell themselves that when the case goes to court, they will give money and it will go away. »
Transparency is crucial for ensuring fair allocation, accountability and securing and protecting tenure rights. We identified a lack of awareness on land policies – particularly a lack of awareness of how to apply customary law – as a barrier for people accessing justice for land disputes.
Data to action
Having collected data of more than 8000 Malian citizens across all regions of the country in Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Mali – second wave, we now have a robust and actionable knowledge base. It makes clear to all where justice innovations are most needed and what exactly needs to be improved in each justice need area.
Justice Data makes transformation possible
We learned key insights, in particular about how the poor and most vulnerable, experience the law and conflict resolution processes – both formal and informal – in their daily lives. This year, we have started to convene a Malian-led and locally-owned coalition of justice stakeholders that focus on these demands. In Justice Transformation Labs we facilitate the design of innovation strategies that deliver increased access to justice.
We are also active in supporting the Ministry of Justice in Mali track their progress towards SDG16.
What else can Justice Data do?
Access to information can prevent crimes
We published the largest nation-wide survey on normal peoples justice experiences ever undertaken in Morocco earlier this year. Talking to 6000 people spread out across the country can show the geographical differences, thus identifying hotspots of crime. In addition, crime prevention is served by identifying which individuals are vulnerable to crime. 760,000 people are affected per year. This data can be used to design evidence-based strategies to address this, supported by the understanding of varying vulnerabilities of different groups and areas.
Helping progress towards SDGs
Collecting thousands of ordinary people’s responses to questions about their justice journeys offers a much more complete picture of what is going on than what the courts or other institutions can offer.
¨SDG 16.3 specifically aims to increase access to justice for all. However, the indicators that quantify the progress of governments toward reaching this goal are disconnected from what they are supposed to measure. The proportion of victims of violence who report their experience, for example, is not only difficult to measure but certainly does not provide a complete picture of the state of access to justice¨quoting Dr. Martin Gramatikov in the Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Morocco report.
The picture needs to be completed to ensure no one is left behind. Our data closes the disconnect between what is sought (equal access to justice for all – SDG16.3) and what needs to be measured (people’s justice needs and experiences).
This article was written with technical support by Rupinder Kaur, Data Analysis at HiiL
Now, an elucidation: bottom-up and top-down are not strangers. In Ukraine, the Ministry of Justice has been proactively supporting justice innovations from the citizenry that address peoples justice-needs.
Early this year, the Minister of Justice of Ukraine signed an MoU with HiiL to help facilitate the continued development of a justice innovation ecosystem in Ukraine.
Last year, Ukranian innovation Axdraft applied to the Innovating Justice Challenge and reached the finals. They have since received 1million dollars in funding from the world-renown accelerator, Y-Combinator.
“When funding priorities for donors change, there is a critical need to continue sustaining the community,” says Dmitry Foremnyi, HiiL’s Innovating Justice agent in Ukraine. “That is vital to keep up knowledge exchange as well as other forms of practical support.”
Foremnyi has been working to secure the necessary support on the ground. Thanks to support of local activities from USAID, and the shared labor of organising the Innovating Justice Challenge activities with 1991 Open Data Incubator expect more top-quality justice innovations from Ukraine to be creating impact.
There will be six weeks of business development and pitch training supported by a network of Ukrainian mentors.
This is the first year we have decided to offer pre-finalists exclusively local-mentor support and we are very excited to communicate the results of how this pans-out.
Here is the list of 10 finalists (selected out of 48!) who will go through the local acceleration program:
To follow the events online, 1991 Open Data Incubator are posting regularly about the timeline of scheduled activities on their Facebook page.
Announcing the winners of the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Finals UkraineWinners of the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Final Ukraine: AxdraftInnovating Justice Challenge alumni share their support of the next wave of promising justice innovations in Ukraine
Unlike startups striving to be the next Uber or Amazon, there is no multi-billion dollar pay-off for the slug involved with creating an innovative model of justice delivery.
Odd, since the demand for justice solutions worldwide exceeds that for Uber rides. Data on human needs show that justice systems still have a long way to go to deliver on SDG16.3 (equal access to justice for all).
Systemic change takes a very long time, whereas hands-on investing in justice innovation can realise results faster.
Giving justice innovations the edge
We have written previously on the immense struggle of surviving as a justice entrepreneur.
HiiL’s acceleration program gives justice innovations the edge.
The idea is not to prop them up with financial support. We aim to give the startups ‘runway’; the tools they need to get to the next stage: sustainability and accelerated growth.
Regional Finals, held this year in Kampala, Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg, is the kick-off of a meaningful engagement between HiiL and the promising innovations.
Role model access to justice solution
Barefoot Law is one of the organisations that we have supported over the past 3 years.
Michael Kwizera, Director of Strategy at Uganda-based, Barefoot Law said:
“HiiL understood what BarefootLaw as an organisation needed to do – which was to move towards scale. Our three-year relationship meant HiiL understood our organisation and our deeply felt vision. We had learned from HiiL that structuring for scale was vital if we were going to achieve impact.”
Impact translates to preventing or solving justice problems for millions of people.
The evidence of market demand for services like those offered by Barefoot Law means there is real social value in their operations.
Impact investing strives to make pragmatic investments that address the route causes of problems to yield social returns. Justice innovations fit that bill.
In Ethiopia, HiiL prepares the first Justice Needs and Satisfaction research to aid policymakers and other non-political parties understand what people need and want when they seek justice, which obstacles they face, and what kind of justice they receive for various kinds of justice problems.
We map bottom-up justice needs to support people where they need it most.
Ethiopia Legal and Political Future Trends
Ethiopia has a legacy of history, culture and dictatorships. However, the new government under the 42-year-old prime minister Ayib Ahmed has chosen a significant path towards rule of law, democracy and inclusiveness. Within that framework, the Ethiopian Attorney General Berhanu Tsegaye signed an MoU with HiiL, during the 9th Innovating Justice Forum in The Hague. Around the time Ethiopia became a signatory of the Hague Declaration.
The MoU was a great step forward, as CEO of HiiL, Sam Muller said at the time: « This means we can start with our Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey to improve access to justice in Ethiopia. ».
Attorney General of Ethiopia Berhanu Tsegaye signs an MoU with HiiL, 7th February 2019
Justice Data Collection in Ethiopia
Together with the Justice and Legal Research and Training Institute (JLRTI), and with the support of the Attorney General’s office, we will be collecting the data needed to inform user-centered innovation and transformation in the justice sector.
HiiL meets the leadership of the research and training institute for the justice sector.
HiiL’s Head of Measuring Justice, Dr. Martin Gramatikov, and Justice Sector Advisor, Dr. Rodrigo Nunez, visited Addis Ababa to prepare the ground for the upcoming Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS) in Ethiopia.
Being part of the first attempt to map out justice needs and journey’s in Ethiopia is very exciting. To get things officially started, HiiL and the JLRTI conducted a “Kick-start” workshop on Measuring Justice in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. In many contexts, collecting people’s justice needs and satisfaction is a radical departure for how things have been done for many years. To embrace a people-centered justice innovation agenda is bold. Brilliant. Brave, even: The results show things as they truly are. HE Ambassador Degife Bulla gave a gracious opening speech, and the master of ceremony was HE Mr. Mitiku Mada.
During the two days, more than 40 representatives of different institutions of the Ethiopian justice sector, a multidisciplinary group of policymakers, justice practitioners, civil society experts, academics and researchers shared their experiences and knowledge on:
Measuring justice knowledge transfer: What are the methods for measuring justice, how HiiL measures justice.
Working together to measure the justice needs and satisfaction in Ethiopia: How we will collaborate to measure justice and build justice indicators in Ethiopia and
Evidence-based access to justice work: How to streamline the indicators into programs and projects that increase access to justice in Ethiopia
Participants explored the concept of user-centric justice and found ways in which this approach can provide valuable insights for strategy and policy formulation, intervention evaluation and learning in a positive data-based feedback loop. Participants were active. They shared a lot of ideas about data sources and were eager to discuss more about user-centered justice. Very innovative. Very cool.
Future of Justice Data in Ethiopia
Subsequent workshops will address topics such as “sustainable justice data collection”, “analysis and visualization of justice data – applied” among others.
Later, will come the actual collection of citizens’ data and its analysis by experts from Ethiopia and HiiL. Buoyed by what transpired over these two days, I cannot wait to share with you the impact this makes in the justice sector. In the new year, the report will be published. At which point we will share it with you, naturally! I really look forward to the results and to see what leaders and justice providers in Ethiopia do with the valuable insights into justice in Ethiopia.
Growing Movement of Collecting Data on Peoples’ Justice Needs
To date, we have collected citizens’ needs in 17 countries (not counting Ethiopia!). It is always a stimulating environment to work in: to meet and share experiences with enthusiastic partners of various judicial bodies and ministries in order to produce these reports.
All reports are free to download on our website HiiL.org under the Project Pages. To compare data across countries, we built a tool called the Justice Dashboard. Also free for anyone to explore at JusticeDashboard.org. With this tool you can explore how citizens rate the quality of the process for different categories of problems; crime, employment, family, neighbour and land.
Sharing hopes and the HIiL approach to bring more user-friendly justice.
Our partners the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsor this project, we are grateful and proud of their support.
If you have any questions about our work in Ethiopia, then don’t keep them to yourself. Why not send an email to Dr. Rodrigo Nunez, rodrigo.nunez@hiil.org.
Individuals that are living outside the rule of law, struggling to solve everyday justice problems or living and working informally, lacking both protection and opportunities.
The OECD and the Innovation Working Group of the Task Force tell us well-designed solutions are possible, yet requiring investments.
Courts, prosecution, police and legal aid providers all suffer from resource constraints.
Funding needs are becoming more clear
The costs of scalable, innovative universal basic justice have been estimated by ODI.
It is less than I thought it would be.
65 – 85% of budgets are needed for formal state institutions and accountability (see Table).
Most resolution happens out of court, so funds for informal mechanisms are needed as well.
So where do revenues come from?
Governments will spend a maximum of 4% in tax revenues on justice (IMF and World Bank data) and users of the justice system are also contributing.
Dividing the budgets, increasing the pie
Our report will summarize how police, courts, prosecution services, legal aid services, and informal justice/ADR each obtain a share of the justice budget.
Is the current allocation effective in order to achieve the outcomes that are needed?
Our focus will be on how to increase the available resources.
How can the sector mobilize extra revenue for basic justice?
We urgently need to figure out how to talk about justice systems at the highest political level. As I have said before in this column: globally, justice systems are not delivering. Read the report of the Task Force on Justice. We need to make them better. That requires a new type of justice leadership and a new way of talking.
Not All Justice Meetings Are Made Equal
On 19 and 20 June the ministers of justice of the G7+ met for two days in The Hague. The fact that they met made me rejoice. You can’t have enough ministers of justice sharing experiences and getting to know each other. Not long after that, I helped facilitate a gathering of leadership and talent of a big law firm and a 2-day expert meeting in Beirut on a justice strategy for one of our client countries. These three meetings had many of the same goals. They were all about justice. They were all about strategy. They were all about meaningfully engaging smart people on a critical issue and a complex topic. In all of these meetings learnings and results where expected. But in terms of how they were organised they could not have been more different.
1. The Quiet, Natural Space
The law firm met in a quiet place, surrounded by nature. All participants were dressed informally. When they worked and talked they sat in circles 7 people, around a table or without one. Or they walked together in the garden. The agenda was shared in advance. A representative sample of those present had been interviewed beforehand about how things were going and what could improve. The outcomes where shared. Nobody carried papers and laptops. There were no phones during the meetings. The group talked about things of the mind and things of the heart. Vulnerability was shared: on a number of occasions I heard confessions of fear, screw-ups and not-knowing.
2. A Phone-free Zone
The Beirut group met in a cheerfully designed hotel. Everyone was also informally dressed. We sat in a square, behind tables. Close enough to be able to look each other in the eye. Interpreters were needed to communicate. That made people very attentive to talking and listening. There was nice food in the meeting room. Here too, a draft agenda was shared. We started the first hour with a check-in. Everybody was given time to share how they felt, what they hoped and expected, and whether they had anything that prevented them from being fully present. We agreed on confidentiality: we would share, speak freely, work hard to deliver the desired outcome, but not allow what was said to leave the room. Phones were not allowed. We talked about things of the mind and things of the heart.
3. Talking Like an Institution
The G7+ ministers met in a so-called ‘chique’ hotel. All were formally dressed. They sat in a large ´U´, behind tables. It created remoteness. Almost all of them were flanked by advisers, surrounded by papers and supported by screens. Interpreters were needed to allow people to understand each other. Almost everybody spoke from a piece of paper. Humanness and personality were shared sparingly. The ministers represented an institution and generally acted like one. Most of the words that were used were complicated. Unlike anything I had seen before, a survey had been done about what the ministers expected. That yielded remarkable data. But no one fully engaged with those expectations. They generally stuck to their prepared speeches. There was very little sharing of weaknesses. Nobody shared ´worst practices´ and ´failures´.
The G7+ meeting was a remarkable meeting, by all accounts. It was more informal than usual. It was more open than usual. It yielded satisfactory results. But so much more is possible.
Creating an Innovation-friendly Space
Justice ministers of the world urgently need to lead a movement to make justice systems more people-centred. To need to open them up to evidence-based working. Bring in innovation. And they need to create ways of doing that at a tremendous scale. To make that happen a new type of justice leadership is needed. The Justice Leadership Group – a group of former justice leaders at the highest political level – has been working to develop it. A method called Justice Dialogues: safe spaces where justice leaders can talk about how they can reinvent themselves to meet the tremendous access to justice challenge. In the business sector, concepts like MSC leadership are being increasingly used. Can we learn from that?
A New Way to Talk
To discover what that new justice leadership looks like and to practice it there is an urgent need that justice ministers find new ways to meet and talk. In regions. Sub-regions. Nationally. Meetings were they can dress informally. Where confidentiality reigns. Where they can share best practices and what works. Where they can share failures. Fears. Concerns. Tears if needed. Where they can be confronted with what their stakeholders think about them in a different way, rather than through a roasting in parliament or in a media storm.
You will continue to need formal, political decision-making meetings to make the world’s justice systems better. But also, you need more informal meetings like the one pioneered by the G7+ in The Hague.
Shall we try one out between Canada and The Netherlands in 2019?
Separation, divorce and domestic violence make up the majority of family problems, which have the most severe impact on children and women.
What can you do if you are not able to communicate with your family? Imagine that you are in a conflict with someone who is close to you. According to our HiiL Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey Uganda, 36% of the people in Uganda are dealing with family justice problems. We can all imagine how difficult of a situation that must be for those individuals.
Solutions Research
In response, we developed the Uganda Family Justice Catalogue. I can already tell you, this catalogue is not meant as a cure. It is not a medicine that you can take to ease the pain, but it could help people to find solutions to their problems. That is exactly what we want to achieve.
Clear and Actionable Justice Interventions
It has been a while since I started working on the catalogue. The idea is straightforward: develop an evidence-based guideline containing recommendations and best-practices that help people and professionals who are dealing with family problems. These recommendations should be clear and actionable. Above all, it should work for the people in Uganda. In order to make this happen, it needs to connect to all Ugandans who will use it. So I went to the Pearl of Africa to co-develop the catalogue.
Here’s the process of creating the Family Justice Catalogue
Local Ownership of the Intervention
I always find it exciting to meet new people from other parts of the world, because we humans have far more in common with each other than we think. This showed true when my team and I paid a visit to Uganda, to interview practitioners about local solutions and presented international research. The research focused on interventions to family conflicts. Examples of interventions are certain living arrangements and steps to take in order to come to a solution. Such interventions would seemingly be quite dependent on culture and local traditions, right?
Wrong. During the interactive sessions in Uganda, it became clear that people’s needs aren’t all that different, despite where they might live. Interestingly enough, we see that the international research does not deviate much from the suggested local solutions. In fact, research and local practices reinforce each other.
Future-Proofing the Catalogue for Diverse Family Justice Needs
As exciting as this sounds to a researcher such as myself, there are still major challenges to face. We know that there is not one standard model of ‘a family’. There are different family settings and structures, there is a difference in the level of conflict and the willingness to cooperate between people. The extreme cases often need different treatments. They are the exception to the rule. In order to also serve small subgroup of extreme cases, expansion of the catalogue is needed.
We also want to make sure that as many people as possible have access to the catalogue. Uganda is a diverse country. There are differences in language, education, infrastructure and more. How do we create a universal product that everyone can use? We started with developing a simplified version and an elaborated version, in order to reach multiple target groups.
We gathered a diverse group of local professionals to take ownership of the catalogue
Put the Prototype to Action
So what will be the logical next step? If you ask me, I would say that the next move is to test the catalogue with the people of Uganda. It is great to have a clear and tangible product ready, but how will people actually use it in practice? And where are improvements needed? We aim to create as much positive impact on people’s lives as possible. The goal is to prevent or resolve as many family justice issues as we can.
´Evidence-based Justice is Exciting´
All in all, evidence-based justice is exciting. Having a tangible product such as the catalogue resulted in fascinating interactions with local practitioners already. It’s now time to test it on a larger scale. With real users. There are still some challenges to face, but that is also part of the excitement.
The work we are doing with local partners in Uganda is financed by the Swedish International Development Agency.
It was in my second week at HiiL that I learnt about the 3-day Proven Innovation Summit. It was to take place in just 4 weeks in Lagos, Nigeria. As the Accelerator Programme Manager, it was my role to develop the programme for this event. As a new member of the HiiL team, I was excited to immediately jump in and get my hands dirty. I love working with entrepreneurs and the Summit was the perfect opportunity to meet the entrepreneurs in person and gain a deeper understanding of their work. The purpose of the Summit was to explore the topic of expansion and scaling. By bringing together entrepreneurs from different markets, we wanted to give them the space to share challenges, brainstorm solutions, exchange learnings and to ultimately access each other’s wealth of know-hows.
Proven Innovations in our Portfolio
This event was catered to the founders of the “proven innovations” in our portfolio. This is a small group of established entrepreneurs who are preparing to lead their enterprises into the scale phase. The proven innovations have a strong team and founder leadership, a clear business model that enabled financial sustainability, as well as, replicability and scalability in other markets, and an impact of 20,000 justice problems prevented or resolved per month. Let me tell you about them one by one.
Women as Community Social Justice Guides
Haqdarshak from India, represented by its founder and CEO, Aniket Doegar. Aniket, a former teacher, founded Haqdarshak in 2015. Haqdarshak is a technology platform that uses deep tech to connect citizens to their eligible government welfare schemes. Over 5000 trained women entrepreneurs play a key role in the operations of Haqdarshak in different communities across 17 states in India. They have so far made it possible for Haqdarshak to reach over 172,000 citizens and to include 60,000 citizens in welfare schemes.
Digitsation of Criminal Records Improves Service Delivery
CrimeSync from Sierra Leone, represented by its founder and CEO, Sorieba Daffae. Sorieba, an electrical engineer and lawyer, as well as a 2019 Obama Foundation Africa Leader, established CrimeSync in 2016. CrimeSync is an all-in-one digital crime records management application that serves to improve judicial service delivery in the justice chain. CrimeSync helps the police, the prisons and the courts in Sierra Leone to go paperless. So far, it has handled over 110,000 direct cases.
Legal Support Where and When You Need It Most
Barefoot Law from Uganda. Gerald Abila, a lawyer, along with his co-founders established Barefoot Law in 2012. Barefoot Law is a technology platform that provides the public with free legal information and assistance. They have so far reached over 650,000 people across Uganda, and over 96,000 people have used the information and justice pathways provided by Barefoot law to address their justice needs. By 2030, Barefoot Law aims to make access to justice to 50 million people across Africa a reality.
On-demand Legal Empowerment
LawPadi from Nigeria. Babatunde Ibidapo-Obe, a lawyer and PhD researcher in law and technology, established LawPadi in 2015 with the aim of giving users clear and easy to understand answers about the law and how it affects their daily lives. LawPadi is an online platform that provides individuals and businesses with legal advisory services, regulatory assistance, and related information. The platform serves between 30,000 to 40,000 unique users per month and is expected to reach 500,000 users before the end of the year.
Balancing the Scales: Housing Disputes Made Easy
JustFix from USA was represented by its CEO, Georges Clement, a 2018 Fobes 30 Under 30. In 2015, inspired by his firsthand experience of growing up in rental homes, Georges started JustFix to help tenants with access to justice. Using technology, JustFix allows tenants facing eviction and neglected housing conditions to build well-documented cases and connects them with a community and legal advocates. In the past 2.5 years, JustFix has served over 10,000 tenants in New York City and has had an over 60% successful resolution rate in its cases. JustFix is also a member of the Right to Counsel Coalition that helped to pass the first civil right to legal representation in the history of the USA in 2017. Within the next 2 years, JustFix will expand to two other cities in the USA.
Automated Legal Documents
We had also invited Yuriy Zaremba, CEO of Axdraft from Ukraine to the Summit, but unfortunately, he was not able to participate. Started in 2017, Axdraft offers on-demand automation of legal processes for enterprise customers, helping them to draft error-free legal documents 10 times faster. Axdraft has over 4000 registered users, raised 1.2 million euros from a seed round in April, and is part of the 2019 cohort of Y Combinator, the top startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley.
Meet the Founders of the Proven Innovations Summit
As these enterprises were scale-ready, the Summit programme focused on sharing challenges related to scaling, e.g., fundraising and organisational development. We also talked about founder well-being and managing stress and rejection. Aniket said that for him, “personal well-being and growth” was one of the most important learnings.
Fireside Chats Deepen Shared Learnings
At the Summit, in an intimate setting, the entrepreneurs discussed their challenges and solutions, and learnt from each other. Babatunde said that “the most important part of the sessions for [him] were the informal chats which [he] had with the other innovators, getting their point of view on certain issues and learning from their experiences.” In exchanging experiences, a sense of comradery developed between the entrepreneurs. Gerlad said that he “loved the Summit,” and for him, “it was a wonderful experience … knowing that [him and BarefootLaw] are not alone in this journey.”
Key Learnings and Takeaways From the Summit
This Summit is largely thanks to the hard work of our colleague Odunoluwa Longe, our Innovating Justice Agent for West Africa. Thanks to her, we were able to bring inspiring and well-established entrepreneurs from the vibrant Nigerian startup ecosystem into the same room as our entrepreneurs to share their firsthand experiences. A key learning for Babatunde (LawPadi) was realising the “need to deepen [LawPadi’s] footprint in one core area before branching out to other areas, or else run the risk of spreading [themselves] too thin and thereby not making any meaningful impact.” In discussions, the entrepreneurs felt inspired to think bigger, as Sorieba put it, “take bold decisions” about their plans to scale and to take this energy to their teams at home. For Georges, the most important takeaway from the Summit, was “to think big about what person/company/partner could create a catalytic moment for JustFix.” He said that “spending some deliberate time every so often to think big picture about a stretch goal is really important after being in the weeds so often”. Since this event, my colleagues and I have been working closely with our entrepreneurs to identify and establish relationships with potential high-level partners who would boost the scaling and growth of these enterprises into new markets. The goal is to help them make a greater impact. Within the next 4 years, we expect these enterprises to prevent and resolve justice problems of 10 million people, making justice accessible, affordable and easy to understand for them.
A Sense of Reaffirmation in my Work with HiiL
On a personal level, this was a short visit and I didn’t get the chance to see much of Lagos or the rest of Nigeria. I really enjoyed having the chance to finally experience a city and country that I had read so much about in the works of Nigerian authors. On top of that, this Summit was an opportunity to understand HiiL’s impact and the valuable work that it does toward making justice user-friendly through accelerating justice enterprises. Here they were: The young inspiring leaders who had already made a significant impact in their own countries and were well on their way to make an even greater impact globally. As I develop the program curriculum for the incoming 2020 cohort, I feel a sense of reaffirmation in my work and that of HiiL’s. I feel inspired by our entrepreneurs and can not wait to see what the future has in store for them.
Lagos edition of the 2019 Proven Innovation Summit by HJA
According to statistics, in South Africa there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand registered not-for-profits (NPOs). These South African NPOs operate in a demanding world. Their end users are generally the most vulnerable groups in society. It is a world where delays and costs related to the drafting of documents can have a serious impact on the well-being of the users of NPO services. In 2018, we scouted and found a solution. JusDraft was created to help deliver vital automated legal documents, completely free of charge. What prompts such a radical new way of doing business?
JusDraft was initially developed in response to HiIL’s Innovating Justice Challenge in early 2018 by Epoq Legal. JusDraft is a real-time online legal services tool designed for South African NPO’s that can be used to draft legal documents and complete court forms quickly and easily for people in need, without the need for an attorney. JusDraft participated in the 2018 Regional Finals of the Innovating Justice Challenge in Southern Africa and entered our Justice Accelerator in October 2018. Since then, they have not only launched their service but helped more than 60 non-profit organisations with their legal documentation. They are now working on adding other types of legal documents to their website and exploring some exciting new partnerships.
“At HiiL, we strongly believe that innovation is needed in the justice domain around the globe,” says Ellen Tacoma, Director of the Justice Accelerator program, “JusDraft is a great example in contributing to that challenge”.
Of these NPOs, 95% serve the communities in which they are based, offering diverse programs depending on their mission and expertise. JusDraft wants to be a one-stop-shop for all NPO document-drafting and support services. Currently, JusDraft are collaborating with various organisations to offer services in areas of family law, criminal law, employment law and finance law. JusDraft is planning, however, to incorporate aspects of property law users find helpful, motoring and more. First, they will be the number one service provider of this kind for NPOs, but eventually, they want to make their services available and suitable to other organisations looking for a legal drafting platform.
“We continuously strive to live up to our tagline, ‘making law easy’; by providing uncomplicated, real-time document automation technology,” says Emile Gerber, the COO of Epoq Legal (the parent of the JusDraft initiative). Epoq Legal’s core business is automated technological solutions, and they offer online legal documents to the commercial sector.
After recieving business development support form us, JusDraft successfully launched their platform May 2019. The JusDraft journey is a testament to the appetite that exists for supporting NPOs and access to justice in South Africa. A range of supporters helped to shape the platform ahead of the launch. For example, Lipco Law For All are generously provided the legal advice helpline open 24/7 all-year, plus some helpful infographics. and another organisation, DebtBusters offer their skills in debt management services. The platform is further made holistic and rich in choice for uesrs for its inclusion of Baobab.law’s self-help video tutorials for users.
COO Emile Gerber and the team behind JusDraft are a proof of the social benefits justice innovation can deliver he said, “We’re really excited about making a positive impact in South Africa with the JusDraft venture”. We are also so proud that the Innovating Justice Challenge is not just finding, but actually inspiring brilliant initiatives like JusDraft to start making impact.
With the support of our partners in Southern Africa, the Dutch Postcode Lottery, we are scouting a new wave of jutsice innovations from the region. For more details, you can visit www.hiil.org/justinnovate.
Meet the JusDraft team and one of their NPO beneficiaries!
When ordinary people work together, they can change history. That core belief guides the Obama Foundation, and resonates strongly with the justice innovation philosophy that drives us at HiiL.
Of course, we can continue now with a formal text, all well meant and heartfelt. But what we really want to say, Funkola and Sorieba, a very big congrats on your Obama Fellowships!
Your selection – as two justice innovators – by the Obama Foundation fills us with joy, because we know how hard you have worked to get where you are now with your justice innovations. Like the Foundation says: ordinary people working together can change history. Well, you both have already achieved something amazing.
For those who don’t know you yet, but will very soon no doubt, allow us to tell those people a bit about their journey. Funkola Odeleye and Sorieba Daffae have made a direct impact in their respective countries (Nigeria and Sierra Leone respectively). Their results achieved by the models they innovated are becoming gold-standard examples of justice innovations.
Our cooperation started through our Innovating Justice Challenge. When we met, Funkola and Sorieba were ambitious, bright and had a very clear idea how they wanted to make a change. And we are fortunate, because we know there are more Funkolas and Soriebas out there that we want to welcome through our challenge.
No-one can bring that change without support and exchange of ideas with people who have the missing knowledge and experience. We at HiiL have developed our Justice Acceleration programme, providing that hands-on support people like these two new Obama Fellows.
Our aim is to make justice user friendly and people centered. Our mission is to empower people to deliver the needed changes themselves.
Funkola and Sorieba, like other innovators we have worked with through our Acceleration programme over the past years, managed to scale their ventures nationally and beyond. Their selection by the Obama Foundation is a recognition of the spirit and work that was put into making their innovations succeed and bring justice closer to ordinary people.
Funkola and Sorieba, you have made inspiring changes to your respective countries, by making justice accessible, affordable and effective. You managed to navigate between legal constraints and entrepreneurial challenges. You found the flow that allows you to fight for justice innovation. And we are happy we could support you sailing between those cliffs.
Sorieba Daffae won the Innovating Justice Challenge 2019 with CrimeSync
Every year hundreds of the world’s best ideas and projects in justice innovation apply to the HiiL Justice Accelerator. Do you want to be the next startup to grow with us? This article describes exactly what to expect if you enter the greatest justice innovation competition.
2019 launch of the Call for Innovations
We are pleased to announce that our Innovating Justice Challenge 2019 is now open for applications.
We scout the next generation of promising justice innovators to improve access to justice for millions of people
What that means is we are looking for justice innovators from East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa and MENA region. We look for the best innovations with a focus on preventing or resolving a justice problem for many people, including small and medium-sized businesses.
Criteria for potential applicants
Criteria on what the « best » justice innovation means.
By the best, we mean innovations that have the potential to become financially sustainable and scale nation-wide or globally, are already showing measurable impact and are led by a motivated, focused team driven to make a change.
There is a deadline…
What to expect after you apply.
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator is looking for promising new justice innovations to prevent or resolve the most pressing justice needs. Between 3 June and 15 August, justice innovators can apply for the Innovating Justice Challenge. The Call for Applications closes at 24.00 Central European Time on 15 August 2019. The forms are all online here. *Note that innovations from all regions use the same form link, except innovations from Ukraine.
What to expect if you are successful
Lady Liberty at the Innovating Justice Forum
We scout from various regions – including yours? See above!
After you fill in our application on YouNoodle, we select promising justice innovations to compete in regional finals. We will have up to six regional finals in 2019. That all depends on you.
BaoBab Law finalists in the regional Southern Africa challenge
What happens at regionals? Those selected will pitch to a jury made up of local and international specialists in Lagos, Nairobi, Kampala and Johannesburg. To boost your chances, you are invited to a free two/three-day training right before the finals. The jury alone will decide who goes through.
The finalists can win up to 20,000 EUR and the chance to participate in the Justice Entrepreneurship School (JES) and the Innovating Justice Forum in The Hague in February 2020.
Successful finalists are then invited to take part in up to a week-long programme of business development (JES). This is a program specifically designed to support innovations looking to create an impact in access to justice. It takes place in The Hague where we will host you.
School of Justice Innovation
The Peace Palace in The Hague (The Netherlands) is home to a number of international judicial institutions and the Innovating Justice Forum powered by HiiL.
The best innovators will then be invited to join our Justice Accelerator programme. We actively support your innovations with seed-funding, business development support, access to a global network, potential further investment opportunities and international exposure for their innovation for at least a year. But it is like once you are in, you are in as we continue to unlock opportunities for previous years cohorts.
What’s our story?
Our mission and Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
Who are we? We are the best-known accelerator that focuses on preventing and resolving justice problems. Our mission is that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. We look for innovations that can grow and scale to impact thousands and potentially millions of people. We have carefully supported more than 60 justice innovations worldwide since 2011. Some of those have become big, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Our reputation is one of results and lots of fun.
We support YOU because you address a pressing justice problem. Legal tech for legal tech’s sake is not what we are about. Let’s talk data: The data we collect reveals 60% of justice problems fall into these five categories: Crime, Land, Family, Neighbours and Employment.
With stakeholders we distilled key areas we would like to find justice innovations for: Kenya – Crime, Nigeria – Money, Tunisia – Employment. We are open to any justice innovation that matches with a prevalent pressing justice need. You are welcome to apply. For examples of how diverse the projects we support are, check out our justice innovation portfolio.
Curious? That is what we hoped for.
To submit an application, please visit www.hiil.org/justinnovate. Remember! Applications closes at midnight Central European Time on 15 August 2019.
User friendly justice possible in partnership with …
We are supported by the Dutch Postcode Lottery to run the Justice Innovation programme In Southern Africa.
We are supported in East, West and North Africa by our partners the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to run the Justice Innovation programme.
The Swedish International Development Agency support our Justice Innovation programme in Uganda.
Where are we from?
Improving the world is easier with a smile, don’t you think?
HiiL is a social enterprise based in The Hague, The Netherlands. We are the friendly rebels of the justice world, dedicated to user-friendly justice. That means justice that is easy to access, easy to understand and affordable for everyone. Since 2011, we look for innovations that provide legal information, legal services or dispute resolution. Innovations we have supported in the past include a mobile app informing people of their employment rights, a website with automated contracts for SMEs, a mobile application to anonymously report a crime, or a website explaining how to purchase and transfer land titles. So apply now and start your justice acceleration journey.
We are proud to share the launch of the Justice for All report by the Task Force on Justice. It is a report which draws on research by the world’s leading justice organizations and experts. It makes the case for shifting from a model that provides justice only for the few, to one that delivers measurable improvements in justice for all.
Here’s why this report plays a monumental role in the justice world and for organisations working on sustainable development goal 16:
1. The global justice gap is understood in three dimensions. In total, 5.1 billion people – two-thirds of the world’s population – lack meaningful access to justice. Until recently, a lack of justice data obscured the scale of the failure to meet people’s justice needs, but more and better data has now become available.
2. The costs of injustice is framed as such: justice is often the missing link in national development strategies. Economies may perform strongly and health and education improve. But without justice, people will fail to reach their full potential and development will be precarious.
3. The benefits of investing in justice is proven by a growing body of evidence that demonstrates expenditure on people-centred justice can deliver a high return on investment. Increased justice reduces the risk of conflict and instability.
4. This report presents the first estimate of the cost of providing universal access to basic justice. Health and education have long had such benchmarks for investment, and the methodology used draws from experiences in those sectors
5. Preventing injustice is put into focus: Justice systems must prevent problems as well as working to resolve those that have already occurred.
6. Six areas account for most justice problems. By taking justice problems as a starting point, countries can design a better journey from that problem to a solution.
We hope these few takeaways we chose peak your interest in reading through this report. Take your time. It’s full of great insights.
We feel thankful to have been asked to make contributions to this report. (We made recommendations, shared data and justice innovation knowledge). In particular, concerning the potential for innovation to solve the justice gap, those findings were published in the report of the Innovation Working Group of the Task Force on Justice.
The Task Force on Justice is an initiative of the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies. Together we have explored the delivery of the Agenda 2030 targets in a world where billions of people are not yet able to obtain justice.
In the past, justice reforms have often focused on institutions that are distant from people and fail to serve their needs. The Task Force proposes a different approach, putting people at the centre of justice systems and justice at the heart of sustainable development.
The UN Agenda 2030 and Justice For All
Justice is a thread that runs through all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Without increased justice, the world will not be able to end poverty, reduce inequality, reach those furthest behind first, create conditions for shared and sustainable prosperity, or promote peace and inclusion. At the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development lies a vision of a “just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met.”
Specifically, SDG16.3 promises to ensure equal access to justice for all by 2030. Other targets of SDG16 cover legal identity, injustices such as corruption and illicit financial flows, and the promotion of rights and gender equality.
All the questions you’ve ever wanted to ask us but dared not, are probably answered in the reveal-all annual report!
How are we funded? How do we measure our impact? Who are we accountable to? Who are our clients? What is our reason for existing?
Our theory of change was systematically tested in 2018. The results we produce have been independently found to be relevant to government officials, judges and lawyers, legal aid providers, and advocates for justice sector reforms. The interim-evaluation confirms that both the data on justice needs alone and the national action plans which are based on our data plus evidence of what works effectively motivate and catalyse dialogue on justice sector reforms and evidence-based programming. We invite you to see where these results were most realised in 2018.
Impact of HiiL
But of course, the annual report isn’t a mere show-all we did exercise. We learn from results and improve. For example, we learnt that combining our activities has an even greater impact. Reporting data, involving stakeholders, implementing evidence-based working methods and accelerating innovation contribute to the same theory of change. We also learn to adapt. Our theory of change in 2018 assumes that justice policy-making that is based on justice needs and what works is attractive for stakeholders in the justice sector. From growing experience engaging governments, we see this assumption is not always reflected in how national plans are made. What we find is that real change towards user-friendly justice requires attitudes to shift, established roles to become more responsive, cooperation means to change, a shift in financial planning, in addition to improved legal procedures and regulation. In 2019, we are launching transformation processes that address this bottleneck in our theory of change: We are investing even more in engaging justice leaders and other stakeholders to work towards concrete goals and strategies that will continuously be monitored.
We invite you to contact us if you have any questions about what we do.
Accessibility and effectiveness of justice delivery have been a concern in the Ugandan legal industry for years. This begs the question: can technologically-driven innovations actively impact the delivery of or enhance access to justice?
Access to justice means access to quality and affordable legal services as a means to achieve human rights, gender equality, and sustainable development. A maid who can get leave to visit her family because she is helped to know her employment rights. Brothers and sister eat every night because their father is paying their mother maintenance support on time, each month as approved by the court. A new entrepreneur wins against a corrupt local boss because he can rely on the courts to hear his evidence about how he came to launch his new product. Employment, family, neighbours, land and crime; all areas in which people regularly encounter need(s) for legal solutions.
Several factors, however, limit access to justice, especially true for vulnerable groups. Factors individuals can’t do much about by themselves: such as high levels of illiteracy, corruption within judicial institutions, gender-related barriers and weak enforcement of existing laws. Institutions that are mandated to address these problems are hindered by the limited capacity of staff and resources and a host of other factors.
With regards to justice delivery, the norm is traditional avenues such as the courts of law and other institutions like the police, justice centers and legal entities/firms. The question remains, however, whether these institutions are able to provide efficient, effective and accessible justice to those people who are in need of it.
Young, tech-savvy Uganda is ready for innovation
Ugandans are embracing technology and steadily catching up with the rest of the world. Innovation and self-starting entrepreneurs are sprouting up daily in cities, and increasingly reaching out to markets nationally.
Innovation for justice issues, however, is an area of exploration that has not been given enough attention. Why do I think so? Especially in relation to access to justice, through justice innovation it is possible to bring justice to people and to ensure that the most pressing justice needs are catered for as quickly, efficiently and effectively as possible! Take JusticeBot for example. JusticeBot provides real-time online legal procedure information on land problems to Ugandan people through common chatting platforms like Facebook, Messenger or even WhatsApp.
Rather than just sharing updates with connections, Justice Bot responds to queries and stories to recommend the user to a lawyer with the right expertise upon request. It works. JusticeBot has been able to reach a total of 4020 users of their solution responding to over 7000 requests in a period of just 4 months since December 2018. A chatbox is an extremely cost effective innovation to start to addressing an access to justice gap.
Well that sounds great! Where are all these great ideas coming from?
If you are someone who wants to innovate justice what can you do? Whilst traditional startups are mushrooming around the country, justice solutions and knowledge about them are usually never part of the picture. The ecosystem for justice innovation is small: most people have never heard of it.
That is where HiiL comes in.
HiiL offers educational programs that support entrepreneurs passionate about solving our most pressing justice needs. Justice problems cannot be prevented or resolved overnight; change takes many years. Our mission is to create more potential for legal and justice innovation in Uganda, that leads to the resolution of more justice problems. One such example to achieve this is the upcoming Innovation Fast Track. This entrepreneurship and innovation training course is specifically designed for the most promising entrepreneurs based in Kampala, with creative ideas that address access to justice challenges in Uganda.
Innovation Fast Track Training: What is it?
This training provided over six weeks, is a business focused modular training which builds the capacity of the entrepreneur to critically evaluate and validate their idea. It also gives us at the HiiL Justice Accelerator the opportunity to provide the groundwork that will contribute to a more organized and well-purposed group of entrepreneurs with improved, effective, safe, fast and easy to access modes/innovations that bring about justice for the people.
If you or some team that you know are interested, please apply for this training before 7th June, 2019 by email to racheal.ampaire@hiil.org with the email subject: Justice Innovation Fast Track Application.Justice innovations need time to grow and scale so they can reach more people. Along the way, there are many obstacles in their path. Connecting potential innovations with the best expertise in innovation, the jutsice sector and technology can change the survival of these new initiatives dramatically. We have seen it, and we will share this with you too. www.hiil.org/hja
Access to justice means access to quality and affordable legal services as a means to achieve human rights, gender equality and sustainable development. Several factors however limit access to justice, especially true for vulnerable groups. Factors individuals can’t do much about by themself: such as high levels of illiteracy, corruption within judicial institutions, gender related barriers and weak enforcement of existing laws. Institutions that are mandated to address these problems are hindered by limited capacity of staff and resources and a host of other factors.
With regards to justice delivery, the norm is traditional avenues such as the courts of law and other institutions like the police, justice centers and legal entities/firms. The question remains, however, whether these institutions are able to provide efficient, effective and accessible justice to those people who are in need of it.
Young, tech-savvy Uganda is ready for innovation
Ugandans are embracing technology and steadily catching up with the rest of the world. Innovation and self-starting entrepreneurs are sprouting up daily in cities, and increasingly reaching out to markets in rural areas.
Innovation for justice issues, however, is an area of exploration that has not been given enough attention. Why do I think so? Especially in relation to access to justice for the people in Uganda, through justice innovation, is possible to bring justice to people and to ensure that the most pressing justice needs of the people are catered for as quickly, efficiently and effectively as possible! Take JusticeBot for example. It is one of many innovations that bring justice to the people. JusticeBot provides real-time online legal procedure information on land to people in need of legal service in Uganda through a Justice chatbot and recommends lawyers with right expertise upon request. JusticeBot has been able to reach a total of 4020 users of their solution in a period of 4 months (December-April), which is commendable. With innovation, the numbers speak for themselves.
Well that sounds great! And if I want to get involved…?
So if you are someone who wants to innovate justice what can you do? Whilst traditional start ups are mushrooming around the country, justice solutions and knowledge about them are usually never part of the picture. That’s where HiiL comes in.
HiiL carries out educational programs that support entrepreneurs with a passion for solving our most pressing justice needs and one such example is the upcoming Innovation Fast Track. The innovation fast track is an entrepreneurship and innovation training course. This course is specifically designed for the most promising entrepreneurs based in Kampala, with creative ideas that address access to justice challenges in Uganda.
Innovation Fast Track Training: What is it?
This training provided over the eight weeks, is a business focused modular training which builds the capacity of the entrepreneur to critically evaluate and validate their idea. It also gives us at the HiiL Justice Accelerator the opportunity to provide the groundwork that will contribute to a more organised and well purposed group of entrepreneurs with improved, effective, safe, fast and easy to access modes/innovations that bring about justice for the people.
Not all justice problems cannot be prevented or resolved overnight. Change takes many years. Justice innovations need time to grow and scale so they can reach more people. Along the way, there are many obstacles in their path. Our mission is to create more potential for legal and justice innovation in Uganda, that leads to the resolution of more justice problems – as soon as possible.
If you or some team that you know are interested, please apply for this training before 7th June, 2019 by email to racheal.ampaire@hiil.org with the email subject: Justice Innovation Fast Track Application.
In 2019, we became proud partners of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, (Nationale Postcode Loterij), one of the largest charity lotteries in the world and one of the largest lotteries in the Netherlands.
Our mission is to prevent or resolve the most pressing justice needs of 150 million people by 2030. Justice should be accessible, easy to understand and affordable for everyone. In other words: we strive for “user friendly justice”. The Dutch Postcode Lottery now supports our work in Southern Africa with a grant of one million euros. Due to the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s generous support, we can continue and accelerate our mission to bring access to justice to millions of people in Southern Africa, from our Justice Accelerator Hub in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Let’s look at a case study. South Africa is brimming with opportunities to improve access to justice. Research shows that despite the progress made in the 25 years since the end of the Apartheid regime, many people in South Africa still face barriers when trying to find a solution for their justice problem. Court procedures take too long, legal aid is too expensive and many people simply do not know what their legal rights are or where to go to.
South Africa is well known for its vast inequality, and this is highly apparent in access to justice. While the small middle class has access to leading global law firms and strong institutions, the most vulnerable in society, those who live below the poverty-line and the illiterate, struggle the with basic legal services.
An enterprising and youthful country at heart, we meet many talented individuals who have the vision and skills to tackle the huge access to justice deficit in South Africa. Whether it’s on the streets or in offices, in traditional sectors or in startup communities, we find passionate people who design, build and propagate projects for ordinary people. People who can not get a solution if they suddenly lose their job, if they need a divorce, or if they have a dispute with their business partner.
These justice innovators need our support in order to scale. They aim to bring justice to the lives of tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. Because justice is for all, not just for the few. But just like with startups in technical, commercial fields, survival is an uphill battle. Justice entrepreneurs need access to clients, money, and partnerships. However, unlike startups in other fields, being justice-oriented means that they face additional barriers: including some from the justice sector which has the power to block services of this sort due to adverse regulation, in many cases creating a climate of extreme uncertainty and vulnerability for those who try to bring change.
Thanks to the support of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, we can continue to find and support the best justice innovators in Southern Africa, and accelerate them so they can scale and impact more people. This means we provide them with seed funding, business development mentorship and technical support. Our local agents in South Africa create opportunities to create partnerships between justice innovators, investors, donors and the justice sector. Called the HiiL Justice Accelerator, this process is very successful. Our startups’ survival rate is 3x higher than is typical, and we teach the teams or individuals behind the startups to measure their success by the real impact they are having. The feedback we get from the justice entrepreneurs we accelerate is overwhelmingly positive. The success of these individuals can transform the lives of families, small businesses, children, men and women of Southern Africa.
What does this look like on the ground, in real terms? Well, because of the lottery’s gift of one million euros we can support super projects like these:
Baobab Law, founded by Guy Stern, is a legal tech platform designed to improve the effectiveness of paralegals and community advice officers (CAOs). The platform helps with case management, communication and referrals, as well as access to information for people on the ground. It is currently being piloted with a group who support paralegals’ work for undocumented children in South Africa. These children are very vulnerable without help, and helping them requires a high level of coordination. The system can help paralegals support more children and keep accurate records which are essential to connecting children to social security; education and welfare. Guy’s case management system is suitable to adapt to support other legal aid or access to justice projects.
Lady Liberty, founded by Sam Ngcolomba, is a mobile legal office which travels to poor and marginalised communities, providing women with access to basic legal information. Women are vulnerable when they cannot understand their rights in relation to domestic violence, sexual assault, marriage, divorce, maintenance wills – subjects that are typically not discussed widely.
Citizens Justice Network is an innovation that produces interactive radio shows to educate and discuss pathways and options for people when faced with a range of legal problems. Sometimes, for South Africans, money is not the barrier to accessing justice; people simply do not know where to turn to and whether seeking help or advice would do any good. The stories shared via radio help improve citizens’ literacy and level of engagement.
Creative Contracts, founded by South African lawyer Robert de Rooy, is a legal innovation that designs legally binding agreements in the form of a comic. Contracts are drawn with cartoons; contracts that anyone can understand. People who are illiterate, have a visual disability or simply do not understand the legal terms in a contract can now easily understand what they sign. A prime example of user-friendly justice.
The justice innovations we scout are the gold-standard in terms of delivering justice. These are only some examples of justice innovations up and running in South Africa supported by HiiL’s Justice Accelerator (See more here), and thanks to the new and exciting partnership with the Dutch Postcode Lottery we can support them to grow and scout many more. Our impact and that of the innovators will grow and with it: more and more people will receive the help they need to be legally empowered. Who knows what amazing justice innovations are waiting to be discovered?
On behalf of our entire team and the justice innovators in Southern Africa, we would like to thank the Dutch Postcode Lottery and all the players of the lottery. Thank you for helping us support fair and inclusive communities across Southern Africa.
This article was first published in a leading Canadian law magazine, Slaw by Sam Muller
In the Hague Declaration on Access to Justice that was adopted on 7 February this year three things stand out (see my previous column). It recognises the need to make justice systems more people-centred. It calls for a more evidence-based way of working. And, finally, it calls for innovation. The question that nobody has really answered is: how does that work? If you are a minister of justice and you wake up one day thinking “I want to do that Hague Declaration thing”, what comes next? How do you know what ‘people-centred’ is? What does « evidence-based working » mean in the justice sector? And how in heaven’s name does an ‘evidence-base’ turn into ‘innovation’? This is something we urgently need to start talking more about. If not, the Hague Declaration will remain a piece of paper. That would be a great loss for the citizens of the world and the hundreds of millions who lack adequate access to justice. Mali may be able to give some answers.
Data
It is a unique country. Vast and diverse, with amazing musicians and artisans. It’s also the first country in the world that I know of which has commissioned two nation-wide studies into the justice needs of its citizens in four years, in 2014 and in 2018. *I must disclose that both studies were led by HiiL, where I work.
The first part of the
answer seems to be: you need data. Not just any data, but data about the needs
and experiences of people. What justice problems do they have? What do their
journeys to justice look like? Do they get outcomes that work? What are the
variations by gender, age group, whether you live in a city or in the
countryside, or for the different levels of education? The data must also be
able to follow trends. So not a one-off survey. But an ability to track. So you
can, for instance, see whether the
resolution rate is going up or down; generally, and per problem. This, in turn, means that you need to do as a minister of justice who wants to Do The Hague Declaration thing, and set up a user-experience data gathering unit.
In Mali, the expertise for this comes from a partnership: a few people from the ministry, the national bureau of statistics, experts from Deme So, a leading access to justice NGO, and international expertise from HiiL. That partnership was has worked together over a year and is funded from a joint fund, managed by the ministry of justice and an international donor (the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Priorities
Once you have data, need to set priorities. In the justice universe, 4 year election-driven mandates are short. Moreover, data shows that many ministers of justice are rotated out even before the end of the 4-year cycle. Setting strategic priorities is therefore critical. For this, you need more than a minister. The process with which the UN adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals may point to a good practice here. The SDGs were the result of wide a fairly fast consultation process. A dose of pragmatism was also part of the process: they were developed around policy areas where progress was deemed possible. The SDGs have fairly broad defined goals that are further developed in more precise targets, that are in turn strengthened with smart indicators. Borrowing from that practice, the minister of justice who wants to « Do The Hague Declaration Thing » could subsequently set up a broadly composed group of experts who, with some legitimacy, select 5-10 access to justice priorities and fit them with concrete targets. The expert group can come from a wide spectrum: ministry of justice, the courts and prosecution, the bar, parliament, academia, civil society organisations, and business (like for example, representatives for SMEs). I have worked on building such coalitions and have seen it work.
Innovation
With data about
justice needs and trends, a capacity to continue to gather more data, an agenda
of 5-10 justice delivery priorities, indicators to know whether there is
progress, and an empowered group of stakeholders you have a very solid
foundation for innovation. Innovation teams can then start work on developing
solutions around the national 5-10 priorities that have been agreed to. Funders
– be they ministries of finance,
ministries of development, international development banks, philanthropic
institutions, or impact investors – are much more likely to allocate money to
clear citizen-centred priorities matched with indicators, an ability to monitor
progress, and a group of committed stakeholders.
International sharing
A last component that I am also learning about in Mali is the importance of international sharing. In the past decades, it has become a normal practice in the health sector. I hear a lot – directly from them – a that ministers of justice who want to Do the Hague Declaration thing feel they would be greatly helped if they could periodically meet with colleagues who are doing the same thing. To exchange experiences. To learn. To strengthen each other. Not in a large scale ‘summit’ setting. But in quiet, safe settings, where they can not only talk about success, but also about mistakes, fears, and hopes. This is something the world must learn to fund. It is important.
The Hague Declaration
on Access to Justice is a modest but great achievement. Let’s talk more about
what is needed to make it work.
Justice Systems are struggling. With one billion new unmet justice needs every year, justice systems find it difficult to cope. They need new ideas.
There are brilliant people that are trying to fix elements of the problem in these systems. “Justice innovators” find new ways to help people resolve their pressing justice problems. But they are often blocked by the systems they are trying to fix.
An opportunity to scale solutions to close the justice gap. At all levels, our understanding of the justice gap is better now. The Task Force on Justice just released its report, Justice For All. We supported it with our data on justice needs, knowledge on how to innovate, and bringing people together. The report finds that 4.5 billion people are excluded from the opportunities the law provides; over 1 billion people lack legal identity, more than 2 billion are employed in the informal sector and the same number lack proof of housing or land tenure. An important thing we do to change these horrific figures is stimulating innovation and scaling what works best.
Our effort to champion justice innovation globally. Each year, we organise an international competition. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s the international Innovating Justice Challenge. The best justice innovations in a region or country are found and pitch their ideas before an expert panel. Winners go on to join our cohort for acceleration (business development training, mentorship, finance). This competition is held in West Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, Europe and Southern Asia. Even teams in the US and UAE apply. You can see our portfolio here.
What happens when you get those innovators together in a room? Each year, we put the best justice innovation on an international stage at the Innovating Justice Forum. In the busy days before the forum in February, we put 12 chairs around a living room rug, in The Hague Humanity Hub for a sharing session. What do a diverse group of innovators talk about? What trends, strategies, and roadblocks do they identify together? What would they share with other justice innovators around the world?
We will tell you. The discussion with these twelve innovators resulted in three key themes:
Innovators need to connect with the justice sector. But these relationships are very difficult to develop. Innovators are, on average, dependent on the justice sector to reach scale: Many justice innovators design their services for the ‘mass markets’ of unserved citizens by justice systems. But their relationships aren’t developing as fast as they need them to. Those innovators who have created these relationship say: “start early, be consistent, and focus relationship building on where it matters.” Establish a map of where allies are within the government, and come up with a plan on maintaining regular contact – even when you don’t “need something”.
Innovators identified a need to advocate for a “level playing field.” When governments decide what service to use in medicine or internet speed, they have objective standards to judge providers against. Justice innovators must advocate to be judged on objective criteria, (which is currently the exception, not the rule). Then, they can fairly compare the effectiveness of their innovation against existing justice services. Innovators need help from the international community to advocate for this level playing field, as it involves challenging those profiting from a stranglehold on the system.
Don’t get knocked down; know the law and use the law. Know your rights, and assert yourself and your justice innovation before governments and the public. Be savvy: Understand the ins and outs of public-private partnerships, tenders, and partnership arrangements to know which can work best for you. This means when your adversaries attack – those invested in maintaining ‘business as usual’ – you will be able to respond in full knowledge of your rights, and the avenues to assert them. But be responsible in terms of the amount of energy invested in defence. Unless survival is on the line, don’t waste energy defending your position: “just get on with it” and show users and investors that you have a valuable service people need.
Do you have experience with some of the themes identified here? Let us know if these lessons are familiar experiences to you. You can talk to us on our media channels; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. And of course, come a join us at Innovating Justice Forum on 5th February 2020.
Forty-six cities, 24 countries, 5,000 people, 56 hours, hundreds of new legal tech innovations. They’re the key numbers to take away from Global Legal Hackathon, an annual event convened by justice innovators around the world. Knowing the budding ecosystem for entrepreneurship in South Africa, our team operating in Southern Africa were convinced that they should bring it back to Johannesburg for a second time this year.
The 2018 event in Johannesburg, South Africa, was a roaring success. Five teams came together over one weekend to build prototype applications for improving ‘access to justice’, or the ‘business of law’. By Sunday evening they had a polished pitch, complete with user validations, market testing and a demonstration of their idea. The runner-up went on to win our own regional Innovating Justice Challenge and take part in the HiiL Justice Accelerator, supported by both financial and non-financial means.
Scaling up
This year’s Global Legal Hackathon was a much bigger event for South Africa than in 2018. Much of its success was thanks to our partner, Baker McKenzie, which turned its plush, leather-chaired boardrooms over to coffee swilling, pizza eating hackers for the weekend. The firm’s hospitality made it possibly the most unexpectedly luxurious hackathon in the world, which we saw reflected in the quality of pitches delivered on Sunday evening.
Participants came from a wide variety of backgrounds including software developers, lawyers, TV and media workers, activists from fellow NGOs such as Amnesty and, of course, students. On Friday evening, engaging speakers from Stats SA, Open Societies Foundation and the Thuli Madonsela Foundation about the need for justice innovation in South Africa. They set the scene for the crucial role hackers and justice innovators have in filling the gaps between demand for justice services and provision.
On Saturday the more typical ‘Hackathon’ activities began. If you haven’t been to a Hackathon before, the process is disarmingly simple. After the round of scene-setting speeches, individuals had the opportunity to pitch and idea that they wanted to work on for the next two days, and everyone else voted with their feet – moving to join the team to which they felt their skills and experience would be most valuable. Over the course of the weekend, HiiL hosted workshops on pitch presentation and the ‘Lean Startup Method’, encouraging teams to experiment and gather user feedback. One group was paying close attention: by lunchtime on Saturday a procession of people filed through Baker McKenzie’s foyer for one-on-one user validation sessions. By the end, the team could claim to be at “first revenue” as visitors offered small amounts of cash to be signed up to the application.
Pitching to win
On Sunday afternoon, eight teams pitched ideas to a panel of judges from The Embassy of The Netherlands in South Africa, Open Societies Foundation, AfricaLII and – of course – Baker McKenzie. We saw presentations on lawyer-matching services, a TV show (and helpline) that answered justice questions and a transcription service for taking police statements in African languages. One team had a functioning chatbot that could answer legal queries in isiZulu, another was looking at helping people arrested at night find representation.
The overall winner of the event in South Africa came via a team from LexisNexis, who had flown from Cape Town just to join us. Its application, Kagiso (the Setswana word for “peace”), is an online mediation platform designed to help parties find a resolution outside of the courts. Although Kagiso didn’t quite make it through the second round of Global Legal Hackathon and on to the New York final (which takes place on 4 May), we have high hopes for its future success and will be watching all of the participants closely.
The energy from this event gives us so much inspiration to keep finding and supporting the worlds best justice innovators. Events like these supported by great partners highlight the fantastic solutions coming up for user-friendly justice. Together we will reach our goal to empower 150 million people to prevent and resolve their most pressing justice problems by 2030.
We are very excited to share this with you. We have arranged for the next Innovating Justice Forum to be back on 5th February 2020. Again, the Peace Palace in The Hague will be the meeting place for the most disruptive innovations to improve access to justice for millions of people.
Curious what happened at the Innovating Justice Forum 2019? Check out our blog.
The after-movie of the 2019 Innovating Justice Forum
Be part of the movement
Share your passion for user friendly justice – (justice that is affordable, accessible and easy to understand, justice that works) – by joining us at IJF 2020. It’s big in ideas and social impact and, at the same time, a special time and space to bring together thought-leaders, innovators, leaders of the justice sector, entrepreneurs and even artists.
Maintenant les utilisateurs de justice peuvent être entendus
Nous avons lancé aujourd’hui un nouveau rapport sur les besoins et la satisfaction en matière de justice à Mali. En coopération avec le ministère de la Justice du Mali, nous avons conçu cette deuxième enquête afin de suivre les progrès accomplis dans les travaux d’amélioration de l’accès du Malien à la justice. Nous avons aussi développé des indicateurs nouveau pour Mali et ODD 16.3.
En 2014, HiiL a mené la première enquête sur les besoins et la satisfaction de la justice (JNS) au Mali afin de mieux comprendre les besoins et les voies de la justice. Quatre ans plus tard (2018), nous avons mené une deuxième enquête. Nous avons parlé à 8307 personnes dans les 10 régions et dans le district de Bamako au Mali. En collaboration avec nos partenaires Deme-So, le ministère de la Justice du Mali et l’organisation de vote, GISSE, nous avons collecté les données et nos experts ont analysé les résultats.
La valeur de ces données est qu’elles identifient les domaines d’innovation. Il fournit également les éléments de base d’un programme d’innovation de justice fondé sur des données factuelles et sur lequel les parties prenantes peuvent décider. La prochaine phase, la transformation de la justice basée sur les données, est prête à être lancée.
Nous remercions l’ambassade des Pays-Bas à Bamako, l’ambassade des Pays-Bas à Bamako, Deme-So, le ministère de la Justice du Mali et le GISSE, pour leur soutien à ce travail en cours.
English text:
Today we launched the Justice Needs and Satisfaction report for Malian people. In co-operation with the Ministry of Justice of Mali, we designed this second enquiry to track the progress made of work to improve Malian’s access to justice, together with some innovative indicators of SDG 16.3.
If you follow the news or live in Mali, you are fully aware
of the tumultuous time the country has been having. There is conflict that is
disturbing the lives of ordinary people to mixed degrees. Rebels and government
clashed in the North of Mali in early 2012, by mid-2013 the United Nation’s
deployed a peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA).
Peace, strong institutions and justice are connected. In 2015, the leaders of the UN
member states agreed to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It
includes one goal about justice: SDG 16. Within SDG16, Target 16.3 commits to ensuring
equal access to justice for all by 2030.
Understanding the justice needs of ordinary citizens is the humble contribution we can make to supporting peace and justice in Mali. HiiL’s mission is directly aligned with SDG16, it is: to empower 150 million people to prevent and resolve their most pressing justice problems by 2030.
In 2014, HiiL conducted the first Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey (JNS) in Mali to enhance the understanding of the justice needs and paths to justice. Four years later (2018) we conducted a second survey. We spoke to 8,307 people in all 10 regions and the Bamako district in Mali. Together with our partners Deme-So, the Ministry of Justice of Mali and the Polling Organisation, GISSE we collected the data and our experts analysed the results.
The value of this data is that it identifies areas for innovation. It also provides the building blocks for an evidence-based agenda for justice delivery for stakeholders to decide upon. Piecing together data about the formal and informal sectors of justice we identify there is potential innovation space in the Malian justice delivery landscape. The next phase, transformation of justice based on the data, is ready to launch.
We thank the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bamako, the
Embassy of the Netherlands in Bamako, Deme-So, the Ministry of Justice of Mali
and GISSE, for their support of this ongoing work.
Below I share a story that left an impression on me; it is the story oa poor young woman in despair of justice in her country. Her name has been changed and I have omitted some of the particulars of her case, it is her voice all the same.
Animita’s Story
I had a dream of building my own health centre. I borrowed 1.5 million CFA from the bank in order to buy two plots of land from two young men. When I wanted to start building, I found out that the plots had already been sold to someone else.
I filed a complaint with the police. They promised to help me find the young men. I spent a lot of money on the police.
Eventually, the men were finally apprehended. One of the men who sold me land repaid me, the other refused – despite having admitted the facts in court and the judge ordered him to repay me in three months.
I was desperate to get my money back. The judge in charge of my case told me that it was not his duty to find the culprit and make him pay for the crime.
How is it possible that a young man confesses his guilt, yet the justice system is unable to make him pay for what he owes? We, the poor, are supposed to rely only on the justice system to protect us. But as the justice system does not meet these expectations, the situation becomes unbearable for us.
The stories in this post describe some of the justice problems women’s face; Violence against women, forced marriages, exploitation. I wished they were extraordinary but they are mundane.
Justice systems around the world fail to do what they are supposed to do: provide justice. Therefore, it becomes even harder for advocates, local and international, to make an impact on access to justice for women.
Women are disproportionately affected by justice systems that don’t address two thirds of peoples problems. This has a high impact on women’s lives; violence, loss of income, stress and relationships suffer. Constitutions and laws that promote justice for women aren’t securing real solutions or prevention. In practice, why is it that women’s rights are not protected, promoted, and violations prevented? We urgently need to invest in justice systems, create new services and succeed in securing fair solutions for everybody with a genuine need.
To achieve this, data about the injustices of women is badly needed. Women’s voices need to be heard about their experiences finding a solution to their problem. Then this knowledge can guide us to the transformation that is needed: one that answers the problems that occur time and time again.
At HiiL, we go straight to the people in various countries to measure their justice needs and satisfaction (JNS) and learn about their legal needs. The justice data reports (Justice Needs and Satisfaction reports) highlight to the stakeholders and actors of justice systems – from police to ministers – where the pain spots are. What we learn is hard to digest. Read these stories for yourself.
RIGHT TO HAVE A DAY IN COURT
(Name withheld), 17 years – Morocco
“After I filed for a divorce, my husband started sending me threatening messages. He even told me he’d take my daughter and go to Egypt. I never took him seriously, I thought he was just trying to scare me into changing my mind about the divorce and pension request for our daughter. I went out one day to buy some groceries and when I returned my daughter was gone. Her father took the opportunity of my absence and took her. The police informed me that my husband has this right – he legally did not abduct her. I tried calling him and my mother in law several times but they both refuse to answer. A lawyer then advised me to file a complaint denouncing the non-receipt of my pension as his wife. The court would then summon him and he’d be forced to return to Morocco. My case is still on hold. While I wait to hear back I cannot sleep at night.”
CHILD MARRIAGE AVOIDED, BUT CHILD UNPROTECTED
Morshida- Bangladesh
“My father decided to get me married when my age was not more than 12. As I was not willing to get married, my father made me leave my house in an evening after humiliation. With the advice of my uncles I went to Upazila Chief Officer with an application to solve this issue. He called my father but my father refused to talk. I moved into my grandma’s place at Mohanpur Upazila. My father stopped taking care of every responsibilities and paying my maintenance cost. After listening to this issue, the magistrate called me and my father to his room for solving this through mediation. They forced my father to bear my expenses. My father managed to skip this resolution somehow. My father owns lands and he is financially solvent but he kept lying to the court about the property he owns. The court might follow up the truth with a further warrant. My father also threatened the BRAC HRLS [legal aid service] officers many times. My father even used to make phone calls and threatened me for this issue. He has been denying to pay any kind of amount to me saying, « I will go to jail but I will not pay any amount. »
WAITING, WAITING FOR A CHANCE AT JUSTICE FOR HER RAPE
Rima – Lebanon
Rima is 27 years old and resides in the capital, Beirut. She is married, has a university degree and works as a secretary. Her story goes back almost three years, when she was working as a secretary in a travel agency.
“The owner asked me to stay for a paid overtime, but I did not understand his intentions. After [his] serious insistence, I agreed to stay overtime. Three days past by and nothing suspicious or unusual happened. On the fourth day, the owner asked me to copy a number of papers on the photocopy machine. While undertaking the task, he grabbed me, threw me on the floor and attempted to rape me. That time, I ran away and left the job. After the incident, I filed a lawsuit before the Public Prosecution in Beirut against him. The file was referred to the Investigation Judge and remains pending there until the present date.”
FIGHTING FOR ACCESS, FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL
Hind – Syrian refugee in Jordan
Hind is a 37-year-old Syrian refugee woman, married with a daughter.
Hind was very concerned because her daughter didn’t have a birth certificate. “When our daughter was four months old, we took her to get her vaccinated, but the authorities told us that they cannot give her any vaccinations because she doesn’t have a birth certificate.” Hind explained that this was also the case for any public service relevant to her daughter’s well-being: “Do you think it’s logical that not having a piece of paper could impact a new-born’s life?” Eventually a lawyer assisted Hind’s daughter in getting a birth certificate issued. Hind found the process very difficult and stressful. “This is not our country, and we lack awareness with the laws and regulations here. Some things are very different than what we were used to back in Syria”
NEVER WILL BE EDUCATED
(Name withheld) – Nigeria
“I wanted to go to school and become a nurse or doctor so much, but my father refused. I told him that I wanted to follow my friend to school, but he said that there was no money to send me to school, and that I am a woman. You know that in my place, women are not really sent to school, they would tell you to go and get married especially if your family is poor. Which was why I married, started giving birth and did not go to school again. But I have made up my mind that my children must go to school. I am just praying to God to help me with money and save us from all these challenges. I did not go to school, that is my greatest regret.”
These stories are the voices of ordinary women we interviewed. Their fundamental rights; right to education, right to health care, right to due process amongst others, have been trampled on.
We at HiiL truly believe basic justice care for everyone is possible. With data and technology, we co-create high quality justice based on what is needed now. The voices of women have to be firmly part of the foundation for innovation. Technology platforms can assist mothers registering a child birth from a remote location on a mobile phone. Legal platforms can give free legal advice and educate women on their rights, but also create accountability mechanisms against exploitation, or even protect their sources of income.
If you go to our justice dashboard, you can see our conversations with women turned into visualised data on an interactive data platform. Data from 13 countries are online this minute, and you can compare experiences of justice between men and women, between rural and urban areas, education level, and even more. It’s user-friendly, so go there now and tell us what conclusions you find.
The gathering produced an important political
document that can now be invoked and used to guide strategy making and
implementation: the Hague Declaration on Equal Access to Justice for All by 2030.
A large group of ministers of justice – Afghanistan, Argentina, Canada,
Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Indonesia, Libya, the Netherlands, Niger, Palestinian
Territories, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Uganda, and Ukraine –
together with ministers for international cooperation, leaders of international
organizations, and the Elders set five significant priorities:
Put people and their legal needs at the center of justice systems. Understand what people need and want when they seek justice, which obstacles they face, and what kind of justice they receive.
Solve justice problems. Transform justice institutions and services through a broader range of justice providers, using high-tech as well as low-tech innovative solutions, based on data, evidence and learning, while taking into account the specificities of each context.
Improve the quality of justice journeys. Empower people to understand, use and shape the law, while offering them fair informal and formal justice processes that meet their needs in terms of both procedures and outcomes.
Use justice for prevention. Make use of mediation and other methods to prevent disputes from escalating; address legacies of human rights violations; and invest in justice systems that are trustworthy and legitimate.
Provide people with means to access services and opportunities. Break down the legal, administrative, and practical barriers that people face to obtain documents, access public services, and participate fully in society and the economy, while promoting gender equality.
As someone who was in the room I can tell you that
justice leadership in Argentina, The Netherlands, Niger and Timor-Leste has
much more in common than one would think. New plans and practices are emerging.
One of them: to have more meetings at the leadership level to talk about the
best ways to implement these priorities. The Justice Leadership Group committed helping them do this. The Elders also unveiled a plan: their access to justice programme. This brings
the voices of 11 global leaders to the table – leaders that have access to the
highest levels of governments.
The Hague meetings also provided clarity about the
size of the problem. The final report of the Task Force on Justice is still
due. In the meantime, the World Justice Project, which led a working group on
the justice gap, published a Working Paper that
significantly deepens the understanding of where the main needs lie. An
estimated 5 billion people in the word have unmet justice needs. There are 244
million people who experience extreme conditions of injustice. They live in
countries where it is unsafe and rule of law is largely absent. Second: 1.5
billion people have unmet legal needs. They can’t get a solution If they have a
legal problem connected with housing, employment, family, and other issues
connected with daily life. This affects the most vulnerable groups most. The
third group is the largest: 4.4 billion people who lack legal identity or other
documentation related to employment, family or property and the like. Because
of it, they don’t get the protection of the law. In December, HiiL
published a report that has
data about the consequences of not having access to justice are. Violence,
personal injury, loss of income, stress, damaged relationships, and an
incredible amount of loss of time. Work is being done to get more data about on
the financing of justice. A first estimation shared by Marcus Manuel of the
Overseas Development Institute in a panel at the Innovating Justice Forum is
that it would cost $20 per person to provide basic justice care in low income
countries. That is less than universal health care, which the WHO estimates costs
around $34 per person. An estimated 2 billion people live in countries that
can’t afford half the costs of universal basic justice care. Innovation and
creativity is needed, because the share of aid going to justice has fallen with
40% in the last five years.
The Innovation Working Group of the Task Force on
Justice also launched a report(disclosure: I am
one of its members). It concludes that innovation in the justice sector is both
badly needed and possible. The Working Group proposes new mental models for the
justice sector that are very much in sync with the Hague Declaration:
make justice delivery efforts more people-centered and outcome-based. It sets
out a number of promising innovation directions, with a list of examples from
all over the word. It looks at the system changes that are needed to reach
scale, the most important of which is the need to level the playing field for
justice innovations. Regulatory frameworks must open up so that they can get
access to clients, money, and partnerships.
It was not all reports and declarations. Twelve
justice innovations from ten different countries battled the 2019 Innovating Justice Awards.
First prize went to CrimeSync from Sierra
Leone. Their web and mobile application allows ministries of justice,
judiciaries, prosecutions services, police and prison services to organise,
collaborate and share information. Runner up was Haqdarshak from India, which supports citizens discover, apply
for and benefit from welfare schemes. South African innovator Creative Contracts came third with visual
contracts that are easy to understand for everyone. The jury concluded that all
these justice innovations be scaled across many countries.
These are many committed groups. Together, they make up a committed global movement. The question now is not what should be done, it’s of doing what’s in front of us.
Over 1 million Ugandans who are facing family conflicts are waiting for solutions that can enable them to move on with their lives. Our goal was to develop a practical manual to help people resolve their family conflicts. How did we do?
Practical solutions to help resolve family conflicts
On the 11th and 12th of February, a group of 10 Ugandan experts in the field of family justice gathered in Entebbe. Across Uganda, HiiL has engaged practitioners and users to collect evidence on family conflicts and solutions. Now this group of 10 passionate experts was faced with the difficult task of combining the large amount of knowledge HiiL worked to consolidate into a practical handbook that people can use: The Uganda Family Justice Catalogue. It was clear that there were long days ahead!
Over the past year, over 120 Ugandan practitioners and users from across the country had engaged in focus group discussions to submit and evaluated their best practices from the field. These focus group discussions have been facilitated by HiiL in both rural and urban settings with a wide range of participants. An international research team coordinated by HiiL has developed and executed a methodology to collect and analyze supporting evidence.
Delving into the challenge
The group held a strong sense of purpose and responsibility.Having a group that included police officers, lawyers, justice workers, teachers and researchers, led to many different perspectives being shared and evaluated. While at times there was disagreement, the group was determined to reach consensus on all topics, all details mattered.
The challenge of developing a shared understanding with a diverse group was mitigated by our shared vision of making the best practical handbook possible that will change the lives of families, particularly young children.
The participants agreed that the goal over the next two days was to reach a common understanding. They knew that at times this would not be easy. There are many different ways that people approach resolving a family conflict and what works in some cases may not work well in others. Some important gaps that needed to be addressed emerged through sharing the varied experience in the group, guided by Dr. Richard Asaba and HiiL’s family justice research team.
Making the family solutions work
There is a shared understanding that resolving family disputes is all about human relationships. The roles of all practitioners and helpers should be to help family members to agree to new arrangements that help them to manage these relationships in a better way. The group agreed that laws and institutions can be helpful, but they too should be encouraged to follow a problem-solving approach. A few questions were repeated multiple times as the group evaluated the evidence “how will this affect the well-being of each family member?”, “Can this work in an urban/rural context?”, “Can this work for all users/practitioners?”. Local leaders play a pivotal role in resolving family disputes and looking out for the well-being of families in their community. They need to be able to rely on practical solutions they can implement on the ground and this is precisely what the catalogue aims to provide them with.
Uganda is ready for the Family Justice Catalogue, and the Catalogue is (almost) ready for Uganda!
After long days of deliberations, the group were triumphant. The group was in agreement with what needed to be changed for the best possible handbook to be presented to Uganda family justice practitioners and their helpers. Different versions of the catalogue will be tested in the coming weeks before it is officially launched and distributed to practitioners and users across Uganda. This process is being implemented by us, JLOS as well as an international group of family justice experts.
I hope you can use today to grow knowledge. Share best practices. Make plans…. Let’s Innovate!
–Sam Muller, Opening Address at the 9th annual Innovating Justice Forum.
This February 2019, HiiL hosted the global-scale Innovating Justice Forum; the annual event for the best and brightest in justice innovation from all corners of the globe gather. The Forum provides the most important paradigm shift for justice in decades: people–centred and evidence–based ways of working towards solutions.
From justice innovation to scale
The theme of the Forum was ‘From innovation to scale’.
A newly published report for the Task Force on Justice, which HiiL’s CEO has and continues to advise on, calculated the size of the access to justice gap to be in the billions.
4.4 billion people are excluded from the opportunity the law provides.
1.5 billion people have unmet legal needs.
244 million people experience extreme conditions of injustice.
There is a ‘silent crisis’ said CEO of LegalZoom, Eddie Hartman. But the Forum really puts the spotlight on it. More importantly, it brings forth the ways of working to effectively deal with the justice gap.
Innovation that touches people’s lives
Innovations are new ideas that can make impact on people’s lives and the justice system
– Dr. Priscilla Schwartz, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Sierra Leone,
Justice systems are not meeting the needs of people in a serious way, basically in every country. We must challenge some of our basic assumptions about what justice systems must do and how they do that. Justice should be re-framed in terms of the justice needs of people and the fairness of their relationships.
To put into action, Bram van Hasselt, Legal Design Thinking said: Let’s work together with the users. You can teach them to get solutions on their own.
The radical assumption that has been changed is of having antiquated systems that users have to live with or live without. What solutions do people want, what are the tools that best empower them to achieve them?
The aim is improving access to justice in a more human friendly way.
Building more inclusive societies
In the countries that HiiL has surveyed only one third of the problems are solved completely. Data is how to achieve people-centred justice.The idea behind gathering data on justice needs of people is to break the innovation justice echo chamber and go where solutions are needed most urgently.
A session in the Peace Palace, from Data to Action hosted by Sara Hossain, (Lawyer at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh) and Rodrigo Nunez, (Justice sector advisor at HiiL) shared skills relating to three new ways of working:
scaling up
reaching those in needs (targeting)
measuring impact
Private and public funding is needed to deal with this crisis, but as the Open Society Foundation working session argued: You can’t ask for more finance is you keep doing the same thing, so embrace data! New evidence-based ways of working can guide investments to deliver social impact.
A value proposition change is needed: justice is not just a cost… it is a value-added. It needs to be re-framed as a social good; much like health and education.
What if education systems missed two thirds of children? – Sam Muller.
People-centred, evidence-based innovation in action!
HiiL organizes a global-scale annual competition to promote these sort of justice innovations. The competition drew over 1000 innovators. From these, a long-list of 400 was compiled, out of which a final 12 were invited to pitch their solution for an urgent access to justice issue at the Innovating Justice Forum at the Peace Palace in The Hague in front of an expert panel.
The 12 innovations address a justice problem in a local context, from bike theft in Kenya, to illiterate workers understanding their contractual rights, to mobile phone applications that empower users with legal knowledge … the responsiveness of innovation to solve a problem was clear after 12 provocative pitches from innovators from Uganda, Rwanda, India, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Benin and more.
The winner of the Innovating Justice Awards 2019, is CrimeSync from Sierra Leone. The jury felt CrimeSync, pitched by Sorieba Daffae, offered a most promising innovation with a high potential to scale, “and replicability across many countries, bringing transparency to an often-compromised system”. The web and mobile application allows justice sector stakeholders to organise, collaborate and share information through electronic case management. Read more about CrimeSync here.
Justice Leadership Group dialogue
In the afternoon of the 6th, the Justice Leadership Group shared their first-hand experience in leading remarkable change in the countries they have served. The panel included the Former Attorney General of Botswana, Athaliah Molokomme, Former Chief Justice of Kenya, Willy Mutunga, the Former President of the International Criminal Court, Sang–Hyun Song, Former Minister of Justice of Jordan, Salaheddin Al–Bashir and Judge at the Court of Cessation in Tunisia, Kalthoum Kennou. Changing justice systems to be people-centred is hard. Dangerous even. Certainly lonely. As HiiL’s Access to Justice expert, Maurits Barendrecht phrased it: you always emerge with battle scars when trying to scale justice innovations. The Justice Leadership Group’s experience in these matters assists senior justice leaders work more effectively towards people-centred justice.
Memorable moments from the Forum
Goosebumps for audience members watching the premier screening of The Justice Leaders, set in Uganda and following two leaders
A call to action by H.E. Priscilla Schwartz: enough of development funding solely going to the ‘wigs and gowns’ let’s re-orientate justice funding towards needs of ordinary people
The launch of the super-interactive Justice Dashboard at the Peace Palace
The announcement of the Legal Tech Alliance: forming the third pillar available to the justice innovators HiiL supports (alongside 1. justice sector knowledge and 2. business development)
Developing methods of empowering the users of justice systems. Innovator Willem Jan Ausma of Adapting Legal, pitched a new model of for clients of legal services: given the right tools they can do things for themselves. The working session by Legal Design Thinking, had people apply taught skills to empower users to reach their own solutions
Arinda Daphine sharing her poetry and with chilling skill capturing the lack of justice that befalls women and girls
Afro-soul artist, Faith Mussa performing music on unspoken justice needs
The spirit of 9 ‘electric’ working sessions in The Hague Humanity Hub was captured amazingly in cartoons by super-illustrator Bob
The sparks of partnerships forming around the Humanity Hub and Peace Palace.
The unveiling of a phenomenal visual recording of the whole day in the Peace Palace Birgit Smit
What people are saying about HiiL
Over 350 attended the sold out event, with numerous sectors represented, including tech, Big Data, lawyers and legal academics, government (Iraq, Argentina, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Mali and more), justice leaders, finance, and social entrepreneurs. Representatives were present from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNDP, Bingham Centre, Namati, UN, LegalZoom and many more.
Talking to an interviewer, the Innovating Justice Award 2019 winner Sorieba Daffae said working with HiiL was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Lawyer, Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo: I studied Law guided by the belief that it is a powerful tool to change the world and to challenge social inequalities. Thanks to the Innovative Justice Forum for reaffirming my thought.
Founder, Kanan Dru: Powerful speeches, thought provoking panel discussions, inspiring innovators and an audience that resonates with it all… with a whole lot of learnings and connections to take back home!
Wim Janson of the City of the Hague: The Innovating Justice Forum was part of the ‘biggest mobilisation in justice for a decade.
Softplan: The day to day does not allow us to often absorb the impact of our work and our responsibility in the lives of tens of millions of Brazilians. In this type of event, involving organizations and reference companies around the world in the segment of justice, we realize how complex and challenging our mission is.
Sket, user-centric legal services: We believe in the transformation of legal services to address underserved legal needs and luckily we are not alone in our mission to make user-friendly justice a reality.
What’s next
We’ll be back next year with another Forum, you might even see it come to a city near you as the user-friendly justice movement becomes ever-global and more of you want to take part.
A Sincere Thank you to Partners
Thank you to all our supportive partners for making the Innovating Justice Forum possible in The Hague: the Municipality of The Hague, the Swedish International Development Agency, the German Development Agency GIZ, the EU, and the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Also with special thanks to Namati, Open Society Justice, the World Justice Project, Legal Design Thinking Network, Humanity X, Legal Hackers The Hague, IDLO, Softplan, Open Society Justice, Terre des Hommes, and UNDP.
We are proud to publish the report of the Innovation Working Group of the Task Force on Justice. The Innovation Working Group was asked to review the evidence of unmet justice needs, explore the potential for innovation, explore the investment possibilities for promising innovation areas, provide parameters for enhancing innovation for SDG16.3, and to make recommendations on these matters to the Task Force on Justice.
It concludes that the access to justice gap in the world is huge. Justice systems are not meeting the needs of people in a serious way. We will need innovation to deal with this problem. We must challenge some of our basic assumptions about what justice systems must do and how they do that.
Justice should be re-framed in terms of the justice needs of people and the fairness of their relationships. We need a focus on outcomes.
Justice systems must also open-up and let others in besides lawyers.
We must also start seeing costs differently: justice systems don’t only cost money; they also provide ‘revenue’ and benefits in the social and economic sense.
We have seen the emergence of new technologies and services, both very new technological advances and 21st century upgrades of ancient traditions, that are available to close the justice gap.
It is also necessary to open up when it comes to financing justice innovation.
The report ends with some suggestions about what is needed from whom to make this change happen.
Dutch parliament considers proposals to reform legal aid and to enhance the services of the judiciary. In a letter to Minister Dekker and to the Committee on Justice and Security of the Second Chamber of Parliament, HiiL focuses on ensuring access to fair and effective solutions for citizens. From this perspective, we comment on the overall strategy, the need for more data on justice outcomes for citizens, the current proposals and the climate for this transition. Our letter also contains suggestions for meeting immediate needs of citizens and the providers of legal services (in Dutch).
De Tweede Kamer bespreekt deze week voorstellen voor rechtsbijstand en de toekomstplannen van de rechterlijke macht. In een brief aan Minister Dekker en de Commissie voor Justitie en Veiligheid, focust HiiL op de routes naar eerlijke en werkbare oplossingen voor burgers. Vanuit dit perspectief, bespreken we de algemene strategie, de behoefte aan meer data over de uitkomsten die mensen nodig hebben, de huidige voorstellen en het klimaat voor de transitie in de rechtspleging die nu plaatsvindt. Onze brief bevat ook suggesties om tegemoet te komen aan de korte termijn behoeften van burgers en van juridische dienstverleners en in het bijzonder de sociale advocatuur.
The Washington Post reported on 19 December that justice was the word of the year 2018, based on data about searches on the online dictionary Merriam-Webster. Interesting. It seems there was a constant need for this word. The writer of the piece adds: “[w]hat we saw with justice in 2018 was more like a continuous sequence of bumps in the data rather than a single outstanding spike.”
A movement is under way. No, not populism or Islamic extremism. A
movement to get justice systems to produce better value. To be more
precise: to get ministries of justice, bar associations, universities –
the threesome that have held the legal services marketplace in their
hands for too long – to let go and innovate. The objective: to create a
movement of funders and do’ers that will ensure that we realize Sustainable Development Target 16.3: equal access to justice for all. We are hopelessly behind, both in terms of ideas to meet the challenge and in terms of funding.
The Task Force on Justice process that I have written about before is gathering steam. In one year, the Task Force met twice at the ministerial level, once in Buenos Aires, and once in Freetown. Working groups have worked on different aspects of the problem. Measuring the size of the justice gap. What do people need and want when they seek justice? What kind of justice do they receive? Making the case. What is the case for action and investment in equal access to justice for all? What strategy is needed for financing equal access to justice for all? Establishing what works. What strategies, tools and approaches will increase access to justice? Taking action. What commitments should national and local actors make to closing the justice gap? How can international and regional cooperation support access to justice at national levels? How should those defending justice be supported and protected? There has been a High Level Group on Justice for Women. A working group on Innovation. Many events have been held and more are coming. On 6 February the 9thInnovating Justice Forum will take place in the Peace Palace in The Hague. This will be followed by 2 days of meetings of the Task Force on Justice, including a special Justice Partners Forum to consult with an expanding group of organisations and experts. At that meeting, the Task Force will agree on its final report. That report will include an assessment of where we stand, what needs to be done to meet the challenge, and a call to action. The report will be sent to the High Level Political Forum in which progress regarding the Sustainable Development Goals is assessedSDG16 will be reviewed for the first time since its adoption. At the SDG summit in September World leaders will be asked to mobilize further actions to accelerate implementation, including on the Agenda for action for Justice that the Task Force will propose.
Even more than 2018, I believe 2019 will be a year of justice. Between 29 April and 2 May the World Justice Forum will take place in The Hague. These events mark one more wave of growing involvement, commitment, and thinking about new and more effective ways to get justice to people.
At HiiL we published a trend report entitled The Elephant in the Courtroom that quantifies and pinpoints the needs. It assesses where promising innovation is happening. And it makes concrete suggestions for improvements at scale. Globally, innovation is encouraging, nearing a major breakthrough. It is an exciting time to be in the justice sector.
This is a good way to end the year. Justice as the word that counted most. And visible progress to deal with the global justice gap.
20 december 2018. Globally, an estimated 2 billion justice problems remain unresolved as you read this article. Peace and justice are needed at magnificent scale. Today we launch HiiL’s report: “Understanding Justice Needs, The Elephant In The Courtroom”. It pinpoints the trends and data on the needs of justice users and how providers of justice serve them.
We interviewed tens of thousands of people to understand their justice needs. From their kitchen tables, people from 12 countries led us through their justice journeys. They mostly encounter issues in their family, at work, in their neighbourhood, regarding land or related to violence and theft.
From these findings, we put forward a path to make justice systems more responsive to the needs of users. The data strongly suggest that traditional legal procedures alone cannot meet all needs. Solutions need to focus on building understanding and improving relationships rather than assigning blame. We see a wide variety of methods that are working in the field with big potential for scaling-up, if legal systems would embrace them.
Globally, innovation is encouraging, nearing a major breakthrough. It is an exciting time to be in the justice sector. A transformation to evidence-based working is taking place. Judges are being released from overly legalistic procedures. This transformation needs to accelerate, so equal access to justice for all can be achieved. A major movement is building to make this happen. So societies can become more just, peaceful and inclusive (Sustainable Development Goal 16).
As preparation for the Innovating Justice Forum mounts, we are very proud and excited to announce the 12 innovators who will grace the forum with their brilliance and passion. Coming from 10 different countries across Africa, Europe, and Asia, the Forum acts as a stage for their ideas to be the points of discussion amongst fellow innovators and legal professionals.
After going through the hoops at the #JustInnovate Challenges, these innovators have put their ideas and scalability to the test. Here they are! (in no particular order)
An app that informs users about their employment rights including leave days for both annual and maternity, overtime rates and notice before resigning or being terminated.
Is simplifying the justice ecosystem by simulating Ugandans experience through an entertaining card & board game that mirrors their environment and subsequently empowers them.
Offers online services (Software as a Service) to check, edit and draft legal documents, initiating legal procedures and to outsource legal procedures.
Seeks to remove barriers to entry for legal assistance by providing DIY legal solutions in the form of video tutorials that can speed up process of resolving legal matters.
The Forum will take place in the Peace Palace in The Hague, on 6 February 2019.
This year’s Forum is connected to a meeting of the international Justice Task Force, part of a wider initiative called Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just, and Inclusive Societies. The Task Force works to encourage an acceleration in the provision of justice to people and communities outside the protection of the law, in line with SDG16.3 and related targets on justice. It is co-chaired by H.E. Germán Garavano, Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Argentina; H.E. Sigrid Kaag, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; and Ms. Hina Jilani of the Elders and the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Sierra Leone, Dr. Priscilla Schwartz.
This year, the Forum will focus on the theme: “From Justice Innovation to Scale”. How do we get data, innovation, and funding to some together in a real transition that produces user friendly justice at scale?
We invite this year’s best justice innovations from across the world to showcase and learn from these amazing initiatives. The Forum also aims to be a platform for justice leadership conversations around the challenge of scale.
Tickets are on sale now! Last year’s Forum was sold out so make sure to reserve your space. Share your ideas on justice innovation with us. A provisional programme will be posted online on our website very shortly.
For more information about the Forum, keep a close look at our website, Twitter, and Facebook, where we will post regular updates. Should you have more nagging questions, do not hesitate to send us an email. We are here and we cannot wait to welcome you at the Innovating Justice Forum 2019.
I was walking down the street with Nelson, one of the regional finalists of our 2018 Innovating Justice Award. He’s co-founder of Gavel (and, more visible: @citizen_gavel on Twitter). A social enterprise that calls itself “a civic tech organisation aimed at improving the pace of justice delivery through tech”. As part of the entrepreneurship training we give the finalists we ask the justice entrepreneurs to speak to the street. Find and talk to justice customers. Learn what they need. How they need it. When they need it. What they do when they need it. This was a busy street in Lagos. We met Frank. Or actually, he met us.
“Can ask what you are doing?”, he asked.
“We are doing research about justice” replied Nelson, “Can we ask you some questions?”
“Of course you can.” Frank was eager.
“Have you ever faced police brutality?”
“Oh yes!”, he shot back.
“It was connected to a family member…”. He talked so fast I could barely follow. He had stood up to the police over a minor occurrence involving his car. They had come to his house. Arrested two family members – including young boy. Frank was well embedded in his community so the neighbours had come to the kafuffle. The matter had been settled by an implicit agreement not to settle. The police withdrew and let the family members go. It was clear to Frank that that’s where he should leave it. He’d wanted to report it higher up but he did not think that would be a good idea.
“I want to be proud of my country!” he said at the end, visibly emotional. “I want to feel safe and have justice!” There is no justice here. We are not safe. If I could leave I would leave. For my children. Nobody cares about us. I see the police do this all the time. They wait for a small traffic thing. Something that is nothing. Then they grab you.“
“Would you be interested in an App that would allow you to quickly report these types things?” asked Nelson.
“YESSSS!”, Frank responded, his eyes opening wide. “Give it to me now and I will immediately give it to all my family members and friends!”
We thanked Frank and walked on. Our next interviewee was a second hand TV seller in a small pavement shop that only had a roof.
“Police? Oh yes..”, he replied. “I sold a TV to a policeman. After 2 months he came back and said it was broken. We had agreed on a 2-week warranty. He wanted me to fix it. I said he would have to pay for it. He threatened me. He wanted to arrest me. Take me to jail for all kinds of reasons. He threatened to take another TV. I went to the police station. But I got nowhere. There is no point going to a lawyer. I can’t afford that. I also see them there…” he pointed to the corner of the street, “Every morning. They stop cars. These people need to pay 3000 niarra. Every morning.”
John also had great interest in the App.
It is incredibly important that a justice entrepreneur constantly tests his/her belief in the problem he/she is trying to solve and the way in which he/she proposes to do this. It may seem obvious. But there are many reasons not to. It costs time. Effort. Money. It is very scary. But the biggest challenge is the White Knight Syndrome, as I call it. The trap of the passion you have for your cause. I first came across it as a UN staff member, working with refugees in the Middle East and later on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. We were doing good. Fighting for a true and worthy cause. That meant we were right, at least most of the time. If an annoying question came to us, our basic feeling was “Hey! Be constructive. Stop obstructing our hugely important work. Should we not be handing out food to refugees or go after war criminals?“ If I look back, it narrowed our focus to truly being open to asking the right questions and criticism. And that made our product less good than it might have been.
Nelson is a remarkable lawyer, fully committed to helping deliver better justice. Passionate about dealing with police brutality, especially against young people. Dedicated to developing something that has a sustainable funding model. Talking to the streets of Lagos for one hour gave him a lot of valuable insights and leads to follow. Policy brutality also involves petty traffic fines. That’s a pretty big market. Frank would give the app to all his friends and family. Can the Franks of Nigeria be a good marketing tool and distribution channel? Speak to the streets. Lawyers, judges and civil servants of ministries of justice should start doing that.
HiiL looks back with pride on the Innovating Justice Conferences of 2018, which were held in seven locations in seven countries across Africa, Europe, and Asia between September and October 2018. Over 40 justice entrepreneurs were selected out of more than 430 applications worldwide to pitch their justice innovation. Driven by a passion for justice innovation and supported by the presence of equally dedicated members of the audience, they showed how they are making justice more user-friendly.
Our justice journey kicked off on 4 September in Johannesburg, with seven entrepreneurs participating. Baobab Law took first place, this inspiring startup provides answers to pressing legal questions in the form of videos of lawyers explaining the law. Judges were impressed with the quick growth of the startup and the partnerships they have developed since inception.
On 21 September, two Innovating Justice Conferences took place in Lagos and Nairobi. In each Conference, seven justice entrepreneurs competed for the first place. In Lagos, HeLawyer from Benin won. HeLawyer is a mobile app which provides around the clock legal advice to citizens. HiiL CEO, Sam Muller, attended the Lagos Conference and opened the event by saying how he felt immensely “humbled” by the drive and promise of justice entrepreneurship he had witnessed. In Nairobi, BTrack Global took first place. The winning innovators created a tracking system allowing owners to track their stolen boda bodas with the use of their smart phones and easily recover them.
Less than a week later, on 27 September, our fourth Innovating Justice Conference took off in Kyiv. Six finalists presented their justice innovation. AxDraft, a free online platform with templates of legal documents for small and medium enterprises, won first place. Continuing the mission for justice the next day, we held another Innovating Justice Conference in Kampala on 28 September. The winner was Yunga, a local digital rescue network for neighbours, allowing them to communicate with each other in case of an attack.
On 2 October, the penultimate The Hague Innovating Justice Conference was held. Six entrepreneurs pitched their innovation to the jury and the audience. Juridische Hulp Online (JHO) took victory home. JHO is a digital platform for starting legal procedures, drafting and editing legal documents. However, one startup that won the Audience Award really captured the audience’s mind. New Dutch Connections, an innovation which aims to bring legal empowerment to refugees, blew the room away with an electrifying pitch.
Last but certainly not least, the final Innovating Justice Conference took place on 6 October in Dhaka. The Dhaka Conference was the first time HiiL organized such an event in Asia. The winner was Haqdarshak from India, a tech platform which helps citizens discover and apply for social benefits.
If you come across an inspiring justice innovation or legal tech from your city, send us a tip! Or better yet, start innovating yourself and be part of the global movement of justice innovation.
Check out the highlights from these events on our Facebook page! Or get a sneak peek on what goes on our #JustInnovate Conference below.
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is pleased to announce that 17 innovators and entrepreneurs have been selected to enter its prestigious Justice Accelerator program, which commences from the end of October.
The Justice Accelerator is designed to help innovators working on scalable, sustainable solutions to access to justice problems grow, The startups were selected through the Innovating Justice Challenge, in a process that including online engagement, training and regional pitching finals in seven locations around the world.
All of the innovators selected will receive an initial grant of EUR 5,000, with additional funding and business service support available throughout the year.
“This year is our largest ever cohort and we’re delighted to have participants from countries where HiiL hasn’t previously operated, including Benin, Bangladesh and India,” says Ellen Tacoma, director of the Justice Accelerator. “The quality of applications has been exceptional, and we hope that all of those who didn’t make it through to the Accelerator will continue to stay in touch and be part of the HiiL network as we move on.”
HiiL supports entrepreneurs and innovators working on both for profit and not-for-profit solutions through the Justice Accelerator. This year’s innovations cover a wide variety of services for assisting with criminal procedures, legal services, property rights and business contracting issues. The solutions include mobile access to legal advice via shortcodes, a chatbot, an automated contracting platform and a board game.
“We’re looking forward to working with such a range of different ideas and experiences,” Tacoma says, “One of the most important parts of the program is learning from others as we all work towards the goal of access to justice for all.”
“Together with its partners, JHO helps private individuals, entrepreneurs, law firms and business service providers to make legal processes / procedures simple and transparent.”
“By having lawyers create engaging tutorial style video-based tutorials (with attachments), we can empower people to resolve many of their own legal issues.”
“Online (or offline) real-time legal document automation designed for everyday people. It includes help, guidance and examples throughout the process including multiple workflows.”
CrimeSync is an all-in-one digital crime records management application which serves to improve judicial service delivery through the whole justice chain.
“FarmworkerzApp seeks to connect vetted farm-hands to potential farms for hiring anytime, anywhere to eliminate service/employment injustice and conflicts between workers and farm owners.”
Yunga is a local rescue digital network for neighbours, that allows them to communicate with each other in real time in case of attack
Uganda
Tunga – Nkola App
Tunga Innovations Ltd is an app that informs users about their employment rights. E.g leave days both annual and maternity, overtime rates and notice before resigning or being terminated.
ZG is simplifying the justice ecosystem by simulating Ugandans experience through an entertaining card & board game, that mirrors their environment and subsequently empowers them.
Following spectacular Regional Finals in Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, Kyiv, Kampala and The Hague, we have concluded our world-wide Innovating Justice Challenge in Dhaka on October 6th. Four justice entrepreneurs from India, Myanmar and Bangladesh presented their justice innovation and competed for a chance to join HiiL’s Accelerator. The Dhaka Finals, which had been organized in close cooperation with BRAC, were the first time an Innovating Justice Challenge was held in Bangladesh. As HiiL is looking to expand its activities to East Asia, the Dhaka Regional Finals were a spectacular start of our justice journey there.
The keynote speech by Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman focused on the need for innovation in the justice sector. According to Dr. Rahman: “many people pay bribes to protect themselves, not to gain anything”.
The winner of the pitch competition was Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Pvt Ltd from India, a tech platform which helps citizens discover, apply for and benefit for government welfare schemes. The other three innovators that participated were:
Lawmate.In from, which providesall business legal services to startups on one single online platform.
Babadon Sango from Bangladesh, which prepares maps use of an open source Android based mobile application, Geo-ODK, on smart phones and tablets by Deed Writers and Para surveyors
Ma Ma Gyi App from Myanmar, a security technology app for women to commute safely, by allowing them to communicate with their circle of trust
Justice innovation is everywhere: from Kampala to Kiev to The Hague. Find out more about the pioneering entrepreneurs who are trying to bridge the gap in justice in our next round of Innovating Justice Conferences!
On 27 September, our fourth Regional Final of the Innovating Justice Challenge took place. This time, we were in Kyiv, Ukraine, where six Ukrainian justice entrepreneurs presented their innovation to the jury and competed for a spot on the Justice Accelerator program. Oleksii Dorogan of the Better Regulation Office held a keynote speech followed by the pitches and panel discussions. And now the winner….Axdraft! Axdraft is a free online platform of high quality automated legal documents for small and medium sized enterprises. Second place and audience choice award went to Vkursi. Vkursi offers a business integrity check in 1 click. It is a legal advisory and algorithm for dealing with company threats based on open data and AI.
One day later, we continued in Kampala where we had a full programme of ten pitches and several speakers. The keynote speech was given by Lade Justice Kazaarwe, who stated that innovation was needed to get justice. We also had a panel discussion by the Family Justice Core Group on best practices in resolving family justice issues such as divorce. They emphasized that it is important to consider the needs of the child in a divorce and the need to involve both men and women in solving family issues. First place went to Yunga, a local rescue digital network for neighbours, that allows them to communicate with each other in real time in case of attack. Tunga won second place. Tunga Innovations Ltd is an app that informs users about their employment rights. E.g leave days both annual and maternity, overtime rates and notice before resigning or being terminated. Audience choice went to Prison Officer Legal Empowerment (POLE) Model; POLE empowers prison communities and the poor with the law. It aims to be incorporated into the training curriculum of prisons.
Our second last Regional Final was held in The Hague on 2 October 2018, as part of Impact Startup Fest. Sam Muller, CEO of HiiL, opened the Conference by reminding everyone of the need for justice innovation and the global movement that has started to accelerate Sustainable Development Goal 16.3: access to justice for all. Six innovators competed for the first place but eventually Juridische Hulp Online, a digital platform for starting legal procedures and creating legal documents. Together with its partners, JHO helps private individuals, entrepreneurs, law firms and business service providers to make legal processes /procedures simple and transparent. Audience choice award went to New Dutch Connections-Know Your Rights, a mentorship programme which links refugees to law firms and law students. During the event, Richard Faas from ARAG and Max Heck from Appjection, one of the finalists in 2016 Regional Finals, spoke about how to scale innovations. They emphasized the importance of collaboration between the corporate sector and promising new business startups.
Congratulations to all winners of the three Regional Finals and all the participating innovators! Follow us on the final leg of our Innovating Justice Challenge in Dhaka, on October 6th.
We went to the homes of 6,130 randomly selected Nigerians across all geopolitical regions. Their voices represent the experiences of more than 180 million fellow citizens. We knocked at their doors to ask them whether they had experienced one or more of the 102 specific legal problems on our list. Read the full report here.
Nigerians suffer most from neighbour-related disputes, crime, money, land and employment issues. Seven out of ten Nigerians report at least one problem.
People get legal information and advice from their personal network
We asked if they sought legal information and advice in trying to resolve their legal problems. Around 70% of them did so, mostly through people they know. Lawyers are accessible only to those who can afford them.
Many people get their problems resolved, but sometimes fairness is missing
The enumerators asked if people acted to resolve their legal problems. Around seven out of ten did so, mostly by approaching the other party directly. Sometimes they involved friends and family as well. Resolution usually happens outside of courts and without lawyers.
Regarding resolution, only four out of ten processes reach complete resolution. The majority of Nigerians do not get a fair resolution, particularly in cases related to employment.
Women and poor people suffer the most
Poor women are the least likely to get their legal problem resolved, and if they do, the quality of the result does not satisfy them. Poor people have more employment-related legal problems.
On 21 September, two unique and electrifying events took place in Nairobi and Lagos: the annual Innovating Justice Conference. The conferences brought together a unique and inspiring mix of justice entrepreneurs, members of the legal and justice sector, representatives from the government and Embassies and many more. All are driven by their motivation to bring innovation to the justice system and make justice accessible for all!
HiiL’s Justice Accelerator team selected seven finalists from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Benin to compete in Lagos and seven finalists from Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania to participate in Nairobi. All finalists had to present their justice innovation to the audience, after which a jury selected the most promising one as the winner. Following an exciting and impressive competition, HiiL is pleased to announce the winners in both Lagos and Nairobi.
Lagos Innovating Justice Conference
And the winner is…..HeLawyer! The first place goes to HeLawyer, a mobile app from Benin specializing in legal advice. It provides citizens, legal information and legal advice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Second place goes to #NoMore, an app that enables females students at Nigerian university campuses to securely report cases of sexual harassment, rape or abuse. Third place goes to Fix Solutions/Crime Sync from Sierra Leone, an all-in-one digital crime records management application which serves to improve judicial service delivery through the whole justice chain.
The Lagos Innovating Justice Conference brought together an impressive line-up of speakers. The Conference was opened by keynote speaker, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, co-founder of Transparency International and and Public Policy Expert, Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative (AEDPI), who praised HiiL’s engagement in Nigeria, stating that” it is my hope that this programme of HiiL becomes a global good”. In a powerful address, Dr. Ezekwesili urged all stakeholders to work towards reducing poverty and eliminating inequality in order to make justice more accessible in Nigeria.
Vice-President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo also highlighted the problem of poverty but noted that the government has taken measures to support innovation in the public sector.
A panel discussion touched the meaning of data for Nigeria’s justice system with:
His Excellency, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, Governor of Ondo State
Dr. Yemi Dipeolu, Special Adviser to the President on Economic Matters, Office of the Vice-President
Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, co-founder, Transparency International and Public Policy Expert, Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative (AEDPI)
Olasupo Shasore (SAN) – Former Attorney-General for Lagos State
Michel Deelen, Head, Netherlands Embassy Office in Lagos and Deputy Head of Mission
H.E. Rotimi Akeredolu, Governor of Ondo State, stated that ” lawyers’ clients are suffering from delays in justice delivery”. He highlighted the innovations that had been made already to address these delays but added that more should be done.
After the Conference, HiiL’s CEO Dr. Sam Muller said he “felt humbled” by the power, drive and promise of the justice entrepreneurship he witnessed in Lagos. Mr. Gbemi King, Head, Training and Development, Women Arise expressed that is he pleased that one of the panel discussions was on the protection of the rights of girls and women. He believes that it will help reduce the high rate of sexual and domestic violence in the country.
Nairobi Innovating Justice Conference
Following the excitement of the Lagos Innovating Justice Conference, we continued our journey for justice innovation in Nairobi. Seven finalists pitched their ideas and the winner is…..Btrack Global! Btrack Globalenables motorcyclists to track their motorcycles through the use of phones, to make them easily recoverable after they have been stolen. Second place went to Viamo, a start up from Rwanda. Viamo is developing information on access to justice that will be made available on demand in pre-recorded audio and text, on a toll-free mobile service under the shortcode 845, supported by MTN. Third place and audience choice award went to Wakili Mkononi, an edutainment platform that simplifies legal information and connects users to legal help.
During the Conference, the audience heard from an impressive list of speakers on the need for justice innovation. The Honorable Justice William Ouko, President of the Court of Appeal, delivered the keynote address. According to him “access to justice includes; easily accessible justice, in an easily understood language and affordable fees”. During a panel discussion, the panelists talked about how to scale up solutions and bring justice across borders.
The Honorable Justice Gitembu Kairu, Head of ICT Committee
Francis Maina, Director of Coordination Office, Governance Justice Law and Order Sector
Zeinab Mukhtar Ali, Education Officer, Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission
“Judges and Magistrates are still writing law by hand. The innovation here is to record audio proceedings and thus make it easily transferable to text…and communication system between courts and the clients…”, said Justice Gitembu Kairu. He also added that the judiciary in Kenya “lacks adequate human resource to deal with all cases that come before them, they are therefore responsive to the use of ICTs.” Francis Maina stated that “public awareness is an area where there needs to be partnership between the private and public sector particularly in access to justice.”
The team of HiiL would like to issue a special thank you to all the speakers and members of the jury at the Innovating Justice Conferences in Lagos and Nairobi. The Conferences brought us one step closer to achieve our goal: making justice accessible for all. Our journey to accessible justice does not end here though. Stay tuned for more updates, because on 27 September our next Innovating Justice Conference will take place in Kyiv, Ukraine!
Following a successful first Regional Final in Johannesburg on 4th of September, the next two Innovating Justice Conferences are about to take off in Nairobi and Lagos on September 21st! Our finalists are ready to pitch and present their justice innovations to the audience. A jury will select the best pitches and a winner, who will qualify to join HiiL’s Justice Accelerator program. It promises to be a tough competition because the level of the finalists is extremely high.
Meet our innovators:
Lagos:
In4Justice: In4Justice provides speedy and easily accessible settlement of small claims disputes.
FarmworkerzApp: FarmworkerzApp seeks to connect vetted farm-hands to potential farms for hiring anytime, anywhere to eliminate service/employment injustice and conflicts between workers and farm owners.
Legal Support LITE: Legal Support LITE (LSL) is a USSD and IVR based solution that provides free, efficient and custom made legal advice to SMEs.
Gavel: Gavel is a civic tech start-up that tracks (criminal) cases, police brutality complaints, and connects the victims with free legal aid lawyers using tech.
#NoMore (nomore.ng): #NoMore is an app that will enable females students at Nigerian university campuses to securely report cases of sexual harassment, rape or abuse.
Fix Solution: An all-in-one digital crime records management application which serves to improve judicial service delivery through the whole justice chain.
HeLawyer: HeLawyer is a mobile app specializing in legal advice. It provides citizens, legal information and legal advice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Nairobi:
Btrack Global: Btrack Global enables motorcyclists to track their motorcycles through the use of phones, to make them easily recoverable after they have been stolen.
Uliza Wakili LLP: Uliza Wakili LLP provides cheap means of alternative dispute resolution to SMEs and startups.
Wakili Mkononi: Wakili Mkononi is a social enterprise, that offers legal aid services and legal networking services on a digital platform.
WASILIANAHUB: WASILIANAHUB is the first collaborative online & mobile tech-justice marketplace, building Africa’s largest Certified Professional Mediators portal for the advancement of Africa’s mediation practice. Professional help is ensured, helping to save time, money & heartache.
iCourtroom: iCourtroom acts as a repository of wildlife crime data, tailored to do analysis of the cases and serves as a measure of law enforcement efficacy.
Viamo: Viamo is developing information on access to justice that will be made available on demand in pre-recorded audio and text, on a toll-free mobile service under the shortcode 845, supported by MTN.
Nusu Hub: Jumuiya Attorney is a marketplace that enables people from low income and rural areas to hire legal professionals, all of whom are pre-screened and vetted.
These two major, unique events in both locations will bring together a large number of high-level key note speakers from the justice sector, government, academia and the private sector. A great opportunity to network, discuss, learn from past experiences and share best practices.
The Lagos Innovating Justice Conference is completely sold out, but we will post regular updates here and on twitter #LIJC and #innovatingjustice. There are limited seats available for the Nairobi Innovating Justice Conference but tickets are selling out fast! Register here if you would still like to attend. Keep an eye on this website for more updates on the Innovating Justice Conferences.
Following an impressive pitch competition on 4th of September, HiiL is pleased to announce the winners of the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Finals Johannesburg.
The first place goes to Baobab.law! Baobab.law was founded by Khokela Daula and Guy Stern, and seeks to remove barriers to entry for legal assistance by providing DIY legal solutions in the form of video tutorials that can speed up process of resolving legal matters. Videos are recorded with professional lawyers and available in multiple local languages.
Judges were impressed with the vision and passion of the co-founders for their start-up, and also with the rapid development of content. The original prototype for Baobab.law was built during Global Legal Hackathon, which took place at the Tshimologong Precinct in February, and was also organised by HiiL.
“Our challenge was to find a solution that would bring access to justice to millions,” says Stern, “A solution that is going to impact millions needs to have a few key ingredients: it needs to be 100% free to use, accessible in many languages on social multiple channels and viral in nature. Video checks all of these boxes.”
As a proof of concept, the team demonstrated their already very active Facebook page which has seen viral growth with over 10,000 video views in the past few weeks and a growing community including the participating firms who share the videos around.
“It’s humbling and overwhelming to see the support the law firms have given us,” added Daula.
The pair say that they have already begun discussing content partnerships and investment opportunities that have arisen as a result of the Innovating Justice Challenge.
Second place in the regional finals went to Zimbabwe’s PhoenixCMS, a low cost case management service, designed to help human rights organisations track important information and improve reporting of rights abuses around the country. In third place, Masenze Strategic Advisors is a Gauteng rights awareness platform working on innovative ways to improve legal education for underserved communities.
Judges also gave a special mention to Buyisa Soul and Spiritual Centre from Alexandra, a group of traditional healers who currently run regular mediation and dispute resolution courts within the township and are looking to scale their work into other geographical areas.
“All of our finalists demonstrated incredible new ideas for providing access to justice services in cost effective, sustainable and scaleable ways,” says Ellen Tacoma, Director of the HiiL Justice Accelerator in The Netherlands, “And their commitment to principles of justice as a human right is truly humbling. They’ve set the bar exceptionally high for our other regional finals in Nairobi, Kampala, Lagos, Dhaka and The Netherlands over the coming month.”
Following the conclusion of the regional finals around the world, HiiL will invite selected startups and innovators to join its Justice Accelerator programme, through which it supports fledgling organisations with seed funding and development assistance.
HiiL would like to thank the Southern Africa judges for their invaluable assistance: Tony Pillay, Acting CEO of Law Society of South Africa, Nicci Stewart, Founder of The Why Effect, Charmika Samaradiwakera Wijesundara, lecturer at Wits University School of Law and Tiyani Majoko, co-founder of Lawgistics Legal Consultants.
A special thanks goes to the speakers : Ms Sam Ngcolomba from Lady Liberty and a 2017 finalist, and Ms Naledi Chirwa, from Soul City.
And we’re off! The first of seven Regional Finals of the Innovating Justice Challenges has begun in Johannesburg today. The selected innovators will receive a training today so they can further prepare for the pitch competition of tomorrow. It will be a tough competition because the level of all the innovators is extremely high!
The Finalists will be judged based on the following four criteria: impact on access to justice, (financial) sustainability, potential for growth and overall presentation.
Read more about the innovators here:
South Africa
Epoq Legal (Pty) Ltd: Epoq Legal (Pty) Ltd is an online (or offline) real-time legal document automation, designed for everyday people. It includes help, guidance and examples throughout the process including multiple workflows.
Boabob: Baobob is a platform which enables lawyers to create engaging video-based tutorials, to empower people to resolve many of their own legal issues.
Masenze Strategic Advisors: Masenze Strategic Advisors provides convenient, relevant and affordable education and information with respect to awareness of basic socio-economic rights, to enable self-representation by the vulnerable and marginalised
Buyisa Soul and Spiritual Centre: Traditional Healers in the Alexandra township convene a mediation court. The innovation is to establish a centre, replicate, and provide additional access to justice.
Portable Lawyer (Pty) Ltd: Allows for easy, affordable access to more than 30 critical contracts, realtime on demand legal support, digital signatures, contract management and data protection compliant.
Zimbabwe
PhoenixCMS: Phoenix Case Management System is a computerised platform that enhances justice organisations’ case intake, tracking, resolution of reported cases, multisectoral coordination and data analysis.
IPassist-zw: IPassist-zw is a web-based platform that enables start-ups and SMEs to access effective and affordable intellectual property services from a pool of experts and lawyers
It is still possible to attend the Regional Finals, although places are filling up very fast! Click on one of the location below to register.
Johannesburg – 4 September, Sandton Convention Centre
Only one week left until the first of seven world-wide Regional Finals of the Innovating Justice Challenge takes off! On 4 September, we will have our first event in Johannesburg followed by Kyiv (27 September), Lagos and Nairobi (21 September), Kampala (28 September), The Hague (2 October) and finally Dhaka on 6 October. The selected innovative justice start-ups are excited to pitch their ideas to improve access to justice and demonstrate their impact, (financial) sustainability and potential for growth. The most promising innovations during the Finals will be selected for the HiiL Justice Accelerator program. Together we will strive to achieve our mission:
By 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems.
The Justice Accelerator has been working hard these past few months to design a programme for the Regional Finals. At each event, we are joined not only by an exciting group of innovators, but also by renowned speakers who will share their knowledge and expertise with us.
You can still register for the Regional Finals, but places are filling up quickly! If you would like to attend, click on the name of the location where each of the Finals will take place to register.
We are looking forward to welcoming you at one of the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Finals!
Geweldsmisdrijven, noodlottige ongevallen en uit de hand gelopen conflicten; voorgoed veranderen ze het leven van slachtoffers en van daders. De strafrechtspleging is dagelijks in het nieuws. Weten we zeker dat onze samenleving dan het beste biedt aan de mensen om wie het gaat? Dit discussiestuk toont wat mogelijk is. HiiL nodigt geïnteresseerden uit om de lancering bij te wonen. Het zal een interactieve sessie zijn met veel ruimte voor visies, reflecties en ervaringen van deelnemers.
Het programma van de middag
16.00 Inloop
16.15 Welkom en introductie
16.20 Ervaren van een « vier tafel procedure » voor ongevallen met ernstige gevolgen
16.45 Reflecties op ervaringen
17.00 « Het ergste hanteerbaar: Ruimte voor menselijk strafrecht ». Presentatie rapport.
17.15 Reacties experts, journalisten/essayisten, belangstellende burgers
17.45 Samenvatting en hoe verder
18.00 Hapjes en drankjes
Only a few weeks are left until the Regional Finals of the Innovating Justice Challenge begin. We will kick-off these world-wide events on 4 September in Johannesburg, and continue in Kyiv (20 September), Lagos and Nairobi (21 September), Kampala (28 September), The Hague (2 October) and end in Dhaka on 6 October. HiiL’s Justice Accelerator team has selected the most promising and innovative justice start-ups who will compete in each of these regional finals. The innovations will be assessed on four selection criteria: (1) impact (2) financial sustainability (3) potential to scale (4) overall presentation. Only the best innovations will be selected to join the HiiL Justice Accelerator program to take their innovative justice solution to the next level and join us to achieve our mission:
By 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems.
The Justice Accelerator has been working hard these past few months to design a programme for the Regional Finals. At each event, we are joined not only by an exciting group of innovators, but also by renowned speakers who will share their knowledge and expertise with us.
Registration for the Regional Finals is still possible, although seats are filling up fast! If you are interested in attending, click on the name of the location where each of the Finals will take place to register.
Johannesburg – 4 September, Sandton Convention Centre
Medical guidelines are created to assist both practitioners and patients. These guidelines offer help in making decisions about appropriate health care. Good guidelines consist of evidence-based recommendations. Based on these recommendations, appropriate treatment can be established. Corresponding to the patient’s needs. What if there was a similar tool for people dealing with family related issues? That’s what we are currently working on.
Evidence based, with recommendations
Presently, HiiL is collaborating with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS) Uganda to create a Family Justice Catalogue.The Catalogue is specially tailored for Ugandans who deal with family problems. It will mainly contain recommendations which are evidence-based and established according to a methodology widely used for developing medical guidelines. Namely, the PICO and GRADE methods which are developed by healthcare professionals to rate the quality of the best available evidence and to establish health care guidelines. By means of a series of ‘PICO-questions’, certain available interventions are examined for effectiveness. These could be for example treatments. The strength of the evidence is then categorized in different scales and ultimately, a recommendation is made.
The best interventions, identified together
Applying this to the family justice sector, we first identify the most appropriate interventions that will be best suited for the affected individuals. To this end, we have already consulted many users, experts and practitioners alike in Uganda. We also look into international literature, where we further pick out methods of intervention that have proven to work. In the case of divorce, these interventions could be in the form of specific housing-arrangements for children or certain visiting arrangements. After we examine the methods’ effectiveness and we conduct scaling of evidence, similar recommendations can also be made. Making the Catalogue a useful and effective tool for families to help solve their issues!
I was in the United Arab Emirates recently to talk to assistant minister of justice Abdulla Al-Majid. He is, as far as I know, the only person of that rank in any ministry of justice who carries the title chief innovation officer. That is a worrying conclusion. Data tells us that justice systems all over the world are underperforming. We also see that they are not solving the problem with more ‘business as usual’. So why aren’t there more of his kind?
As a person Abdulla is hard to equal in terms of vision, drive, and courage. He will not rest until the justice system of the UAE does even better. And it is. In a conversation we had a while ago I understood more of what drives him. He told me the story of his grandfather. “He’d be away for weeks at a time. Travelling to the villages and wadi’s. They knew he was coming. He’d stay there to deal with all the disputes people where having. “. He calls it “Justice coming to you.” Accessible. Easy to understand. Effective.
Abdulla Al-Majid’s mission is exactly the same. Justice coming to you, using the wisdom of his grandfather and technology. That wisdom is captured by what psychology, social science, behavioural economy, and neurology are teaching us about how people chose, resolve disputes, comply with rules, and experience fairness. Easy-to-use digital technology harnesses that wisdom and disseminates it to citizens.
Abdulla and others are helping me understand what a chief innovation officer of a ministry of justice should do. I am not finished with my thinking yet, but here’s my first stab at a job description. Comments welcome. When we have something good enough, I suggest we all push the remaining 194 ministries of justice of the world to appoint one by 1 January 2019.
Let’s start with what the chief innovation officer of a ministry of justice must produce. I’d say: measurably better justice delivery for citizens. Justice coming to you. Accessible, easy to understand, and effective. Justice delivery that gets better, year after year. Just like the health sector annually produces better health treatments and more access.
What about asking him/her to help produce better tools to measure whether justice outcomes are being achieved? For most ministries of justice and judiciaries, success is producing enough judicial decisions per year, delivering them in time, being adequately staffed, and staying within budget. It needs to be more about outcomes. How much violence is prevented? How many employers and employees have been able to make smooth transitions to new work when a contract was terminated? How many former spouses have been able to transition to happy new lives after their relationship ended? When there is more clarity on outcomes it becomes clear where innovation is needed.
What else can he/she deliver? What about a one-stop-shop access to justice route for employers and employees, supported online? Smart do-it-yourself platforms that help SMEs inexpensively organise the legal infrastructure they require? A block-chain based virtual reality system to execute a will at home? Smart protocols containing best practices for dealing with family, land, and neighbour disputes? Or online dispute resolution mechanisms that seamlessly connect informal justice mechanisms with courts. He/she’d help build them and scale them up.
What does the role require? Our chief innovation officer must be an excellent convener, connector, and collaborator. He/she must be able to set-up, drive, and facilitate processes, because that is what innovation is. His/her role is not being the inventor, but rather the one who turns almost everybody he/she works with into a justice inventor and entrepreneur. He/she must also able to force something through if needed. Both the convening role and the ability to be able force through if needed would dictate that the post be ranked at the level of assistant minister or at a minimum that of director general.
Breaking down barriers will be an important part of the work. There are many of them. Between the departments within the ministry of justice. Between the ministry of justice and the ministries of interior, social affairs, health, education, finance, and economic affairs. And then there is the outside world: the bar association, the private sector, universities, think tanks, and civil society organisations. Each of these will generally have a contribution to make to a justice innovation. But they all like to stay in their own worlds.
The function also needs a serious budget. You must be able to convene people and to commission research about what users experience and need. You’ll need some seed money to spend. The budget should have some built-in freedom. Innovation is about trying, with enough room to try something fail, learn, and try again. He/she does not have to be a lawyer. In fact, not being one can be an advantage: you can ask all the stupid questions that nobody asked before. He/she must be creative. A servant leader, whose ego does not get in the way of things. A window to what is being done in other countries is also important: justice systems have more in common than is sometimes thought. We can learn from each other.
In today’s world, a chief innovation officer of a ministry of justice must also be able to work with data. In fact, his/her default mode of working must be evidence based. It would also be good if he/she was somewhat familiar with business model thinking because most innovations require creative and smart ‘deals’ between legitimacy givers, implementers, funders, and knowledge bringers to work.
What am I missing? Let me know. With your additions I’ll try to develop a job description format we can all use and push. I’m sure Assistant Minister Al Majid will be happy to help.
This article was originally published on Slaw.ca on 23 July 2018.
After receiving over 400 applications for the Challenge, we are happy to announce the justice innovations and #legaltech that have made it to the final round.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator assessed these applications with four criteria in mind: impact, sustainability, scalability and team. Additionally, HiiL involved external mentors to assess applications based on feasibility, social impact, and institutional roadblocks of their justice innovations.
Each innovation will be invited to a local pitch and training event in September. Details will be available soon on these events at www.innovatingjustice.com but you can already block off the dates:
Johannesburg – 4 September, Sandton Convention Centre
Land dispute resolution in Bangladesh: Land dispute resolution in Bangladesh, prepares maps of land ownership using an open source Android-based mobile application.
Benin
HeLawyer: HeLawyer is a mobile app specializing in legal advice. It provides citizens, legal information and legal advice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Ghana
Kompliance: Kompliance is an SME registration platform which allows SMEs to create and manage their legal documentation as well as have access to legal services at a lower cost.
India
LAWMATE.IN: LAWMATE.IN provides all business legal services to startups on one single online platform.
Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Pvt Ltd: Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Pvt Ltd is a tech platform which helps citizens discover, apply for and benefit for government welfare schemes.
Kenya
Btrack Global: Btrack Global enables motorcyclists to track their motorcycles through the use of phones, to make them easily recoverable after they have been stolen.
Loyasoft LTD: Loyasoft LTD helps startups solve their legal headaches at a subsidized cost, by easily accessing qualified vetted lawyers and template documents on their platform.
Uliza Wakili LLP: Uliza Wakili LLP provides cheap means of alternative dispute resolution to SMEs and startups.
Wakili Mkononi: Wakili Mkononi is a social enterprise, that offers legal aid services and legal networking services on a digital platform.
WASILIANAHUB: WASILIANAHUB is the first collaborative online & mobile tech-justice marketplace, building Africa’s largest Certified Professional Mediators portal for the advancement of Africa’s mediation practice. Professional help is ensured, helping to save time, money & heartache.
iCourtroom: iCourtroom acts as a repository of wildlife crime data, tailored to do analysis of the cases and serves as a measure of law enforcement efficacy.
Myanmar
Ma Ma Gyi App: Ma Ma Gyi is a security technology app for women to commute safely, by allowing them to communicate with their circle of trust.
The Netherlands
Visual Contracts: Visual Contracts is an online tool to introduce mobile workers and lawyers to legal design thinking, kickstarting the process of redesigning legal documents, through automatic visualisation.
JuridischeHulp Online (JHO): Together with its partners, JHO helps private individuals, entrepreneurs, law firms and business service providers to make legal processes /procedures simple and transparent.
New Dutch Connections – Know Your Rights: New Dutch Connections – Know Your Rights works to empower refugees by increasing their legal knowledge, to help integrate into society, become advocates for their interests and help pursue professional and personal goals.
Online Schuldencoach: The ‘Online Debt Coach’ is an online programme for people suffering from debts. It empowers people to get their lives together, by giving them the tools to take action of their situation by enrolling on the programme.
Lexilu: Lexilu provides centralised information on rights and obligations for foreign workers abroad. We do this through (offline)app or online(website) in a gamified and visual format.
AcodeIT: An online platform where people can track the status of their legal cases with an intuitive visual timeline.
Nigeria
In4Justice: In4Justice provides speedy and easily accessible settlement of small claims disputes.
FarmworkerzApp: FarmworkerzApp seeks to connect vetted farm-hands to potential farms for hiring anytime, anywhere to eliminate service/employment injustice and conflicts between workers and farm owners.
Legal Support LITE: Legal Support LITE (LSL) is a USSD and IVR based solution that provides free, efficient and custom made legal advice to SMEs.
Gavel: Gavel is a civic tech start-up that tracks (criminal) cases, police brutality complaints, and connects the victims with free legal aid lawyers using tech.
#NoMore (nomore.ng): #NoMore is an app that will enable females students at Nigerian university campuses to securely report cases of sexual harassment, rape or abuse.
Rwanda
Viamo: Viamo is developing information on access to justice that will be made available on demand in pre-recorded audio and text, on a toll-free mobile service under the shortcode 845, supported by MTN.
Sierra Leone
Fix Solution:An all-in-one digital crime records management application which serves to improve judicial service delivery through the whole justice chain.
South Africa
Epoq Legal (Pty) Ltd: Epoq Legal (Pty) Ltd is an online (or offline) real-time legal document automation, designed for everyday people. It includes help, guidance and examples throughout the process including multiple workflows.
Boabob: Baobob is a platform which enables lawyers to create engaging video-based tutorials, to empower people to resolve many of their own legal issues.
Masenze Strategic Advisors: Masenze Strategic Advisors provides convenient, relevant and affordable education and information with respect to awareness of basic socio-economic rights, to enable self-representation by the vulnerable and marginalised
Buyisa Soul and Spiritual Centre: Traditional Healers in the Alexandra township convene a mediation court. The innovation is to establish a centre, replicate, and provide additional access to justice.
Portable Lawyer (Pty) Ltd: Allows for easy, affordable access to more than 30 critical contracts, realtime on demand legal support, digital signatures, contract management and data protection compliant.
Tanzania
Nusu Hub: Jumuiya Attorney is a marketplace that enables people from low income and rural areas to hire legal professionals, all of whom are pre-screened and vetted.
Uganda
Bataka Court Model: Bataka Court Model BCM is a community based informal Justice Model, that provides an alternative justice mechanism to enhance access to justice for the poor.
Tunga Innovations Ltd: Tunga Innovations Ltd is an app that informs users about their employment rights. E.g leave days both annual and maternity, overtime rates and notice before resigning or being terminated.
Yunga: Yunga is a local rescue digital network for neighbours, that allows them to communicate with each other in real time in case of attack.
Via: Via is a conversational legal voice assistant, that utilizes artificial intelligence to give legal information on the go and recommends a lawyer thereafter.
BitShelter: The BitShelter system is an interactive system that disseminates, shares, and displays legal information including images, video, text, and audio in real time.
JusticeBot: JusticeBot is a chatbot that provides access to legal procedures information and services, to Ugandans in needs of legal service and justice.
LegIT: LegIT is a self-service platform that enables micro, small and medium enterprises to generate legal documents conveniently, efficiently and affordably in three easy steps!
ZZIMBA GAMES: ZG is simplifying the justice ecosystem by simulating Ugandans experience through an entertaining card & board game, that mirrors their environment and subsequently empowers them.
Muchomo Moments Ltd: Muchomo Moments Ltd uses videos to break down the law to the masses in relatable languages, through local video shacks.
Ukraine
AXDRAFT Business: AXDRAFT is absolutely free online platform of high quality automated legal documents for small and medium enterprises.
Vkursi: Vkursi offers a business integrity check in 1 click. It is a legal advisory and algorithm for dealing with company threats based on open data and AI.
Saveyourself.bot: Saveyourself.bot is a chatbot to educate people what to do, how to react in cases of bullying and domestic violence. It helps to save lives.
SOE ProZorro: SOE ProZorro is a public e-procurement system that has replaced old paper-based state tenders. It is a hybrid open-source system that links a central database to commercial e-tender platforms.
Memelex: Memelex provides visualizations of clients’ legal documents (contracts, privacy policies etc.) in the form of comics or more conservative set of pictures.
Amigo Juster: Amigo Juster is an app for online arbitration in Ukraine, on the basis of current arbitration court (so called “treteiskyi sud”).
TOEcуд: TOEcудa is a platform that ensures the availability of indicators for assessing the judiciary in the context of a separate judge.
Rent It Bot: Rent It Bot is a chatbot which creates rent agreement based on users’ answers, advises on rent issues and thereby saves users’ time and enables them to regulate these relations.
Zimbabwe
PhoenixCMS: Phoenix Case Management System is a computerised platform that enhances justice organisations’ case intake, tracking, resolution of reported cases, multisectoral coordination and data analysis.
IPassist-zw: IPassist-zw is a web-based platform that enables start-ups and SMEs to access effective and affordable intellectual property services from a pool of experts and lawyers.
We all need relationships with others to love, to be safe, to earn a living, to learn, to plan, and to be healthy and happy. Because we are human, these relationships can sometimes deteriorate or even break down. That’s when we need a good relationship management system. Which is what a good justice system should be and that’s why access to justice is so terribly important. We must therefore be thankful that 193 heads of government adopted Sustainable Development Target 16.3 in 2015: to ensure equal access to justice for all.
My past lamentations on these pages have been that not much is happening around Sustainable Development Target 16.3. Not much in the way of structured data collection, which should be happening according to the agreement that cemented the Sustainable Development Goals. Not much in terms of convincing indicators, which is critical for progress. Not much in terms of financing, without which not much will happen. In the meantime, what evidence we have shows that justice systems, all over the world, are seriously underperforming.
Most countries, ministries, judiciaries, bar associations, and often academia continue to produce a lot of user-unfriendly justice. With that I mean justice that is hard to access, hard to understand, not very efficient, and not very effective. In my January column, I provided some data about what I have begun to call the global access to justice gap. It affects more people in the world than some of the big diseases like malaria, HIV and tuberculosis with nasty things like violence, loss of livelihood, seriously damaged relationships, and health problems.
It will take a similar effort as the world took to deal with the big diseases: sustained political and operational commitment, sustained data about the problem and what’s working to solve it, and sustained funding at sufficient levels. Both at the international and national levels. I can’t say that we are there yet. But a couple of things are happening that will make it more likely that something will finally start happening around SDG 16.3.
In February an international Task Force on Justice was set up and had its first meeting in Buenos Aires. It is part of a wider initiative called Pathfinders for Peaceful, Justice, and Inclusive Societies. The Task Force brings together a group of governments, international organisations, and civil society organisations around making SDG16.3 something real and tangible. Sierra Leone, Argentina, and The Netherlands, preside, all at ministerial level. Amongst its members are two members of the Justice Leadership Group and two members of The Elders. As part of its work, the Task Force on Justice will assess the scale and impact of what we have come to call the justice gap: the fact that an unacceptable amount of people lack access to justice. This is detrimental for people, causing significant harm and affecting more people than some of large global diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. It also has significant economic effects: business in particular SMEs, are held back from their potential without protection by the law. Lastly, it creates a large accountability gap: if rules that are promulgated cannot be invoked, governance deteriorates very quickly.
There is involvement from experts from the World Bank, OECD, the Open Society Foundation Justice Initiative, Namati, the World Justice Project, and my own organization, HiiL. For the first time, the Task Force will quantify the costs of injustice and the benefits of investing in justice. This business case will demonstrate the urgency of increasing funding to deliver SDG16.3 (access to justice for all) and related targets for justice. It will show the crosscutting importance of justice to achieving global goals for people, prosperity, peace and planet.
The outcomes of the Task Force of Justice process will be shared iteratively the coming year, through a number of events. Keep your eyes out for this. This process can be a game changer.
Throughout May and June, we are interviewing over 9,000 people in Mali about their encounters with legal problems in everyday life. This is part of HiiL’s collaboration with Mali’s Ministry of Justice as we work together on the second wave of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey. The interview data will show the most serious and prevalent justice problems in Mali, what people do to resolve their problems and how they assess these paths to justice in terms of fairness, quality and costs.
Back in 2014, HiiL conducted its biggest Justice Needs and Satisfaction study to date in Mali. A total of 8,400 people were surveyed about their justice needs and a particular emphasis was put on the perceptions of the national reconciliation efforts. This was in light of the aftermath of the 2012 conflict when insurgent groups took control of three of the country’s northern towns.
The close partnerships fostered during our 2014 project have continued over the years. Discussions developed with regards to how HiiL could support the Ministry of Justice’s mission to consolidate the rule of law and develop tools that offer transparency and accountability to the justice sector.
For the first time ever, we are revisiting a country to conduct a follow-up second survey in order to learn how the experiences of people changed over time. Through this unique opportunity, we will identify trends regarding progress, or lack of it, in enhancing the quality of justice and people’s access to it. The 2018 second wave study is seen as a chance to strengthen local capacity in Mali and to use data to develop effective indicators which will support the policy objectives of the Ministry. Critically, in our second wave study, we will identify the needs of citizens from all regions in Mali. Local enumerators will conduct interviews in Kidal, which, due to the security situation in 2014, was previously excluded. Exploring the perceptions of justice across all of Mali is critical in order to better understand the range of relationships between problems, people, communities and institutions.
HiiL’s bottom-up approach fits the needs and interests of Mali’s Ministry of Justice. In March, the Justice Needs and Satisfaction questionnaire was co-designed, and the overall infrastructure was established, between HiiL and the Technical Commission. The commission was comprised of the Ministry of Justice, CPS, DNAJ, INSTAT and the Ministry of Human Rights. Another partner includes Deme So, who recruited 90 interviewers to collect the survey data. At the end of April, we jointly delivered training in Bamako to prepare these interviewers on how to talk to people about their most pressing justice problems. Local expertise and feedback has provided valuable insights. The data collected will be used as a springboard for innovation and for the evidence-based transformation of justice processes which places the needs of the citizen at the centre. Interviews will be conducted over the next month and the final report will be published at the end of 2018.
Do you want to improve your design thinking skills while also innovating the employment sector?
Are you interested in creating more fair and flexible employment contracts that address the needs of both employers and employees?
We are organising a one-day event at the Border Sessions tech festival – the Design for Justice Lab. During the Lab, the participants will take part in a legal desing journey to innovate the employment sector.
Currently, employment contracts are inflexible, which hurts both employers and employees and forces them to prioritise their needs. Our aim is to allow the parties to take ownership of their contracts, and to create a contracting environment which is flexible, user-friendly, adaptable to the situation and mutually beneficial.
The Lab will be centred on using legal design thinking to find solutions. First of all, to get a grasp of the problem, participants will gather insights from people who have experienced problems in their employment. Then, they will use these insights to map the issue, to brainstorm about possible solutions, and to work out the most interesting ideas. The day will end with each team presenting their findings and ideas, followed by drinks and networking.
Join us to innovate the employment sector! You can register for the festival here, and for the Lab here.
The PINC (People, Ideas, Nature and Creativity) experience aims to bring together thought leaders, innovators, and creative thinkers alike. HiiL’s CEO, Sam Muller, was one of the leaders invited to speak at PINC.19 conference. In this occasion, Sam asked how lady Justice is doing and expressed the need for a global effort to boost legal innovation as a way to make justice more accessible for all.
On Wednesday the 9th of May 2018, HiiL, in close cooperation with BRAC Human Rights and Legal Aid Services, launched its ‘Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Bangladesh’ report. The event was broadly attended by active members of civil society and generously chaired by the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Mr. Kazi Reazul Hoque. The report pinpoints areas of improvement for access to justice in Bangladesh and can serve as a benchmark for policy makers.
The report is the result of approximately one year of diligent work in the country. 60% of all legal problems can be traced to three main areas, namely land disputes, neighbour conflicts and crime. Setting these three categories of legal problems as priority areas for policy development stands to improve the lives of millions of Bangladeshis.
Equal access to justice for all and, especially, what is stipulated in SDG 16 are recognized by all as critical parts of a stable and prospering society. In Bangladesh, the potential for innovation is massive, but major hurdles remain. We believe that if the Bangladeshi civil society comes together and pushes for substantial change and continual monitoring of outcomes, access to justice stands to strongly improve in the coming years. The world is watching!Another key area is encouraging people to take action, by increasing awareness of their legal rights and empowering them to look for a solution when faced with a legal problem. We find that roughly half the people do not take any action to resolve their legal dispute, simply because they do not believe the system will help them.
Are you interested in the current status of justice innovation in South Africa? Want to see how ‘lawtech’ can give access to justice to those need it? Check out the following blog post by Adam Oxford, HiiL’s Justice Innovation Agent in Southern Africa:
“Why the Pace of Justice Innovation Has to Speed Up In SA »
Change is coming, and it’s best to embrace it sooner rather than later.
Where should justice innovators look for inspiration in South Africa? One place to start would be the financial services sector. It’s full of examples of creative thinking, innovative technology and how to be locally-specific and world-beating at the same time. Our banks are constantly finding new ways to address profitable but previously unserved markets: in 2013, 67% of South Africans used formal banking services. By the end of 2017, that number had risen to 77%.
Before he left to work for the mobile network MTN, the erstwhile Absa CEO for Corporate and Investment Banking, Stephen van Coller, was a regular speaker on the conference circuit for digital innovation and fintech events.
The common theme of his talks was “disrupt yourself”: African banks, he argued, were used to eye-watering profit margins of 50% or more, but in the digital age, the cost of transacting approaches zero, which means those margins stop looking like a good business model and more like an enormous opportunity for new competitors.
Those competitors are prepared to accept lower returns (and still make a good living), and they have lower overheads too since they don’t have a legacy network of branches and technology to support.
South African banks understood the threat that was coming and worked hard to foster internal innovations and develop partnerships with the upstart fintechs. There’s a reason that no mobile network has managed to make effective inroads into financial services here as they have elsewhere on the continent.
Now it’s time for the legal community to take heed as well.
The Case for Disruption
“Lawtech” isn’t quite as mature or disruptive as “fintech” yet, but there’s plenty of people looking at it as an opportunity and are ready to strike at the heart of billable hours soon. Just like the cost of moving money around five years ago, today’s legal fees contain a lot of processes that can be done more efficiently and still generate profit.
Breakthrough technologies like AI and blockchain are reaching levels of maturity similar to mobile phone at the time of the mighty M-PESA’s launch (which, lest we forget, predated iPhone by a couple of months), but even more worrying is that legal services across Africa have barely begun to adopt the kinds of simple innovations which are common elsewhere in the world. House buyers in the US, Europe and Asia, for example, take one-click conveyancing for a couple of thousand rand for granted – after all, they’ve been doing it for a decade and a half.
The fact is that the current system is fundamentally broken and needs dramatic new thinking. We have a surfeit of trained lawyers, but a huge deficit in access to justice – a situation which simply does not make sense.
The real benefit of justice sector innovation in South Africa will be social impact. Right now, South Africa has a two tier legal model. Part of the reason the legal fraternity has staved off change for so long is that there’s a decent sized and moderately growing market in the middle-class and corporate worlds which is still prepared to pay for yesterday’s service at yesterday’s prices.
Those with access to this world enjoy the benefits of our well respected courts and institutions, and our talented practitioners. The reality for most people in the country, however, is that we have roughly one tenth the number of practising lawyers per person as there are in the US, and the services that they provide are prohibitively expensive. That leads to an over-reliance on legal aid and pro-bono services and – as Legal Aid acknowledges – the gap between supply and demand in these stretched services is growing.
The effects of lack of access to justice are well documented: from miscarriages of justice to service delivery protests to interminable delays in land reform cases to poor protection of those vulnerable to gender-based violence – it’s a catalogue of everything that we know can and should be better in South Africa today.
What’s more, when there’s no effective access to justice – be that the rule of law or effective customary justice – civil society becomes heavily politicised and frustration leads to anger and violent protest.
We have to think bigger, and we have to think better. Where are the SMS or WhatsApp services that can reduce the cost of legal services to a fraction of the cost but scale to the moon? What social problems could we solve if they existed? How can we enhance the effectiveness of non-judicial systems that are the current sole recourse for many?
Just Copy the Banks
We have models for scaleable, mobile services that extend the reach of professional services to those who have previously been denied access – and we have plenty of examples of how to do that it in a profitable manner.
We also know what happens when those opportunities exist and we choose to ignore them – just check the business press for the latest corporate dinosaur to be slain by an opportunistic rebel. How many referrals come to you via the Yellow Pages these days? The South African justice sector is ripe for and in desperate need of innovation and disruption, and if it doesn’t happen from within, there will be those who will do it from without.
And they will take your billable hours, whether you like it or not.
About the Author: Adam Oxford is an Agent for The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL)
Adam Oxford has over 20 years’ experience as a writer in the field of emerging technology. He currently works with The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL), helping to find and support entrepreneurs who are working to improve access to justice in Southern Africa. HiiL’s current Innovating Justice Challenge closes at the end of May: www.innovatingjustice.com
In the small town of Arua, right next to the DRC border, a few entrepreneurial lawyers have set up an independent mediation center to deal with the increasing number of land disputes that flood the Courts of Law. With two accredited mediators, two legal clerks, one lawyer and one operations manager, the small cemented house along the main road appears like a mini court of itself – only that it feels more intimate and welcoming. I wonder how much easier it must be for, say, a single mother of three who is defending her plot of land to simply enter the modest building to find a place where she can discuss her legal problems as one would with a friend. As opposed to facing a row of judges sitting on a raised wooden bench in the search of justice, which one speaks to most people more?
First independent mediation center in Uganda
The West Nile Mediation Centre is the first independent mediation center in Uganda, which opened its doors to the public in June 2017. Shortly after, the Centre was selected as one of the finalists in HiiL’s Innovating Justice Challenge and entered our Justice Accelerator programme in January 2018. From the beginning of our collaboration, we have been guiding, mentoring and training these innovators in the far North to grow their initiative into a scalable and impactful model. The long-term vision? Being able to develop and multiply a network of para-mediators in settling disputes for thousands of people across the country.
“All of us are driven to improve lives for the community. Justice has to trickle down to the poorest people,” says Joram, one of the founders and currently in charge of public relations. He received us with a big smile at the entrance of the building. He explains how mediation can prevent civil cases from escalating into criminal matters: “The easiest way to resolve a conflict here is through violence. That’s simply what most people resort to when they don’t want to go to court.” But mediation has proven to be a much faster, affordable, and amicable way to come to a resolution.
In order to relieve Courts of their case-backlog, all civil matters arriving at any Court in Uganda are obliged to go through a mediation process first. Only if mediation or informal settlement did not succeed in solving the dispute, will the Court take the case on. What this means in practice is that many cases are sent back to the clan leaders or Local Councils (LCs are community representatives that help in referring cases to the formal system) to be settled, or alternatively to a court-accredited mediator of which there are way too few.
It has lots of potential
Although alternative dispute resolution is far from being the new kid on the block in Uganda, an independent Mediation Centre which trains and grows a network of (para)mediators to settle disputes independently of the courts, LC’s, and clans or religious leaders, is definitely a novelty. As Natal, one of the founders of the Centre explains: “If you go to an LC with a problem, but they have already talked to the other party first, you are unlikely to have a case settled in your favour. Usually the first party who talks to the LC has won [sic] the case. Most LCs are not independent and skilled enough to mediate a case fairly. That’s why independent mediators are so much needed.”
As we are observing one of the mediation sessions, we see how Peter, the acting director and accredited mediator of the Centre, carefully listens to both parties and asks for clarifications and evidence for some of the claims made. It feels a lot like a court case, except there are no lawyers who represent the two parties or replace their personal stories with legal talk. The two parties just sit on plastic chairs next to each other, sharing their stories. I ask whether Peter doesn’t dream of becoming a judge one day. He answers with conviction, “Certainly not, because being a judge means you will always have to compromise… and to be the one who makes the judgement and appoints a ‘winner’. It would leave me with a sense of regret that the two stories could not be reconciled.”
Since January this year, the West Nile Mediators have handled 270 disputes, of which 70% were successful (i.e. not leading to a referral to Court or continuation of the dispute). Getting a case settled costs on average 150,000 Uganda Shillings (the equivalent of about 38 Euros), depending on the complexity of the case. Creating a network of para-mediators will allow the Centre to expand its reach to regions beyond the West Nile, and mediate hundreds more cases per month. However, such a system will face its fair share of challenges: in order to be successful, para-mediators will have to be trained and accredited, and operate independently and without bias even if mediating in their own communities. How will you prevent para-mediators from falling to the same trap as the current LC?
How we work together
Those are the challenges we will aim to overcome during the Accelerator programme. Brian Ndyaguma, the Accelerator agent for Uganda, has been mentoring the West Nile innovation team to develop a sustainable scale-up model, improving the user-experience of people coming to the Centre, and marketing their brand better. We can’t wait to see how the para-mediators of Northern Uganda will help to settle more disputes, more fairly for more people.
For more information, follow the West Nile team on Twitter: @mediationUganda
Yesterday HiiL, in cooperation with Legal Hackers Kyiv and Legal Hackers Amsterdam, and supported by Arag, hosted the first ever Dutch Legal Startup Crash Test! This concept was first launched in 2016 in Kyiv by Dmitry Foremnyi, to bring the legal, justice and tech scene together.
The aim of the Legal Startup Crash Test is to bring more justice to society through the support of legal entrepreneurship, innovation and open data. We invited three startups to share their ideas with the community, and the community was asked to be critical and help the startups further.
Legalpioneer – Wants to democratize and tokenize the legal tech funding globally. It is a product of Legalcomplex, an analytics company.
VR Courtroom – An immersive simulation of a court in session. The tool can be used for training purposes for students and legal professionals. Furthermore the tool can be used by law firms to prepare their clients for a court session and help their clients reduce stress.
Patentbot – This is a Ukrainian startup that can register your trademark through a chatbot in the US and Ukraine and announced their launch on the European Union market. From April 19th, PatentBot will register and check TM online 24/7 in 28 EU countries. The preliminary cost of registration of TM in the EU is 249 EURO. The check if the TM is available for registration is free of charge.
It was great to have such a diverse crowd even though it was almost 30 degrees outside! After the pitches it was time for some drinks and a lot of ideas were exchanged. We want to keep building this community of people that believe that innovation in justice is possible and necessary. Please reach out if you want to be a part of this community to sandra.vanderpal@hiil.org
LEGAL STARTUP Crash Test is an informal pitching event for entrepreneurs and representatives of the legal sector. It is a platform for the development of justice and legal innovations.
Plan for the event:
1. Content part. A presentation of an experienced entrepreneur aimed at solving problems of early-stage projects.
2. 5-minute presentations of 3 startups in the field of law or justice. Each pitch is followed by a rigid 15-minute discussion.
3. Networking. Pizza and soft drinks are included.
Register via Eventbrite. Ticket price – 5 euros excl.
The war in Syria has forced millions of Syrians to flee their country. They are particularly vulnerable and live under difficult circumstances in their host countries. Access to justice, especially to formal institutions, is particularly challenging due to missing residence permits and critical documentation. Most refugees rely on themselves and their (often small) social network to seek information and resolve their problems. The biggest barrier which prevents many from engaging in dispute resolution is that the refugees do not believe that they will succeed or achieve a positive result.
The latest Justice Needs and Satisfaction report from HiiL contains key information about the justice needs of Syrian refugees. Based on face to face interviews with 1800 refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, it explores their road to solving their most pressing justice problems. The study is part of a strategic partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In Lebanon, 65% of all Syrian refugees experience one or more legal problems every four years. In Jordan, 38% do so. Syrian refugees mostly experience problems which ensure their survival: non-payment of wages, termination of employment, eviction from housing, or disagreements about rent. Sadly, Syrian refugees also encounter violence frequently: among neighbours, against their children, and in the form of violent crimes by strangers. Experiencing these types of conflicts have severe effects on the refugees’ lives, frequently causing problems with relationships, loss of income, loss of time and stress-related illnesses.
Justice system in post-conflict Syria:
The report also provides insights into how many Syrian refugees want to return to Syria, what they expect their most urgent justice needs to be, and what kind of compensation the government should provide for them. It is still unclear how justice will work in post-conflict Syria, and the more information we can collect about what types of needs the Syrians will have, the better. HiiL’s report estimates that a total of 2 million housing disputes and 800,000 ID conflicts will occur once more than 4.5 million Syrians return to their country. Dealing with this number of justice problems would be a challenge for any country, but even more so for a country destroyed by war, with much of its infrastructure ruined and highly fragmented society. However, the situation also offers an opportunity for improvement. Syria can significantly improve its system by investing in innovations that deliver inclusive, effective and accessible justice mechanisms.
The way forward
More data is needed, especially on the Syrians that are displaced within the country: what particular problems do they face, which dispute resolution mechanisms are available for them and how could they be improved. It is important to recognise that whilst collecting such data is difficult, it is not impossible. Adopting SMS-based data collection, chat bots among Facebook users or monitoring social media are promising options. HiiL is currently taking steps to collect more data and will be able to share it later in the year. Rebuilding Justice in Syria is a great challenge, but also a great opportunity to organise mechanisms around the needs of the people and the communities. Access to justice is a problem that Syrians face today, but it does not have to be in the future.
On 1 March 2018 in Suva, Fiji Hon. Chief Justice (CJ) Anthony Gates launched the project Access to Justice Assessment. CJ Gates put pressure on the relationship between data on people’s need for justice and their access to justice:
“This is another step along the path of access to justice for the people of Fiji. The assessment will provide data, information and feedback. It is right to have the humility to seek such assessments.”
Photo: UNDP/Ria Sen
The project is implemented by UNDP Fiji with funding from the European Union. The role of HiiL is to measure and make transparent the justice needs of the people of Fiji. Enumerators were already trained to talk to randomly selected individuals about their legal problems. A large sample of people will be asked about their experience with situations in which the law can provide a solution. We will ask the people how they respond to legal problems and most importantly – the extent to which they receive fair resolutions.
Sampling instructions for the enumerators
In order to understand the justice system from its different sides we will talk to the main justice stakeholders in Fiji. Our interest is to understand the justice system from a 360 perspective. This will allow us to map out the options for improving access to justice and justice delivery.
Conducting large scale empirical Access to Justice assessment in Fiji is not an easy task. The upcoming elections are steering the attention and energies of many institutional stakeholders towards the political arena. Otherwise, that attention and energy could be used by them to better serve people. Moreover, from a geographical point of view, the country and its 110 inhabited islands are a serious logistical challenge for survey research. On the top of that there are still communities who are dealing with the consequences of 2016 Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston.
Nevertheless, our brave enumerators are already in the field traveling by cars, buses, boats and planes to meet and talk to Fijian people about their needs for justice. The report will be published later in 2018.
LEGAL STARTUP Crash Test is an informal pitching event for entrepreneurs and representatives of the legal sector. It is a platform for the development of justice and legal innovations.
Plan for the event
1. Content part. A 30-minutes presentation of an experienced entrepreneur aimed at solving problems of early-stage projects. 2. 5-minute presentations of 3 startups in the field of law or justice. Each pitch is followed by a rigid 15-minute discussion. 3. Networking. Pizza and soft drinks are included.
Eventbrite Registration is required. Ticket price – 5 euros. Tickets can be bought in advance on Eventbrite only.
We do still have a spot open for you to pitch! So do you think you are working on an interesting justice innovation? Let us know here.
Since the conflict erupted in 2014, parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Eastern Ukraine remain outside of the Ukrainian government’s control and as a result, issues related to employment justice and the obtainment of (ID) documentation are some of the most prevalent.
In an attempt to spur innovation to provide effective and user-friendly solutions to some of the most urgent justice needs in the region, HiiL with the support of UNDP, conducted a workshop in the city of Kramatorsk. The aim of the workshop was to build innovative prototypes for justice journeys in the areas of employment justice and the obtainment of ID documents.
A group of experts from around the region including judges, lawyers, mediators, legal aid providers, representatives of end-users and various related institutions gathered for an intense day of co-creation to address some of the most pressing justice needs for people in the region. A number of different prototypes were developed during the workshop, all of which were based on a user-centric approach that prioritized the needs of the users of the justice system.
Despite the diversity within the group, there was a feeling of consensus on the goals and envisioned justice journeys as well as many shared personal experience with the issues that were being discussed. One particular area in which all participants shared a strong enthusiasm for was the use of innovative technologies for providing shared data platforms. For both employment justice and document obtainment issues, it was widely agreed that shared databases and availability of digital documentation would have strong benefits.
The draft prototypes will be refined and reviewed by relevant experts and collected into a report. Next steps will involve analyzing the feasibility of the proposed prototypes and working to build a coalition for implementation.
Tucked away in a small side road in central Kampala lies a white, two-story building with a dozen lawyers crammed inside. But this is no traditional law firm – this is Barefoot Law. These lawyers each stared down a career of public prosecutorial work, private law work, or politics and chose a different path: using their talents and their love for technology to make access to justice and the law readily available to 50 people across African by 2030.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator played a critical role in this journey, identifying and supporting one of Barefoot Law’s first innovative products, when the mSMEGararage won the Innovating Justice Awards in 2015. This proved to be a catalyst of success, after which the organisation grew and was awarded the presteigious King Baudouin African Development Prize in 2017.
Now, two years after first identifying the promise of the organization, the HiiL Justice Accelerator in partnership with Nuffic conducted a two-week Tailor-Made Training (TMT) programme in Uganda to help Barefoot Law in defining, executing, and scaling up its social mission.The first step, and the major accomplishment of the training, was defining the BHAG – the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal that Barefoot Law wished to accomplish. They set an ambitious target and mission: Barefoot Law seeks to make access to justice and the law readily available to 50 million people across Africa by 2030. Full of drive for this inspiring goal, the Barefoot Law team spent nine more days working on a framework of how to get there. This included work on lean startup and experimentation, social impact measurement, organizational structure, sales and marketing, personality and leadership, resiliency, international scaling, spinoff strategies, and technical tools for building prototypes.Attendees of the workshop anonymously reported afterwards:
“It is going to be a huge catalyst to the organisation’s growth.“
“Barefoot law is going to do what it has been doing better and more efficiently.”
“We will have more direction, focus and more unified voice especially because of the BHAG. We have a great goal to aspire towards. Our structure and the functions of each team member will improve. The training has also helped us figure out the cracks we need to fill out in order for us to make access to justice and the law readily available to 50 million people across Africa by 2030.”
The HiiL Justice Accelerator greatly looks forward to being able to play a continued supporting role in the development of Barefoot Law’s programme, and thanks Nuffic for its support of a crucial programme at a critical time for Barefoot Law.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator is proud to announce that after receiving more than 600 applications and a challenging 4-month process of selection, we have selected our twelve finalists of the 2017 Innovating Justice Award!
These innovations will attend and pitch at the 8th annual Innovating Justice Forum on December 7th in the Peace Palace. You can get your tickets here.
Evidence And Methods Lab is a Ugandan civic technology initiative working in the areas of access to information, accountability and innovation. By creating smart infographics of complex justice problems they promote accountability.
LegitCar is a car theft-deterrent system to help people find their car and make it difficult to resell stolen vehicles. Since most vehicles stolen from people are still resold to unsuspecting buyers who do not know these vehicles are stolen, LegitCar hopes that by making stolen vehicles difficult to resell they make them easy to recover!
Usalama takes access to emergency services to the 21st century by providing a single point to contact emergency services by a tap of a button. They offer a new and dynamic way for people to engage in community policing that is consistent with this century.
Msheria helps bailing out petty traffic offenders and taking them through the whole court process. This mobile application provides access to legal consultancy until you are a free person.
Justfix empowers tenants in neglectful housing situations with tools to better organize, connect with advocates, and take legal actions. They add another tactic to the fight for housing justice by partnering with grassroots organizations to create better support for systems for New York City’s excluded communities.
Road Rules is a mobile app that is revolutionizing the way people acquire driver’s licenses and helps motorists fight traffic police corruption in Zimbabwe.
Lady Liberty is a ‘1st in South Africa’ mobile legal office, taking law to marginalised women by traveling to poor remote areas and by using mobile technology.Their focus is on Domestic Violence (Protection and Harassment Orders), Sexual Assault, Marriage (Customary vs. Civil: In and Out of Community of Property), Divorce (Process, Assets, Maintenance and Children’s Rights), Maintenance, Wills and Labour.
Pinky (Ukraine)
Pinky allows customers to complain and to negotiate disputes with retailers taking easy steps online. Pinky facilitates parties through the process and optimizes the filing of complaints and their processing, which helps to save the company’s budget and increases the customer’s’ loyalty.
In my latest column on Slaw Online I raise a global access to justice alarm. We are not moving on Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 on equal access to justice. There is a tremendous lack of data and therefore the indicators for measuring whether any movement is being made towards achieving the goal are far below par. Funding levels are low and do not in any way resemble the kind of concerted efforts that we see in areas like health and education. Innovation is minimal.
This matters for two reasons. Firstly, because the lack of effective justice services affects a lot of people, in key relationships, with severe consequences. I am talking hundreds of millions. Read the blog for the details. Secondly, because in 2015 the heads of State and governments of all the UN member states decided that there should be a Sustainable Development Goal on equal access to justice. That was a promise, a decision and a commitment made to the citizens of the world, in particular the most vulnerable. It must be honoured.
There is also good news. Last week an international Justice Task Force was set up and had its first meeting in Buenos Aires. It is part of a wider initiative called Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just, and Inclusive Societies. The Task Force brings together a group of governments, international organisations, and civil society organisations to making SDG16 something real and tangible.
Sierra Leone, Argentina, and The Netherlands, preside, all at ministerial level. Amongst its members are two members of the Justice Leadership Group and other, impressive leaders in the field. The group has the support of two members of The Elders, Hina Jalani and Mary Robinson. Other leading organisations include the Open Society Foundations and Namati. There is a true joining of forces. Having been present at this first meeting I have seen firsthand, that the Justice Task Force will really be able to make a difference and rally more support for SDG16.3. Concrete decisions were taken to start bringing together knowledge and strategies that will make SDG16.3 more understandable and more actionable as a problem. At HiiL, we will continue to lend our full support to its work.
We are not at all on track with the realisation of SDG Target 16.3: equal access to justice for all.
HiiL’s surveys show that 60% of the justice needs people have involve five problems: family disputes, neighbour disputes, employment disputes, crime, and land disputes. These concern key relationships and needs. Shockingly, a little over 70% of the people who experience such problems do not find a satisfactory resolution. The survey also revealed that almost 30% don’t even feel empowered enough to take action and that women and other vulnerable groups have less access to justice.
For each of the five priority problems we measure severe consequences: from violence and loss of livelihood to damaged relationships and health problems.
This affects more than half of the world’s population. To deal with this challenge we need two things:
A lot of innovation, because existing mechanisms are not delivering
Solutions at scale, because a lot of people need to be reached.
Why is this not happening? This was the key question addressed at a Justice Dialogue held in the Peace Palace in December 2017, hosted by the Justice Leadership Group and HiiL. Chief Justices, (assistant) Ministers of Justice, and justice innovation leaders from all across the world gathered to discuss the topic of Breaking barriers to justice innovation.
How can we develop a better functioning justice market that involves government, civil society, and the private sector in ways that produces both: innovation and solutions at scale? The dialogue gave rise to three main themes:
Innovation priorities
Some needs are more pressing than others. Budgets are not endless and organisational capacity has limits. How do you know your innovation priorities? The keyword is data. We need data on justice needs that can be presented in an actionable way, enabling stakeholders to build an agenda and strategy around it. This data should be made available to the public. We also need documented and systematized evidence of what works. This evidence could help in implementing a system that measures improvement. Lastly, we need to shift our focus from a response-system to cost-effective prevention.
Roles and partnerships
Designing and implementing innovating justice solutions requires the coordination of many efforts. What efforts, and how do they work together? The discussion made clear that key actors and stakeholders in the judicial system must rethink their view on partnerships. Up until now, the private sector has largely been absent and, in fact, often not welcome. However, there are many areas where public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the justice sector can prove to be both effective and efficient. Ownership is another element: a ministry of justice, a chief justice, and a chief prosecutor cannot place justice innovation on the agenda by themselves. While forging partnership is crucial, we also need people who can be responsible. Why can we not have a ‘CEO’ of family, employment, crime, neighbor or land justice problems?
Funding for justice innovation
Innovation and scaling up need funding. But where are the innovation funds? Currently, there is hardly any budget for investment in the entrepreneurial justice sector. We need to help investors realise why it makes sense to invest in justice innovations. Unresolved justice needs undermine social harmony and economic growth. This argument needs to be prioritised if we are to get the political leadership on board. The link is – or should be – fairly obvious: there can be no peace and prosperity without justice.
In this report, you will find the main conclusions of the group and follow-up that they agreed to.
We welcome your thoughts, input, and invite you to join us in the effort to break down the barriers to justice innovation!
Sociale advocaten zijn ongerust over hun toekomst. Zij vragen de overheid om beloning voor de uren die zij werkelijk maken. Donderdag 1 februari zal er een demonstratie in toga zijn in Den Haag. Dit is één van meerdere signalen dat de rechtspleging moeizaam werkt voor de doelgroep. Deze factsheet geeft inzicht in data over de rol van de sociale advocatuur bij de toegang tot het recht. We verwijzen ook naar analyses hoe die rol zou kunnen worden versterkt.
Doel is om de dialoog over de toekomst van de rechtsbijstand, die (weer) op verschillende plekken plaatsvindt, te informeren en te stimuleren. Daarom stuurden we deze notitie toe aan Kamerleden, beleidsmakers, bij HiiL bekende stakeholders en journalisten. Het perspectief is vooral dat van gebruikers van het rechtssysteem. Wat hebben zij nodig? Op welke soort innovatie zouden zij hopen?
Het belangrijkste inzicht lijkt te zijn dat de diensten van sociale advocaten beter zouden kunnen aansluiten bij de behoeften. Mensen willen vooral hulp bij het actief oplossen van conflicten, in hernieuwde samenspraak met de andere partij. Sociale advocaten zijn ook vaak die bruggenbouwers die opkomen voor mensen in nood. Maar als probleemoplossers staan ze niet bekend bij het publiek. Mensen maken daarom relatief weinig gebruik van een advocaat.
Dat heeft ook te maken met de procedures bij de rechter waarin deze advocaten werken. Die zijn tijd- en geldverslindend, en de advocatuur aarzelt om verbetering van die procedures te ondersteunen. Er zijn ook vragen te stellen bij de manier waarop de advocatuur zichzelf heeft gereguleerd. Die regels maken het moeilijk om te innoveren.
Being a justice entrepreneur is not easy. By trying to prevent or resolve the most pressing justice needs, you may be doing the government’s job or trying to assist it. You need to choose your battles: are you trying to have citizens choose your disruptive solution over existing ones? Or are you convincing the government they need to partner with you? And most importantly, is it possible to create deep impact on access to justice, if you don’t work with the existing justice providers?
During the Justice Entrepreneurship School – a week long period of training provided by the Justice Accelerator Team – fifteen young justice leaders from around the world were invited to The Hague to gain new skills and exchange best practices on how to innovate in the justice sector. The participants were carefully selected from the Innovating Justice Challenge 2017 finalists, and their innovative solutions to justice problems ranged from an automated patent license bot in Ukraine, to a SMS legal service for farmers in Uganda, to a tenant legal protection app in New York.
During the School, the questions raised above were the center of most discussions, leading to a meaningful, emotional exchange of experiences and best practices. Interestingly, despite the innovator’s wide diversities, conclusions about how to work with the public sector thematically converged. These discussions accumulated in a list of recommendations for innovators on how to make justice entrepreneurship a success. These recommendations are not only unique to the justice sector, they apply equally for civic entrepreneurs trying to work with government bodies.
We are glad to share the final list of 6 best practices with you here. Make sure to take them with you on your innovation journey!
Incentivize your key partner in public institutions to work with you: start to build a deep relationship, connect to top level decision makers and communicate with innovators inside the government (‘intrapreneurs’).
Tell a success story, and use this to convince stakeholders. Share your successes or challenges on public platforms as a lever (e.g. social media).
Offer value to the stakeholders you’re trying to convince, so it becomes a win-win and they can do their job. It’s not only about criticizing or asking for help, but try also to give something, such as providing free training.
Connect on an emotional level by sharing a pain. The government is a group of people with emotions and some of them have faced the same justice problems. Know their needs and fears, and solve them with your product.
Do not take the government by surprise: build the information flow and explain what needs to happen. Start with easy requests and build it from there.
Have a ‘Plan B’ to work around the government, if really needed. Create the demand for your product or service, and let the government come to you. Maybe you’ll end up being the government!
What did 2017 bring? Lots of hard work, but was the dial on justice innovation moved?
Let me briefly beat my drum again why we must ask this question every year; ministers of justice, chief justices, MPs, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, justice NGOs, tax payers, voters, and revolutionaries.
In the past few months, HiiL has put together all it’s data collected on justice needs and experiences in the past four years. Almost 70.000 voices. Twelve countries. Africa, the Arab world, and Europe. A new Trend Report based on this data will come out in the first quarter of 2018. Here’s a sneak preview. Our data shows that 60% of the justice needs people have involves five problems: family disputes, neighbour disputes, employment disputes, crime, and land disputes. Shockingly, we found that a little over 70% of the people who experience such problems do not find a satisfactory resolution. Almost 30% don’t even feel empowered enough to take action. So justice systems appear not be delivering. There is a shocking amount of unresolved unfairness. What would we say if a health system did not cure 70% of health problems? Or if a school system largely missed 70% of the children? Would we accept that? So we must ask this question at the end of every year.
My conclusion from 2017 is that it’s still not moving very fast. That should worry all of us. But there is movement.
In my closing column of 2016 I highlighted a few positive developments around data collection – a prerequisite for innovation. You need to know the justice needs and experiences of people and you need to know whether and to what extent what is offered works. The most significant development then was the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, including a Goal related to justice: SDG 16. I would now say that thus far the concrete effect of proclaiming SDG16 has been minimal. The Institute for Economics and Peace did a thorough study this year and concludes that “at this stage, globally comparable data is either not available or only gathered for a limited number of countries…” Without such data, it is not possible to move forward on the targets. You can’t even see that you’re not making progress. What is positive: the World Justice Project continued unrelentingly with its data collection with another edition of the Rule of Law Index. HiiL completed five data reports: the UAE, Kenya, Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon. Also promising: the Pathfinders initiative, convened by Brazil, Sierra Leone and Switzerland and facilitated by the Center for International Cooperation of NYU, which highlights data as one of the key enablers for the realization of SDG16. This puts it in focus at the international political level. At a Justice Dialogue convened by the Justice Leadership Group and HiiL in the Peace Palace on 7 December the need for more collaboration between the public and private sector in collecting and sharing data about the justice needs and experiences of users was emphasized. We must push that lot more SDG16 funding is reserved for such data collection. May the development agencies of Canada, the Nordic countries, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, Japan, and others step up to the plate.
In our 2012 Trend Report on Basic Justice Care for Everyone we highlighted five innovation directions as most needed and most promising. These were the ones that our research and the experts we consulted though had the potential to deliver the most justice where that was most needed:
Legal and practical information, just in time, offered online or via hybrid online-offline services
Programmes of lawyers, paralegals or facilitators integrating advocacy and mediation skills
Evidence-based guidelines for resolving the most difficult issues through proven formulas
Specialized processes at courts and informal tribunals that concentrate on problem-solving, aggregating experience around highly specific issue areas and topics
Online platforms supporting dispute resolution
2017 did not bring massive movement in these areas. It is good to see that companies like Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer are expanding. That’s a lot of affordable access to justice for a lot of people who did not have it. But the rules that limit the provision of legal services to lawyers are still strong. We don’t see a these types of platforms being set up elsewhere. Around bullets 2, 3, and 4 my impression is: many interesting pilots – little or no scale up. The nut of online dispute settlement has not been cracked at scale. A start-up to watch in this regard is Justice42, which rebooted Rechtwijzer. It is now offering a separation/divorce procedure. The monopoly of courts remains strong. Innovation stimulation through prizes continues: Namati (the Grassroots Justice Prize – global) HiiL (Innovating Justice Awards – global) and the Financial Times (only Europe and the US) continue to run their respective innovation awards. We also see more legal hackathlons: Kyiv, Zurich, London, Berlin – to name a few. Helsinki hosted a Legal Design Summit. We also see universities getting serious about legal innovation courses, for instance Gillian Hadfield and Dan Ryan at USC. All this will produce innovation with more growth potential. Scale and initiatives that contribute to the real access to justice gap connected with the five global core justice needs remains the real challenge.
Legal Zoom and HiiL announced the setting up of SDG16 Legal Tech Alliance (no website yet): a way of helping promising justice entrepreneurs get access to technology that the Legal Zoom giants have developed, so they don’t need to start from scratch. These companies will contribute what they have learned to justice entrepreneurs in less developed countries. It is hoped more legal tech companies will join.
In December I was present at a closed high-level session in the Peace Palace involving chief justices, (assistant) ministers and justice innovation leaders. The question under discussion was: why is innovation not happening when there are so many potential customers? What are the barriers? A report with the conclusions is being written as I write, but I can, again offer a sneak preview. The big barriers to innovation seem to be (in no particular order): lack of data about the needs and experiences of users of justice systems; the natural monopoly of judges and lawyers; the challenge of developing the smart public-private partnerships that innovation needs; limited or no access to finance. Note: no one said that there were no promising innovations! Evidence bares out that that is not the problem.
We have much work to do in 2018. And lets ask the question again in December. I hope the answer is better and bigger than this year.
De Nederlandse rechtspleging is er niet als de burger haar echt nodig heeft. Dat was de uitkomst van een rapport van HiiL in mei 2017. Het systeem zit vast in het toernooimodel van procedures, in de beperkingen van juridische kennis en in het keurslijf van regels voor de aloude beroepen van advocaat en rechter. Die voorkomen dat er echte goede, gespecialiseerde en schaalbare rechtspleging ontstaat.
Het is een uitdaging die bijna te groot lijkt. Getuigenissen van mensen die klem komen in het juridische systeem zijn soms huiveringwekkend. Reacties op een misdrijf, afspraken hoe een conflict te beëindigen en een luisterende, responsieve overheid; er is veel te winnen. Maar dat is ook ingewikkeld, omdat het vereist dat rechters, officieren, advocaten, ministerie, slachtofferhulp, reclassering, de wetgever, en al die andere partijen die zich inzetten voor onze rechtsstaat samen om tafel moeten om nieuwe wegen te zoeken.
Wie doet er mee?
De NVvR (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Rechtspraak) is samen met HiiL deze uitdaging aangegaan. Samen verzochten we Raad voor de Rechtspraak, OM, Ministerie van VenJ en Hoge Raad om suggesties voor insiders en buitenstaanders. We hebben een krachtige groep van zo’n 35 mensen met verschillende achtergronden verzameld. Diversiteit is belangrijk: verschillende leeftijdsgroepen, zorg-experts, ontwerpers, acteurs, wetenschappers en ervaringsdeskundigen kunnen bijdragen.
Volgen van het programma
Inmiddels zijn er maandelijkse sessies. We deelden kennis over hoe te innoveren. Er werden zeven projecten gedefinieerd. De groep sprak over de uitdagingen van een proces van adaptive change: een manier om om te gaan met grote uitdagingen zoals energietransitie, klimaatverandering en, ja inderdaad: een meer verbindende rechtspleging. In spreekbeurten en debatten maken we een fundamenteel betere rechtspleging tot een onderwerp. We maakten een aansprekende schets van een nieuwe procedure voor vermijdbare ongevallen met dodelijke gevolgen.
Blogs
Miek Smilde, journaliste, schrijfster en interviewster van topjuristen in het blad Mr, volgt de dialoog en doet daar verslag van. Zie haar blogs op de website van NVvR.
Syria. The scale of displacement, destruction, violence, and victimhood is unprecedented by all standards.
The UN refugee organisation UNHCR tells us that 6.5 million people are internally displaced and that there are over 5 million people who have fled Syria to other countries. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in March this year that the war had killed 465.000 people; current estimates are at over half a million. Statistics from UN Habitat say that 760.000 housing units have been destroyed, that 50% of the hospitals don’t function; the numbers are probably much higher.
I have talked to credible journalists that speak of neighbourhoods that have been emptied, after which other groups of people are brought in. Credible organisations have confirmed that chemical weapons have been used repeatedly. As things look now, the Assad government is likely to win the war. He may ultimately be sacrificed, but his power structure is likely to survive. Russia, Iran, Turkey are in the political lead – and have been for a while. The US, the EU, and the UN are largely absent. It increasingly looks like this will be the first major war in quite a while in which the powers that ‘win’ are not known for their default position in favour of rule of law and human rights.
What is the rule of law and human rights world doing? Focussing on accountability. There are digital pieces of evidence of every single hour that this war has lasted. Gradually (and with limited coordination, it seems), an accountability machine has been set up. In 2011 the UN Human Rights Council set up the Independent International Commission of Inquiry to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 and to identify those accountable. In the meantime a number of NGOs staffed by highly professional investigators, funded by many of the same states that pushed for the Independent Commission, are also collecting evidence; for example the Commission for International Justice and the Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre. In 2015, the Security Council set up the Joint Investigative Mechanism to investigate the use of chemical weapons (this week, the Russians vetoed the extension of its mandate). As icing on the cake: last year the UN General Assembly set up the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011, also known as IIIM (or ‘Triple IM’).
Important as accountability for massive human rights violations is, there is more to justice than that. A survey that we recently did amongst Syrian refugees in Jordan gives a sense of what I mean with that. Their most pressing justice problems centre on housing, property rights, access to public services, and official documents. This raises the question: in terms of reconstruction and peacebuilding after a war, how does the justice need of accountability for human rights violations relate to the more mundane justice needs of housing, property rights, access to public services, and official documents?
The main ‘justice’ question connected with peacebuilding has always been justice or peace? Put differently: how can we talk peace with a leader that we threaten to put behind bars? Our data suggests that there is another justice question that the international community must look at: how does the question of accountability relate to the immediate need for mundane justice? In Syria, considerable resources are being put into the first. Nothing is happening in the second area. The UN system has developed a considerable body of knowledge about accountability. Little or no knowledge is available on rebuilding justice mechanisms so that people can move back into their homes, live on their land, sort out inheritances, deal with child custody matters, get back to work, and (re)start an SME. These are also critical justice needs for people who want to pick up their lives after conflict. It might even be that not focussing on mundane justice undermines accountability efforts. What is the relationship between the two types of justice and when must one focus on which one? Mundane justice may also be a space in which those that strongly prioritize rule of law and human rights world and those that consider that less of an immediate priority in post conflict reconstruction can find common ground, without compromising principles. This question might be worth a few round tables and more research. It seems important.
On December 7th 2017, HiiL hosted the Innovating Justice Forum in the Peace Palace. After months of preparation, the all-day event saw the brightest minds in justice innovation gather for a day of skill sessions workshops and panels of expert justice leaders – all relating to 2017’s theme of breaking barriers to justice innovation.
The aim of the Forum was to show that through innovation, barriers to justice can be broken. People’s justice needs are the reason for this innovating. In the words of justice leader H.E. Mr. Abdulla A.J. Al-Majid, “Justice is not about the state, it’s about the people. It is about happiness for the people”.
The opening and closing panel comprised of H.E. Chief Justice Bart M. Katureebe Chief Justice of Uganda, H.E. Mr. Abdulla A.J. Al-Majid, Assistant Minister and Chief Innovation Officer, Ministry of Justice, UAE, Dr. Willy Mutunga Former Chief Justice of Kenya and founding member of the Justice Leadership Group, and Mr. Mamadou Ismaël Konaté, Former Minister of Justice and Human Rights of the Republic of Mali. This formal judicial expertise was merged with the upcoming talent of the innovators, and combined with the skill sessions and workshops. The bottom up and top down approaches, demonstrated by the Forum’s variety of speakers and workshop leaders, showed how accessible justice for the people is the goal for all those involved in the Forum.
Over 300 attended the sold out event, with numerous sectors represented, including tech, Big Data, legal academics and professionals, students and social entrepreneurs. Representatives were present from the Ford Foundation, The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UNDP, RMIT University’s Centre for Innovative Justice from Melbourne, LegalZoom and many more. With the 15 innovators pitching throughout the day at various intervals, and the jury deliberating, the event was defined by an excitement for the future of justice innovation and the wide issues it can help. Innovators tackled an array of justice issues as diverse as road legal advice for drivers in Zimbabwe, a bot in Ukraine which speeds up ™ applications, and online platforms for legal professionals here in The Netherlands.
The winner of the Innovating Justice Challenge 2017 was announced as South Africa’s Citizen Justice Network. Proving that knowledge is power, Citizen Justice Network trains community paralegals to be radio journalists, and then pairs these paralegals with radio stations so that vital social justice content can be produced and disseminated to people. Decided upon by a jury of highly experienced individuals from the private, not-for profit and legal sector, the runners up were JustFix NYC in third place, and Lady Liberty from South Africa in second. Tackling housing rights issues and gender issues affecting marginalised women respectively, the innovators displayed the people-centered justice initiatives that will disrupt and change justice for the better.
In 2017, HiiL signed the SDG Charter to demonstrate its commitment to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These SDG’s were a recurring theme in the Forum, with a major development announced between HiiL and LegalZoom. A tech alliance was announced at the closing of the forum, with the two organisations’ passion for access to justice and a urgency to fulfil SDG16 a major driving force between the partnership. David Steven’s call to action from the Forum’s mid-morning panel session to “make 2018 a year of justice” is off to a bright start.
The HiiL team are excited to invite you to the 8th Annual Innovating Justice Forum(#JustInnovate17) – the world’s premiere event for Justice Innovation! 2017’s event is shaping up to be our best one yet.
In the prestigious Peace Palace, we are bringing together 15 of the best justice innovators to an audience ingrained with a passion for justice – YOU! These daring, bold innovations distinguished themselves from more than 600 applications this year, and tackle a wide range of issues, making this an incomparable justice innovation event.
Joined by some of the top minds in justice innovation from both The Hague and abroad, including superstars of the public & private sector, academia, and more, this is an event not to be missed. Our all day event includes workshops, keynote speeches, info sessions, as well as networking afterwards!
6000 people in Lebanon have been surveyed for crucial data on their experience of the Lebanese justice system. HiiL’s latest report includes key findings on the state of justice in Lebanon, as well as the experiences of 1200 Syrian refugees’ too.
The latest Justice Needs and Satisfaction report from HiiL, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, has compiled key, crucial data on the justice needs in Lebanon. HiiL has gone directly to the people of Lebanon and listened to their justice stories. By knocking on the doors of 6000 members of Lebanese society and asking a series of questions on how their lives are affected by all aspects of justice, important data has been collected.
HiiL’s latest report includes key findings on the justice system in Lebanon, including data on refugees who make up 20% of the people surveyed. The study is part of a large multi-country project commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The report was produced and launched in Beirut in cooperation with ACRLI, the Arab Centre for the Development of the Rule of Law and Integrity.
Released on December 1st 2017, the report is an insight into justice from the users perspective. Important data includes the statistic that 3.1 million people in Lebanon face one or more serious legal problems every four years (68%). Other key findings from this report include issue prevalence, impact, legal information and advice, and dispute resolution. The most serious problems are neighbour disputes, employment and family related issues. Gender also emerged as a decisive factor in justice equality. It was found the women are disproportionately affected by family legal problems. Most of these disputes revolve around divorce, but domestic violence is also a pressing issue. These disputes have a strong impact on citizen’s lives – however, people are very active in seeking legal advice to resolve the disputes.
Among other findings a correlation was found between low education levels and/ or income and seeking legal information and advice. At the time of the interview, 6/10 actively sought legal advice, yet on top of this and in spite of action being taken, 53% of the legal problems were not settled – meaning for 1.1 – 1.2 million people, their legal problems remained unresolved.
1200 Syrian refugees were interviewed for the report. The Syrian refugees living in Lebanon report legal problems slightly less often than the rest of the population (65%). However, they are in a particularly vulnerable position with respect to access to justice, since their legal status in Lebanon is precarious. Syrian refugees report problems which are also common for the Lebanese citizens. However, grievances around ID documents are very prevalent among the Syrian refugees. Seeking legal information and taking action is much less common among Syrian refugees than with citizens. Many of their problems are unresolved (70%) at the time of the interview.
The report ends with a number of recommendations, underlining that there is a need to pay special attention to vulnerable groups, and to build a system that listens to the users of justice. The full list of recommendations and the entire report is available to download here in both English and Arabic.
We worked together with leading brands & retailers to achieve living wages in textile and garment supply chains. ACT (“Action, Collaboration, Transformation”) is an initiative between international brands & retailers, manufacturers, and trade unions to address the issue of living wages in the textile and garment supply chain.
HiiL supports ACT
Our clients asked us to support and facilitate their collaborative process and to ensure implementation and follow-up of their strategic plans to establish industry-wide collective bargaining for workers in the global garment and textile supply chain.
Our role as HiiL was to bring trust, transparency and a balanced representation of the different stakeholders as a neutral third party. With our support, ACT has been able to bring together different stakeholders with different interests. The brands have agreed on the Enabling Principles, have signed an Memorandum of Understanding and have started work on the first country programme in Cambodia.
HiiL supported the partners involved to develop their strategies and actions jointly in a sphere of innovation. We supported the brands to work transparently, collaboratively and in good faith to ensure the mutual responsibilities. We helped the relevant partners to explore different solutions, make room for imperfection and continuously adapt their strategies to ensure implementation of their joint goals. We encouraged them to jointly drive a new culture of trust and participation between all relevant actors.
How will ACT achieve this?
ACT is the first global framework on living wages in the garment sector that brings together all relevant stakeholders; identifying what each stakeholder’s role and responsibility is, and how, if taken together, this can support living wages in a scaled up, sustainable, industry-wide approach.
There are very few examples of industry collective bargaining agreements within key garment and textile sourcing countries. This is why retailers & brands, trade unions and manufacturers are working towards this goal.
Tucked away in a small side road in central Kampala lies a white, two-story building with a dozen lawyers crammed inside. But this is no traditional law firm – this is Barefoot Law. These lawyers each stared down a career of public prosecutorial work, private law work, or politics and chose a different path: using their talents and their love for technology to make access to justice and the law readily available to 50 million people in Africa by 2030.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator played a critical role in this journey, identifying and supporting one of Barefoot Law’s first innovative products, when the mSMEGararage won the Innovating Justice Awards in 2015. This proved to be a catalyst of success, after which the organisation grew and was awarded the presteigious King Baudouin African Development Prize in 2017.
Now, two years after first identifying the promise of the organization, the HiiL Justice Accelerator in partnership with Nuffic conducted a two-week Tailor-Made Training (TMT) programme in Uganda to help Barefoot Law in defining, executing, and scaling up its social mission.
The first step, and the major accomplishment of the training, was defining the BHAG – the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal that Barefoot Law wished to accomplish. They set an ambitious target and mission: Barefoot Law seeks to make access to justice and the law readily available to 50 million people across Africa by 2030.
Full of drive for this inspiring goal, the Barefoot Law team spent nine more days working on a framework of how to get there. This included work on lean startup and experimentation, social impact measurement, organizational structure, sales and marketing, personality and leadership, resiliency, international scaling, spinoff strategies, and technical tools for building prototypes.
Attendees of the workshop anonymously reported afterwards:
« It is going to be a huge catalyst to the organisation’s growth.“
“Barefoot law is going to do what it has been doing better and more efficiently.”
“We will have more direction, focus and more unified voice especially because of the BHAG. We have a great goal to aspire towards. Our structure and the functions of each team member will improve. The training has also helped us figure out the cracks we need to fill out in order for us to make access to justice and the law readily available to 50 million people across Africa by 2030.”
The HiiL Justice Accelerator greatly looks forward to being able to play a continued supporting role in the development of Barefoot Law’s programme, and thanks Nuffic for its support of a crucial programme at a critical time for Barefoot Law.
For more information about the HiiL Justice Accelerator, visit www.innovatingjustice.com. To connect with our Ugandan justice innovation programmes, contact Nathalie Dijkman at nathalie.dijkman@hiil.org.
Less than one month to go until the 8th Innovating Justice Forum! This year on December 7th, the greatest minds in law, entrepreneurship, big data and more are coming together in the Peace Palace to discuss how to break barriers to justice innovation. Will you be one of them?
This year is shaping to be our best yet. The exciting, all-day programme includes globally renowned speakers, workshops and exciting pitches from upcoming entrepreneurs. With speakers including Mali’s Minister of Justice and Human Rights Mr. Mamadou Ismael Konate of Mali and Assistant Secretary Ministry of Justice of U.A.E H.E. Mr. Abdulla A.J. Al-Majid, and talks on how to use blockchain technology for A2J, #JustInnovate17 is proving to be unmissable. On top of this, our 15 finalists from this years Innovating Justice Challenge, chosen from over 600 applications, will pitch their entrepreneurial justice startup initiatives before a jury. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch the future of justice disruption and innovation!
By attending, you are helping HiiL support Sustainable Development Goal 16 -Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, apart of the UN SDG Charter HiiL signed this year. You are also helping HiiL in our overarching goal – that by 2030, 150 million people worldwide will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. Accessible justice for many can become a tangible reality when innovation is pursued. Will you join us on this journey?
We are also awarding 10 free tickets to the event! All you need to do is tell us about your passion for justice and innovation here, and you could be attending this exciting event! The deadline is November 30th. More information can be found on the Forum website – www.innovatingjusticeforum.com
Cryptocurrencies, and its underlying blockchain technology, are everywhere today. Bitcoin’s revolutionary breakthrough provoked intensive research into the potential adoption of backend technology into a multitude of fields. Essentially, blockchain is a secure digital ledger which can record almost anything which has value – coins and financial transactions, ID documents and ownership titles, votes and shares, property and contractual rights, positive and negative reviews. It is clear that blockchain technology will transform and probably disrupt many areas of the law in the months and years to come.
Based on mutual consensus between all participants and automatic authenticity checks, the decentralized blockchain technology has shown tremendous potential for building independent systems. Thus, the autonomy as well as the transparency of those systems would guarantee a broader access to justice to everyone involved.
But is it going to remain a technology geared towards the needs of big business such as banks, insurance, the fintech sector and investors? Can blockchain help the billions of people who need the law for protecting their basic justice needs?
Throughout the years, HiiL has asked tens of thousands of people around the world about their justice needs and experiences with access to justice. We find that worldwide, large numbers of women and men encounter legal problems that might have a legal solution. At a global level, people most often need accessible and fair justice journeys for: crime, land problems, disputes with neighbors, family problems, employment and money-related disputes. Problems around ID documents (i.e. birth, citizenship, marriage and death certificates) and welfare benefits are common among the most vulnerable groups.
The answer to our question is – Yes, blockchain technology has huge promise for the justice needs of the people. Countries like Estonia, Ghana, Honduras, Ukraine, Sweden, the Indian state Andra Pradesh and Georgia already experiment with registering land titles and ownership rights using blockchain. There is a great hope that this will make land transactions more affordable, transparent and secure.
In the field of family justice, there are already examples of e-marriage and marriage certificates encoded in public and private blockchains. The fields most likely to be innovated using blockchain are inheritance, dowry, and prenuptial agreements. Benefits of such innovation include smart contracts which can help women to secure and enforce their rights.
Employment is about livelihood. Millions of people need protection against exploitative practices, unfair dismissal, unpaid wages and dangerous working conditions. Employment contracts and their clauses can be registered in a blockchain. Complex schemes of intermediaries can be hold accountable through transparency. Data can be exchanged with labour inspectorates and watchdogs. In Brazil, a startup called CreditDream works on decentralized blockchain applications for universal access to credit.
Undoubtedly, there is a great potential for blockchain technologies to deliver just and fair solutions to millions and even billions of people who need justice. The creativity of the industry will lead the way. But there is a need for visionary leadership which steers innovation towards people’s most prevalent and pressing justice needs.
In an attempt to evolve data to action, HiiL has conducted a workshop in Tunis to formulate an action plan around designing smart employment contracts and innovative dispute resolution mechanisms around employment justice. The workshop was part of a larger project concerning the Justice Needs of the Tunisian people, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Experts in employment justice from the Ministries of Justice, Employment and Social Affairs, Judges, representatives from academia, human resources experts and representatives from the Labour Inspectorate attended the workshop. Based on the results of this years Tunisian Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey, the expert participants discussed the Tunisian people’s most pressing justice needs and formulated goals for a new system of employment justice. Pressing goals that emerged included equal access to jobs, an equilibrium between stability and flexibility of jobs in the private sector, transparent promotions in the public sector, up to date labour codes and better enforcement of protection.
In a session led by HiiL’s Research Director Dr. Maurits Barendrecht, user stories from the perspectives of employers, employees, judges & mediators and public agencies were developed. This innovative method of product design helps to shift the focus onto the needs of the users of the justice system.
Together with the coalition that we have built during the workshop, we are working on securing funding to follow up on the tasks specified in the action plan.
Over 6000 Jordanians have been surveyed for crucial data on their experience of the Jordan justice system. HiiL’s latest report includes key findings on the state of justice in Jordan, as well as 600 Syrian refugees’ experiences and expectations of justice too.
The latest Justice Needs and Satisfaction report from HiiL, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, has compiled key, crucial data on the justice needs of Jordanians. Launched on October 23rd 2017, the data from over 6000 people surveyed, includes important findings such as: the most prevalent legal issues, most serious justice problems, and Syrian refugees’ justice experience and their expectations of justice on return to Syria, among many other issues. The report was produced and launched in Amman in collaboration with Jordanian NGO Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD).
Justice problems in Jordan affect the most basic human needs: human relationships, income, shelter, and income. The most common legal problems encountered in Jordan are disputes with neighbours, family problems, employment and housing issues. One out of three persons in Jordan suffered at least one legal problem that was impactful and difficult to resolve in the past 4 years – approx. 2M people in the past four years. Limited protection from the law correlates with socio-economic factors of income and education, with low levels of both impacting severely on people’s justice journeys.
Divorce is the most serious, prevalent family justice problem in Jordan. People involved in divorce disputes seek information and advice more often than people with other problems, and action is taken to find a resolution also more frequently. In contrast, many other disputes remain unresolved for a longer period of time.
Chapter 9 of the report is dedicated to the surveyed findings from 600 Syrian refugees. Almost every dimension of a Syrian refugee’s justice journey is rated lower than citizens, particularly regarding stress and emotions, and they are also less likely to have their problems solved than Jordanian citizens. Four out of 10 reported at least one legal problem, and housing and social welfare are their most pressing justice needs. Landlords harass refugees more often, and refugees feel their problems impact them severely. Surveyed refugees declared that the most pressing needs in Syria upon return will relate to housing and property, as well as securing a functional state that can provide services to the population.Almost half (46%) say there will be a need to address the grave human rights violations committed in Syria since 2011.
The report ends with a number of recommendations and can be downloaded here.
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In the past month at HiiL, there has been a lot of activity surrounding our Boostcamps. These are events where chosen applications of the Innovating Justice Challenge pitch in front of local expert juries, and innovators are chosen to attend the Innovating Justice Forum in December, here in The Hague. These Boostcamps are an exciting, important step in the challenge, and are a crucial element of HiiL’s work.
The Boostcamps are a pivotal process in finding the most daring, bold justice entrepreneurs with innovations that make justice more accessible. These entrepreneurs contribute to HiiL’s mission to enable 150 million people by 2030 to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. Shortlisted from over 600 applications, the most promising pitches are selected by our seasoned legal professional juries, whose incomparable insight we are very grateful to have. Each Boostcamp jury is represented by national experts from that country in the fields of law, entrepreneurship or investment or similar.
By supporting innovation through this annual challenge, a crucial link is made between data and action. HiiL’s reports have focused on justice needs in various countries including Ukraine, Uganda, Tunisia, the Netherlands and more, and applications are encouraged from countries where HiiL has identified pressing justice needs issues. The Challenge is divided along the six ‘justice pain points’ that were identified in this data.
After the call for applications, a shortlist form, interviews and evaluations, 6 Boostcamp locations were chosen. So far, 5 out of 6 Boostcamps have occurred – Kampala, Accra, Nairobi, The Hague and Johannesburg. A blog on the exciting innovations from Kampala can be read here. Only one is left – Kyiv on the 19th of October. It is a busy process, and an exciting time to follow innovations that are helping to provide access to justice worldwide.
The diverse, wide range of innovations that have been showcased through the recent Boostcamps display a promising, inspiring ecosystem of justice entrepreneurship. Innovations have included a Ugandan enterprise that creates infographics to simplify complex, legal issues, a New York based app that helps tenants faced with housing legal problems, and a Kenyan platform that connects gender based violence victims to security services quickly and easily, among many others. Through innovation, HiiL’s aim to make accessible justice a reality for 150 million people by 2030 is progressing – stay tuned for our list of finalists and attend our Innovating Justice Forum THIS December to join us on this exciting journey!
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In the past year, HiiL has been involved with the Dutch “Divorce Challenge”. This is a challenge run by the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice that aims to collect ideas that lead to an improvement in divorce proceedings, and for the situations of children involved. Stemming from a motion from the Labour Party, on 6 September 2016, the Dutch former Minister of Security and Justice launched the Divorce Challenge.
The goal is to limit the amount of acrimonious divorces (bad divorces where parents fight a lot), and to decrease bad effects that such divorces have, especially on children. The challenge invited people from a wide spectrum, including professionals, social innovators and experience experts, to come up with good ideas, and entries were submitted between September and November last year.
Facts show that divorce proceedings need reform. On an annual basis, 35.000 kids deal with consequences of divorce. 10 to 15% of the divorces are defined by problematic, acrimonious actions. Research has shown that children dealing with such a divorce face issues at school, get involved in criminal activities, deal with emotional problems, and in the future even have problems in their own relationships.
From 21 November 2016 an expert panel made a selection of over 500 submissions. On 14 December 2016 the selected submissions did a pitch in front of a panel. 5 were selected, of which HiiL’s « Rechtszorg in plaats van rechtsstrijd bij scheiding » was one of them. HiiL wants to change the divorce procedure by emphasising legal care instead of legal fights. The focus is on: 1. Sustainable, justifiable agreements between well-informed family members and, where necessary, offer them help and support. 2. Legal experts (and judges most importantly) will be accessible without legal fights. 3. Sometimes situations or people are difficult, then the professionals should focus on what works (best practices). 4. Online support (a platform) for the divorce procedure.
So what is happening now? HiiL with important actors including the judiciary, the legal aid board and others, and alongside the other 4 winning submissions, will explore the next steps and actions to take. An independent expert platform will guide the ‘exploration’ phase of the challenge. The focus will be on: 1. informing, awareness and supporting parents in the divorce process, 2. the divorce process, and legal care, 3. ‘feeding’ the public debate on divorcing in general. Fruitful findings and conclusions from this collaborative process are hoped for in the not so distant future, upon which decisive reform can hopefully happen.
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My last column was about Kenya. So is this one. For me, Kenya is currently one of the most interesting countries to follow if you are interested in rule of law development and justice innovation.
“I had just started my working day when I got a call from my sister. She had been taken to the police station or her way to work. The matatu bus on which she was traveling had been stopped and checked for seat belts. The passengers not wearing them where taken. I rushed to where she was but was too late; she had already been booked. This meant she was on her way to court for a hearing. I took me some time to find out which court and I rushed over there. By that time it was just past noon. We had to wait until four o’clock before the hearing of her case took place. They always do the serious criminal cases first. Seatbelts come later. By the time her case started the judge was tired. It did not feel like a real hearing. Just a quick decision. She told my sister she had to do a few hours of community work. She was given a buckets and a mop and was told to clean courtrooms. Luckily she did not get a fine. That could have been ten thousand shilling, nearly a weeks’ work! Still, costs were high. She lost a day at work. And so did I. If I had just been in time for the police! I could then have paid him five hundred shillings and we could have gone our way again.“
The rising middle class. We read about how more and more Africans can call themselves that. The definition is a very basic one: middle class people earn slightly more than what is needed for bare survival. They can spend a little on insurance, education, and maybe even an occasional holiday (literally – day). The person who told me this story would fall under this definition, as does his sister. Urban, slightly better off than the millions in the slums. But still working very hard every day to ensure housing, to nourish their families, keep them healthy, and put their children through school. My friend was happy he had running water two days a week. He also told me that something seatbelty like this could happen to anybody in Kenya. The justice system is generally not seen as something that helps you in life. In fact: you work hard to avoid it. See also my previous column on family justice.
For my friend it was all the fault of the judges. This was not obvious to me at all. I asked him to explain.
“You see,”, he said, “A policeman can decide not to book me when I have inadvertently done something wrong in traffic. I can then thank him. But when you are before a judge you get booked and usually you get some form of punishment. The fines are enormous. Why don’t they change that? The laws are wrong. The judges just punish.”
I pondered the separation of powers. Judges don’t make these laws. But this was too much to bring into the conversation because something else popped up in my mind.
“So how do you thank a policeman?”
“It depends, if they really help you can give them four or five hundred shilling.”
“But that’s corruption! Shouldn’t you blame the policemen instead of the judges?”
“No! I see that differently. If a policeman askes for money and negotiates, it is corruption. But if he does not ask and takes a good decision, like not booking me and just giving me a warning, then I can thank him. That is my decision. If he takes a good decision, then that is OK. You have to thank somebody if they make an effort.“
I repeat: Kenya is probably one of the most interesting places in the world to follow if you are interested in rule of law development and justice innovation. In this mini documentarythat was shown on Dutch TV you see Kenyan justice innovation in action. In 2010 the citizens of Kenya adopted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It devolves more power away from Nairobi to the regions. It solidly enshrines the separation of powers. It is very progressive on gender equality. It lays the foundation for a citizen oriented, citizen serving justice system. Up to last year, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and his small team around him led the judicial transformation process. They did many things, from refurbishing and building court buildings, putting in place digital systems, and redesigning the Judicial Training Institute, to enhancing performance, changing cultures, and building a cadre of young judges. But the work was far from done.
This year, Chief Justice David Maraga took over and under his leadership, the transformation continues. It was also under his leadership that the Supreme Court declared the elections in Kenya “null and void” on 1 September, a decision that nobody expected and that is unique in Africa.
Rule of law is being built. Political parties are invoking the law. The Supreme Court sees a breach and elections are declared null and void. All political groupings are respecting the judgement. But also: an opposition leader who initially, before the case was brought to the Supreme Court, said he did not trust the judiciary. The other presidential candidate who, after the judgement, said he’ll ‘fix’ the court when elected. All are using the law and the constitution. Underneath that, we see judges who get blamed by middle class Kenyans for seatbelt situations. Policemen get thanked, without it being considered a serious issue by many citizens. Justice innovators like Sauti that are empowering women entrepreneurs. It’s a complex business, building rule of law. Keep following Kenya, for the next 10- years. In my next column I will be able to write about the outcomes of the nation-wide justice needs and satisfaction survey that was done in Kenya. Note: at the request of the judiciary of Kenya, which wants to keep improving.
Bangladesh is a small, developing country in South Asia located between India and the Bay of Bengal. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. More than 150 million people co-exist in a picturesque piece of land where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Megha Rivers flow into the Bay of Bengal
Notwithstanding the fact that Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, it is making rapid progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. Bangladesh’s poverty rates are also improving; according to the World Bank, the poverty rate dropped from 44.2% in 1991 to 18.5% in 2010.
Rule of law and justice are intrinsic to decreasing, and ultimately eliminating, the prevalent issue of poverty in Bangladesh. Fair, predictable and transparent laws, implemented and enforced by objective and fair institutions allow people to invest in their human and social development. The rule of law protects and increases the value of important relationships around education, family, property rights and work.
From an individual’s perspective, the rule of law concerns a person’s ability to resolve disputes in a fair and constructive manner. This means accessible mechanisms, which apply fair processes that lead to just outcomes. A well-designed justice journey is organized around a neutral decision maker. This person or group of people is independent from the disputants and aims to resolve the disputes according to fair, objective and known criteria. Effective justice journeys should be user-centered, non-discriminatory, timely and respectful.
HiiL is implementing its Justice Needs and Satisfaction methodology to study how the people of Bangladesh experience and perceive the available justice journeys. We are going to ask a large number of randomly selected individuals from across the country about their encounters with justice. This will yield rich data to map out access to justice in Bangladesh. It will reveal the scope of the problems and the strategies that people use to resolve their legal issues.
Most importantly, the data will tell how the users of justice assess the quality of the processes, the quality of the outcomes and the costs of justice. This will allow for a prioritization of policies and also a redesigning of existing procedures so that people’s expectations are better met. Data will trigger justice innovation based on the implicit needs, interests and expectations of the people of Bangladesh.
Our project in Bangladesh is developing rapidly. A large part of its success is based on HiiL’s cooperation with excellent partners. This includes Nielsen Bangladesh, who are collecting survey data. From 9 to 11 August 2017 we trained more than 50 highly capable interviewers in Dhaka. BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Aid programme is our strategic Knowledge and Implementation partner. BRAC’s unparalleled track record and capacity linked with HiiL’s potential in measuring and innovating justice promise impactful developments in the access to justice arena in Bangladesh!
Stay tuned – our data report is expected to be published in December 2017.
HiiL’s Research Director Maurits Barendrecht was a guest on Maastricht Law Talks, a monthly podcast covering comparative law. In this episode, access to justice was the core of the discussion, and is a strong belief that propels the work HiiL does too.
Listen here to learn about Prof. Dr. Barendrecht, HiiL, and the global, systemic, unsolved issue of access to justice.
In one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world, agriculture employs 82% of the workforce, yet contributes only 26% to the GDP. Could merging entrepreneurship and legal advice with farming be the solution to this Ugandan economic asymmetry?
Based in the Ugandan capital Kampala, Lawyers 4 Farmers (L4F) is a HiiL backed legal initiative that aims to spread awareness of basic legal knowledge and entrepreneurial skills to the farming population. Hellen Mukasa, co-founder of L4F , explains that “The main objective of L4F is to enable farmers to navigate the complexities of the law and make practical changes in the way that they start, structure and manage their farm businesses for increased productivity and profitability.” With the knowledge acquired from HiiL’s data that 88% of Ugandans faced legal problems that were severe and difficult to resolve over a four year period, transferring legal system knowledge, combined with insights on entrepreneurship, to the agriculture sector is a fruitful venture.
Despite the entrepreneurial spirit which defines contemporary Uganda, farmers remain overwhelmingly excluded from the money economy, with 40% of rural farmers living below the poverty line. Hellen highlights this imbalance, explaining that “If farmers embrace entrepreneurship, they can learn skills which in turn enable them to increase productivity, eliminate the middlemen and deal directly with end users leading to increased profitability . Exports would grow and unemployment levels would reduce as jobless Ugandans would go back to farming.”
So how does L4F work?
The SMS based platform provides educative, basic legal advice to farmers in their local language, and offers instant guidance on legal problems. Everything is translated and interactions are conducted in the local language. So far, there has been a positive start for L4F, with Hellen describing success stories of farmers who did not know they could acquire land titles for their land, and did so through the L4F platform. Progress is evident even with farmers sending inquiries through the platform, as Hellen says that from the baseline survey, “even talking to a lawyer was intimidating for farmers”. Therefore, bridging law and agricultural is already off to a promising start.
What are the main legal problems faced by Ugandan lawyers?
Hellen outlines three main problems; the first two are land wrangles and succession issues, where disputes occur over land ownership and laws of inheritance, the latter centering on laws affecting land ownership of women, which has been adopted by official law yet slow for communities to accept. The final legal problem identified is domestic violence. The majority of Ugandan agricultural workers are female, and domestic violence is a major issue after the harvest season, when earned money becomes a point of contention in the household.
Gender is a major propeller of L4F’s work. Hellen, as one of the leaders of the all-female team, explains that “76.9% of our [L4F] beneficiaries are female. 2 of the 3 legal problems identified revolve around the female farmer and therefore the content we develop and activities we plan are mostly centered around protecting the female farmer”. By merging law and entrepreneurship with farming, a myriad of issues will hopefully be addressed, and L4F is off to a promising start already.
On Saturday July 8th, Martin Gramatikov, head of Measuring Justice, and Roger El Khoury, HiiL representative in the Arab countries and Senior Justice Sector Advisor, led a workshop with a distinguished group of Jordanian judges, lawyers, and civil society activists in Amman. This session was intended to present and discuss the preliminary findings of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey HiiL conducted earlier this year in Jordan.
Because data on it’s own tells only part of the story, HiiL needs the views and reflections of local experts from the countries we analyze. This allows us to get a full picture of how people get access to justice.
The workshop produced an open discussion about Jordanian’s legal problems. Our survey showed that neighbors relations, family justice problems, and housing, are the most pressing and prevalent legal needs in the population. Our sample also included Syrians refugees (10%), for whom housing, public welfare, and employment are critical issues.
The local expertise of the workshop participants provided key insights for the HiiL team. These fundamental inputs will be reflected in the full and comprehensive data report which HiiL will publish soon. HiiL is grateful for all the valuable feedback received from these experts who attended the session in Amman. The feedback will help HiiL finalise the report, which is an evidence-based eye-opener for future discussion and cooperation on Jordanian justice innovation.
Gathering data is just the first step towards justice innovation. HiiL’s next phase after releasing the report will involve creating a coalition of stakeholders around the most pressing justice needs in Jordan. This collaboration will develop innovative solutions to deal with those justice needs. In alignment with this, HiiL will work with the private sector to empower justice entrepreneurship in developing new solutions.
East Africa has a huge informal private sector that drives most of its economic and social development. However, this is staggered by an outdated, complex and corrupt legal and political framework. Uganda is the most entrepreneurial country in the world, and its micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME’s) collectively constitute about 90% of private sector production and employ over 2.5 million people. But most small businesses struggle to survive beyond their first years.
Many East African entrepreneurs and business(wo)men are operating in the informal sector, which makes them vulnerable to corruption. The existing justice sector and legal framework does not provide support for these micro businesses, in fact, it is so complex and corrupt that it discourages their development. Up-to-date information about changing laws and tax regulations are complex and inaccessible to most business owners, while a monopoly of lawyers provide unaffordable and unreliable legal services.
As part of HiiL’s impact measurement activities, we closely follow some of the beneficiaries of our programmes and innovations. Their stories reveal more than numbers can: they show the real struggles and opportunities that come with improving access to justice. One of the great things about working at HiiL is that I can hear these stories first hand, feel inspired by the next generation of justice leaders, and be excited by what innovation can achieve in the legal space. My personal interest in documentary making drove me to follow two of our innovations in action, and make a film that could help our partners, clients, innovators and friends to see what we really mean by driving justice innovation.
This short film follows two entrepreneurs who are applying new technologies to support informal businesses in East Africa. Timothy is a Ugandan lawyer reaching out to micro business owners in Kampala outskirts via WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter through the mSMEGarage. David is a Kenyan IT researcher rolling out Sauti: an SMS platform for women traders on the Kenya-Uganda border. These, and many other young innovators in the legal space are leveraging on East Africa’s fast paced environment to empower fellow business owners and fulfill the justice needs of SMEs. Will the future look brighter if emerging economies, like Uganda, were to benefit from this new generation of visionary tech-driven justice leaders?
Watch the documentary below, and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for HiiL updates! Visit www.innovatingjustice.com for more information on HiiL’s justice innovation initiatives.
During a recent drive through crazy Nairobi traffic I learned a few important things about family justice journeys in Kenya. It started with me looking out my window and seeing two women walking uphill, carrying heavy loads on their backs.
“Kenyan women are strong!”, I remarked.
“Yes, that’s true.”, my driver John replied, “They work to make money and when they come home they do all the work in the house and take care of the children.”
“That’s different with us… “ I replied.
“When I come home after work, the children have been washed, I sit down and my wife brings me my food. She must do that.”
“You never take care of the children?”
“Of course, when my wife is sick or when she is away or something. Two times a year or something I cook in the weekend: a stew with ugali. That’s all I can cook.”
“My father also never cooked.” I reflected. John continued.
“As a man you have a lot of responsibility. Your salary must pay for the house, the insurance, the car, the school, the daily shopping. If there is a helper in the house or with childcare, that comes from the salary of the wife. So the man has no time to do much in the house. He will often come home late, very tired. It makes him the boss of the family.”
A huge grin appeared on his face. “We always laughed about former president Kabaki. He could not control his wife, Lucy. She once slapped a newspaperman and an official and in public. This was very embarrassing for him. Wives are hard to control! There was a newspaper story a while ago about a man who was so angry that his wife was complaining and had not cooked that he chopped off both her hands! That was terrible. It is good that the man is now in jail. With the help of many people the woman was able to go abroad and get prosthetic hands. Violence like that is bad. But as a man you also need to be strict. Sometimes you can slap the woman if you really have to. We are all advised that when you have just married you need to be very strict for the first few months or maybe a year, so that things are clear. In that way you avoid trouble.”
“If I or one of my friends slapped our wives I suspect she would hit back or go to the police!”, I replied.
“You would not do that here. There is too much shame. If your wife runs away because you slapped her or because of some other trouble between you, you have to call your family in law. If you do not know where she is, your family in law will blame you. You must know. Normally when there is a big argument or things are not well in the marriage, the wife will to back her family. That is where she will be.”
“And then what?”
“The man and his parents and the wife and her parents or other family members will get together. They will talk about it and the family will help them solve the matter.“
“What kind of things can they then do?”
“They listen. So, for example, the man will say that very often when he comes home late after a hard day of work, there is no food for him. And that the wife only complains and never asks how he is doing. And then he slapped her because she was shouting at him. Or the woman might say that he is not bringing enough money for the family and that she thinks he drinks with his friends and he slapped her when she complained about it. The family could tell the man to pay a fine. Or the woman to apologize. They help them solve the issues.”
“They don’t go to court?”
“It is not considered good to go to court. Then it all becomes public. And it is very expensive and takes long. It is much better done within the families.
“So how do you marry, when you have found a girl?”
“The man and the women decide themselves, mostly. We call that Come-We-Stay-Bro. You decide to stay together. But once you decide: you must involve the families. The parents of the man, the parents of the woman. You agree all together about the marriage. You agree on a dowry for the family of the woman. As a man you must pay that. But if the woman runs away later or does not fulfil her obligations in the marriage, then the man can ask that the dowry or parts of it be paid back. Even after twenty years.“
“Do you register the marriage?”
“Some people do. Many don’t. You have a ceremony in your community. And that’s it.”
We had arrived at our destination. Part of me regretted it. I was in Kenya in connection with a nation-wide justice needs and satisfaction survey we are conducting. I knew one cannot generalize based on this conversation, but it stayed with me. How do you marry what I had just heard with the official legal system? That evening I Googled the 2014 Marriage Act and saw that it does its best to reach out and connect to customary and religious practices, in interesting and innovative ways. But none of what I had just heard could be read there. I saw that the 2010 Civil Procedure Act and Part X and XII of the Marriage Act contain a formal procedure for marriage and a mainly adversarial procedure for its dissolution.
I reflected on the obvious good practices that exist within family structures that prevent conflict, provide quick access to mediation and reconciliation, and that provide for a safe space within which to talk – although it was undoubtedly not perfect. What if there was a more uniform, integrated family justice catalogue that contained all the best practices for justice support for family relations Kenya? It could go from the Come-We-Stay-Bro-moment, to the marriage itself, dealing difficulties that may arise, dissolution if unavoidable and aftercare for a dissolution agreement. It could be evidence based and centered on what works best for users and the rights of the Kenyan constitution. Supported by a super-user-friendly IT platform on which different suppliers of family justice services could offer services that comply with the best standards. And people could pay with mPesa – Kenya’s widely used electronic payment system.
HiiL Justice Accelerator has been fairly active during the month of June. What issues has it managed to address through its activities?
Pitch Event of Legal Innovation
On the 30th of May there was a Pitch Event hosted together with Rocket Lawyer. Rocket Lawyer, already a well-known legal tech organisation in the US, desires to make legal services more affordable, simple and available to more people than ever before. They are now expanding into Europe and they just opened office in The Hague.
With our event we wanted to showcase some of the Dutch legal innovations and discuss how exactly can legal innovations make justice more accessible.
Juribot – through the use of AI it makes case law transparent;
Visual Contracts – provides people with the tools and skills to create understandable legal documents and services.
Blockchain for Justice: Reuniting Children with their Families
Shortly after, there was another event. This time it was organised alongside the KidsReunited initiative and Blockchain Workspace at the A Lab Amsterdam. Blockchain for Justice event was set up to target the issue of refugee children who wait at the border to be reunited with their families. Currently, an estimated 3.500 unaccompanied minors are waiting in Greece to get reunited with their family in EU member states. According to EU legislation these children have the right to reunification. Unfortunately the process to actually get the children to their parents is not working well and sometimes takes up to 2 years. We want to speed this process up, and found a solution to do so, using blockchain technology.
This event was a kick-off to find people and organisations that want to contribute to building this solution. We found already many people that are interested and hope that this solution will become a reality.
HiiL Justice Accelerator supports on a yearly basis innovations that foster faster conflict resolution and secure rights of citizens in legal systems all over the world. Legal Alarm, one of the winners of the last year’s Innovating Justice Challenge, falls with its efforts in the category of innovations proving legal information whereby it creates rights awareness and secures access to justice for people who normally would be left helpless.
Legal Alarm is a mobile app which was developed by a group of Ukrainian lawyers and legal experts who were eager to provide easy and quick legal help for people in need of it. This is especially useful in emergency situations such as when they cannot adequately assess their legal situation, as for instance during their travel abroad. Valentyn Pivovarov, a lawyer and a legal innovator, is part of the Juscutum Attorneys Association that stands behind this innovation. In his own experience, he describes how during his visit to Belarus he encountered a transport inspection that gave him a fine which he had to pay in order to preserve his car. Upon learning that the authorities were not authorised to do so, he illustrates that the emergency legal help is not only helpful but necessary.
He asserts that “every 40 second there is an act of police violence in Ukraine. More than 115,000 complaints were lodged against the law enforcement in 2016.” Thus, even though Ukraine is slowly yet surely on its way to becoming a full democracy, these legal innovations can significantly help the developing legal system adjust itself to the needs of Ukrainians. In HiiL’s Justice Needs in Ukraine Report from 2016, the study shows that most prevalent justice needs are related to employment, neighbours, housing and consumer problems. It was proposed that filling in the justice gap between self-help and formal justice processes with innovations in the form of “online platforms, legal information websites and different forms of hybrid programs for legal information and dispute resolution” would be the most promising way forward. Legal Alarm fits perfectly with its functions into this scheme; it provides you with a non-stop access to a local attorney; it gives you the option to notify people through a social media alarm; it can provide you with a legal advice; and it can geolocate you if need be. It is a comprehensive innovation that is specifically designed to target the gaps in law and ultimately serve the needs of the citizens.
For the moment the app is aimed specifically at the Ukrainian market, however, Valentyn is clear about their efforts to expand beyond the borders and make it available on an international level. During the Innovating Justice Challenge 2016 he got to meet many innovators from Africa, and therefore, he believes that it is a country with the greatest potential for improvement.There the citizens are similarly often unaware of their rights and they are unsure as to where they can get legal help.
Valentyn has also been active as an ambassador for the KYIV Legal Hack (partnered by HiiL) that regularly organises legal hackathons around Ukraine and motivates local entrepreneurs to start their own startups. What you can see in this Eastern European country is a quickly emerging community of young and inspirational innovators that collectively work towards the betterment of their legal system. Projects similar to Legal Alarm that are advanced through the Justice Accelerator programme can help citizens around the world stand against police harassment and abuse of power, sooner or later aligning justice system with the needs of its citizens.
You can download the Legal Alarm app through the following links:
In March 2017, HiiL, Modria and the Raad voor Rechtsbijstand (the Dutch legal aid board) announced that their cooperation around the Rechtwijzer platform had ended. What happened to this ‘revolutionary’ online justice platform and what are the lessons? This is an edited version of a paper exploring different theories: it was prepared for a conference of the International Legal Aid Group in June 2017.
Rechtwijzer: the platform and the philosophy
Separation may the biggest personal challenge most people will ever face. A Justice Needs Survey completed in Holland in 2014 clearly spelled out the impact divorce has on couples and their children. The mission of Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar was to reduce this burden through innovating the legal process of divorce itself; reducing the adversarial nature of the process; and making it easy to follow. The design was focused on letting people agree on all the things they need to restructure their lives after a divorce. It did not support mediation or adjudication as they are generally known but it offered redesigned mediation and adjudication services so that the parties can make fair, sustainable agreements.
The platform had a diagnosis phase; an intake phase for the initiating party; and then invited the other to join and undertake the same intake process. Once intake was completed, the parties could start working on agreements on the topics that occur in every separation – such as future communication channels, children matters, housing, property issues (money and debts) and maintenance. The dispute resolution model was that of integrative (principled) negotiation. So the process was based on interests rather than rights, but the parties were told of rules such as those for dividing property, child support and standard arrangements for visiting rights so that they could agree on the basis of informed consent. Agreed agreements were reviewed by a neutral lawyer.
The platform was built on the Modria online dispute resolution platform. This was designed for consumer disputes (e-commerce) that are to be resolved quickly, supported by algorithms. It had to be made suitable for separation, where people have to work on their individual solutions and apply them for many years. So HiiL operated a front-end with the online dispute resolution support. The platform was offered to users by the Dutch legal aid board through its website. Modria and HiiL charged a set-up fee and a fee per user to the legal aid board. The platform charged users a fixed fee for mediation, review and adjudication. The legal aid board subsidised fees for those entitled to legal aid.
The platform met critical acclaim by the media, international experts and in various reports on court reform. We counted over 60 media mentions in 12 countries, including the Economist and major newspapers. We gave dozens of presentations at conferences, parliaments and ministries. We received visits from civil servants at ministries and leading judges. The only real criticism came from the Dutch Bar that wanted more safeguards for security and informed consent, and also lobbied for having lawyers do the intake instead of doing this online.
Theory 1: Citizens do not want online supported resolution services
The model of the Rechtwijzer complied with the available research. The latest legal needs survey in the Netherlands (Geschilbeslechtingsdelta 2014) suggests that 48 per cent of people seeking assistance in the legal sector want advice about how to solve problems; 45 per cent advice about their rights and obligations; 24 per cent help with approaching the other party; 20 per cent mediation; 18 per cent some kind of financial advice; and 16 per cent help with starting a procedure. The demand for a lawyer making a case in court is much less prominent (9 per cent).
For us, the ultimate test came down to whether the platform actually worked for users. Their evaluations during the process were generally positive, and increased when we implemented improvements. The average ratings for the phases were 7 out of 10, with slightly lower ratings initially for the review phase, which quickly improved when both platform and lawyers adjusted their working methods.
The most important indication is what users say after six months. Using Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar led to over half of the participants experiencing low or very low stress levels during their separation, with 36 per cent experiencing normal stress levels.
It may be difficult to believe that users experience less stress when using a platform with an average completion time of 24.3 hours. However, users can spread out these hours as they like, so as to deal with each step of the divorce at their own pace. Our users have reported as a result that they have more control over when and where they utilise the platform. In fact 84 per cent of participants felt that they have more control over their separation as a direct result of this user empowerment.
‘The process is clear and Rechtwijzer takes finding, helping with and resolving issues seriously.’
Traditionally, control in the legal separation process is left in the hands of the lawyers hired by both parties. The Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar process did not seek to remove lawyers from the equation, but instead to integrate them in the platform. Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar sought to maximise lawyers’ interventions in such a way as to aid our users but not supersede their judgement. As a result, 82 per cent of users felt respected or very respected by lawyers or mediators on the platform.
Almost 70 per cent of the participants stated that – to a great or very great extent – the emotional pain they felt before using Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar was reduced after separating on the platform. Indeed, over 70 per cent of the participants found the process fair to a great or very great extent.
Close to 60 per cent of those starting a case found their partner willing to participate; finalised their agreements through the platform; filed them and saw their separation registered. This is a satisfactory percentage. Legal professionals are used to substantial numbers of clients who drop out of the process or shop around for other options, as legal needs studies consistently show..
The quality of the agreements couples have been guided to making are a marked improvement over those of a traditional divorce process. When asked, 72 per cent of the participants rated their experience on the platform with 8 out of 10 or more (7.7 on average) and 70 per cent said that its use led to effective and sustainable solutions. Although there is obviously a self-selection effect that makes comparison difficult, this can be contrasted to an average separation procedure in the Netherlands scoring 2.81 on a 1 to 5 point scale.
There was no ambiguity in the willingness of most users to recommend the process to others. We also observed that the number of Rechtwijzer users went up quickly when major media reported about the platform. The users were from all income-groups, and somewhat more from groups with more education.
So, the conclusion seems to be that a substantial proportion of the population is ready for online supported dispute resolution services and is enthusiastic about using them. Without major marketing efforts, we easily reached a market share of 2-3 per cent of the separation market (becoming the biggest ‘law firm’ for separation) with spikes of 5 per cent after media coverage.
Theory 2: Legal aid boards, ministries, courts and law firms not ready for online supported dispute resolution services
The expectation of the Rechtwijzer team was that legal aid boards, ministries and courts around the world would want to move forward with this type of ODR solutions quickly after the Dutch delivered a proof of concept. A legal aid crisis is evident in many countries. Dissatisfaction with the current court procedures is considerable – with the possible exception of some Nordic countries, Switzerland, Austria and Germany where settlement processes are well developed and integrated in accessible court procedures.
So why no move forward?
The English NGO Relate worked with us to test an English version. The Legal Services Society in British Columbia implemented a version supporting only negotiation. But it was hard for them to gain financial and regulatory support for a full scale launch in England or Canada. We tried to bring together a consortium of legal aid boards to develop the system. but there was considerable resistance to a public-private partnership between a non-profit foundation for access to justice, a Silicon valley start-up and a leading legal aid board. Naively perhaps, we thought that such a partnership would make innovation happen.
For those who joined the ODR conference in The Hague in May 2016 and saw the trend report we wrote (ODR and the Courts: the challenge of 100% access to justice), it is probably no surprise that the necessary cooperation processes did not materialise. We devoted an entire chapter to the institutional barriers to reaping the full benefits of online supported dispute resolution services. At present, legal aid boards, courts and ministries are not actively looking for the best processes to help their citizens resolve their disputes. There is not a lively international market for the best possible procedures for separation, neighbour disputes or drugs related crime.
Why is that ‘market’ not materialising? Our experience is that legal aid boards are mostly busy with funding lawyers, spending 80-95 per cent of their budgets on that, and have not yet found a parallel financial model for delivering access to justice in innovative ways. Websites or mediation services are often funded as projects but not as part of the core program. Courts try to digitise their current procedures, spending huge sums on this that mainly goes to IT services companies that deliver tailor-made software. But their procedures, which are prescribed by legislation, do not allow implementation of innovative technologies. Ministries mediate between politicians, courts and the legal profession, without a clear vision on the future of access to justice and funding. There is a lot of talk about ODR, but no serious attempt yet to introduce it for a class of problems that really matters to citizens.
The attempt in British Columbia (Civil Resolution Tribunal) and England and Wales to set up ODR for small claims is a case in point. It may sound smart to start small and then scale up. But will scaling up ever happen? We are pessimistic, based on earlier experience with small claims innovation worldwide. Leaving small claims to the innovators is a nice gesture that shows willingness to innovate. But it does not require real change in the court system or the legal profession, because nobody in the system is dependent on small claims. Starting with small claims may just be ‘token reform’.
Another option for bringing online supported services to the market is through law firms. Relate sought cooperation with an organisation of law firms serving families with resolution services. In the Netherlands, we had some explorative dialogue with the organisation of family lawyers and mediators. The problem seems to be that individual law firms are too small to invest in new technology. They are limited in their growth and innovation options, because regulation does not allow them to bring in outside investors, entrepreneurs, IT professionals or professionals from other disciplines as co-owners of their firm. Law firms are also not allowed in many jurisdictions to pay referral fees, so business models based on that are difficult as well. Finally, lawyers are restricted in their ability to serve the couple, or the family, because of a conflict of interest.
Theory 3: The market can resolve the access to justice problem, so government not needed, and we failed to deliver
The third alternative is that Rechtwijzer did not work because we at HiiL failed to deliver. There are certainly things we could have done better. The Dutch legal aid board and Ministry of Justice did not actively market the platform, but perhaps we could have raised money for this and have done this ourselves. We could perhaps have made the platform more attractive for lawyers working on it. Perhaps we focused too much on the satisfaction of users, as well as offering them an affordable platform in the spirit of legal aid.
We debated this a lot internally. One group, let us call them the experienced dispute system designers, pointed to the submission problem. Getting ‘the other party’ to the table and parties voluntarily agreeing to use the same procedure often just does not happen. This is the reason why voluntary mediation fails to attract huge numbers of disputes, and the same is true for arbitration and many new, voluntary procedures at courts. The causes of this are not well understood. Emotions, tactics, reactive devaluation of proposals from the other party, lack of trust in decisions of third parties and communication problems may play a role.
In this version of the theory, strong incentives are needed to bring the two parties to an ODR platform in order to let their dispute be resolved. Courts can provide these through rules for decisions by default.
The opposing group looks to encourage parties to use the procedure by making it easy, safe and attractive rather than forcing them to use it. On the Rechtwijzer platform, the respondent did not have to pay. The invitation to participate is worded in a friendly way and users are asked for their views regarding possible solutions, instead of having to react to the proposals and positions of the other party.
We just do not yet know whether an online dispute resolution system, used by two parties in a conflict, can exist as an independent service, offered by the market. Until now, it has not emerged.
If involvement of government is needed, we do not know exactly exactly what is necessary. The optimal mix may consist of some elements of endorsement, referral and subsidy. The use of neutral (online supported) dispute resolution services may also be promoted in other ways. The government could make this mandatory for those wanting to use lawyers with a government subsidy, stimulating both lawyers and clients to use the platform. Or it might be prescribed.
There is nothing new here. Currently, in many countries, only lawyers can give you access to courts. Use of them is promoted in many ways. So why not create a level playing field between lawyers and ODR, as well as other innovative legal services?
Conclusions and implications
So, what can the Rechtwijzer case teach us? Online supported dispute resolution can be effective. Outcomes can be sustainable; fair, improve relationships; and help undo some of the harm done.
The challenge is how to implement this improved way of resolving disputes. The main providers of justice – such as courts, legal aid boards, ministries and law firms – cannot implement online supported dispute resolution under the current regulatory regimes. Offering ODR to citizens as an independent service is an option, but it is uncertain whether it will succeed without some form of government support. Although many forms of alternative dispute resolution failed to make a breakthrough in the past, a smart ODR offering may yet be able to do this.
A new organisation, supported by HiiL know how, and in cooperation with the Dutch legal aid board, has been set up to develop a new platform, with a new offering. Many of the lessons learned will be implemented. During the next months, more information will be available.
The broader lesson is about innovation in legal dispute resolution systems. That is hard to achieve. ODR is no different from mediation, problem-solving courts, fast tracks, ombudsmen and countless other attempts to replace traditional court procedures by more innovative mechanisms. The demand for better procedures from citizens is huge. But the government institutions to which we entrust adjudication and legal aid do not have processes for implementing and scaling up innovation. Truly opening up to innovation. That should happen first.
Not only do we need to redesign justice systems, we also need to re-design our justice system design systems. Why? Many users of most justice systems are not getting what they could. Moreover, technology and science are changing societies at such speeds that our current factories for making the rules and mechanisms that get justice to citizens can’t keep up. Doing this is tough. It gets in the way of a lot of vested interests, engrained beliefs, lauded legal concepts, and embedded cultures.
If we look at the innovation capacity now, the main innovations we see are what I call ‘nibble-at -the-system’ innovations. In a metaphor from the tourism industry: innovations that allow you to book your hotel faster and easier. What we not doing, is building AirBnB’s that create a whole new way of finding a place to stay in a foreign land. So what can we say about today’s state of justice system design systems?
In my October 2016 column I focussed your attention to Gillian Hadfield’s new book “Rules for a Flat World’. I hope many of you took my advice to read it. The core of what she suggests is to use markets as a tool for re-design. Why is the health sector so innovative? Because it’s worth it while to be. The users of the system – patients – have voice and push for cures. It’s worth doing research. There are known routes to get products to market. There are agreed quality standards that can be measured. You can make money from a business model you develop. Investors come. What Gillian Hadfield suggests pushes the outside of the envelope in a serious way. Why not create more of a market for legal infrastructure?, she proposes. Introduce competition. A government could tender a particular conflict resolution procedure.
Let’s imagine. Last year we completed a Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey in Uganda. It told us that nearly nine out of ten Ugandans have experienced one or more problems during the past four years. People who reported having experienced a justiciable problem often experienced more than one type of problem. While 42% of the population reported having experienced only one problem, 22% reported two problems, and 23% even three or more problems. We estimated that between 5.1 and 5.3 million justice problems around land occur every 4 years. More than a third (38%) of the people did not take any action in the face of the justice problem they faced. Only 5% of the cases get to a court. The data thus clearly shows a need for improvement. What if the ministry of justice of Uganda would do a call for tender for land conflict resolution systems? Such a tender could be based on clear terms of reference, which would for example include accessibility requirements (in terms of costs, effort, distance, online), quality requirements (with measureable fairness standards) and requirements relating to the business model itself. One could imagine bringing in new financing models, like social impact bonds and new public-private partnership models. Can this be an example of a way to re-design justice design? I would say it is.
In that same column I have another example of a new approach. This one is actually happening: the divorce challenge, issued by the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice last year. The Dutch Parliament adopted motion asking the ministry to issue an innovation challenge. It asks the ministry to invite civil society to submit ideas that lead to a reduction of contentious divorces by 50%. Through such a ‘right to challenge’ anybody who has a better solution for the problem than the one the government has, is welcomed forward. Because a parliamentary motion backs the challenge it’s not a gimmick that the executive or government bureaucracy can easily pretend to take serious but in reality shove aside. Since writing that column we have heard that we became one the winners of the challenge. What we are however also learning is that it is not easy for a ministry of justice to go from a winner of an innovation challenge to a system change. It means letting go, it worries some stakeholders, it creates worries about the legal basis for of the ideas, and it leads to all kinds of financing questions. These are things ministries have not dealt with.
In my last column I reflected about how the design systems we have used up to know to rebuild justice systems in post conflict or post revolution countries need re-examination. Most of what has been done thus far in that area is based on what justice design systems in the richer and so-called developed countries produce and teaching poorer and less developed countries do so the same. It also makes them design in the same way as we in the West do. Years of so-called rule of law by the international community in the DRC, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and many other places have not been in vain, but have also not yielded spectacular results either (putting it mildly). In that column I bring together nine points that I am picking up as lessons we are learning and things we can do differently.
Lastly, let me point you to a very interesting article by Shannon Salter and Darin Thomson in the most recent McGill Journal on Dispute Resolution, in which new design systems in the area of civil justice are shared.
Central to all these approaches to resigning the design system are two things. Firstly, putting the user of the system at the core of what you do. The data revolution that is happening now will only make that easier. Secondly, creating innovation space, which concretely means dealing with suffocating rules and making justice innovation worth investing in.
This needs more attention. I welcome any other new ideas on redesigning justice design.
The Ministry of Justice of the United Arab Emirates and HiiL Innovating Justice collaborated in 2016 to identify and map out the legal challenges in the daily lives of the people living in the United Arab Emirates.
Almost four thousand randomly selected individuals from across the Emirates were interviewed about their needs for just and fair processes and resolutions. People were asked whether they faced problems, which could have been resolved with legal means. We also asked locals and expats about their responses to the legal challenges. Where do they look for legal information and advice? Which justice journeys do they travel in order to receive fair resolutions? What are their perceptions of the quality of the dispute resolution procedures? How they see the outcomes of such processes?
Eighty percent of the respondents were expats and 32% were women. The study shows that almost half of the people living in the UAE – 45%, have had to deal with one or more legal problems in a period of 4 years. Examples of such problems are employment disputes, land conflicts, money related disagreements, family disputes as well as various other situations which might occur in daily life.
These findings are typical based on what we see in other developed and industrialized countries. In a study HiiL conducted in the Netherlands in 2015 for example, we found that 46% of Dutch residents encountered at least one legal problem over a four-year period. Another study from Canada in 2009 reported that 45% of Canadians experience one or more legal problems over a similar period.
Which are the most frequently occurring legal problems for UAE residents?
Locals report most often accidents and personal injuries whereas expats experience most frequently employment problems. Other often-occurring legal problems are disputes around money, conflicts between neighbors, problems with housing and various types of challenges. Land and family related legal problems occur less frequently, and yet have significant impact on the lives of the people involved. The multitude of legal challenges identified is a clear confirmation that the people of the UAE seek accessible and effective justice journeys. Effective justice procedures are one sure-way to guarantee that people develop to their full potential in an environment of fairness and rule of law.
Promisingly, most of the people in the UAE who experience legal challenges take active steps towards resolution. An impressive 93% say that they took actions to obtain a fair resolution. This indicates an active and empowered population, which is willing to pursue paths to justice. The finding also shows the tremendous potential in the UAE on which justice innovations can thrive. It is important to note that UAE residents are supported by a vibrant infrastructure for provision of legal information and legal advice. 78% of respondents say that they received some sort of information and advice to navigate the justice journeys.
The report indicates that the quality of the justice processes, the quality of the outcomes and the costs of justice can be further improved. Namely, the psychological dimension to justice journeys, such as stress and emotions, can be considerably redesigned and developed. Another dimension which can be improved is the quality of the process – objectivity and neutrality will increase people’s satisfaction with justice.
The Ministry of Justice in the UAE is determined to flow This data into action and improvements. It will help move towards Vision 2021’s goal to make the UAE’s justice system one of the most effective in the world. Data and knowledge will contribute to improved delivery of justice services according to people’s needs and expectations.
In partnership, MOJ and HiiL are working on two strategic initiatives. They are organizing two projects to innovate the justice journeys for employment disputes and accidents. More in-depth data will be collected to better understand the specifics of these two legal problems. Two Innovative workshops with stakeholders and service providers will take place in order to set Justice Delivery Targets based on the data from the study. The envisioned end-results are prototypes for innovate justice procedures that deliver better justice to the people of the UAE.
Second, the MOJ is working together closely with HiiL experts to improve the overall justice innovation ecosystem in the UAE. The goal of this part of the project is to make sure that there will be more and better innovations in the justice sector developed in the UAE in the years to come. Efforts are made to integrate international justice innovation best practices and align them with UAE values and existing local practices.
Simultaneously, the Ministry of Justice and Hiil are holding Justice Innovation workshops with the relevant stakeholders from the justice sector, the business, technology and education communities to develop an Innovation Plan for Justice in the UAE. This will be translated into a more inclusive society, and ultimately into more happiness and will contribute to the realization of the UAE innovation Strategy.
Scheiding is voor kinderen en partners een reorganisatieproces zonder weerga. Er is veel uit te zoeken en te regelen. Daarbij spelen sterke emoties en grote belangen. Hulp, ordening of toezicht door een rechter zijn daarom nodig. Maar er wordt breed erkend dat de huidige juridische manier van werken conflicten versterkt, matige kwaliteit oplevert en goede behandeling verhindert. Daarom hebben we in samenspraak met de branche een plan ontwikkeld dat moet leiden tot een vernieuwde hoofdroute: rechtszorg bij scheiding.
Duurzame, rechtvaardige afspraken tussen goed geïnformeerde gezinsleden, met waar nodig hulp en steun.
Juristen, en met name rechters, worden toegankelijk zonder juridische strijd op basis van ingenomen standpunten.
Soms is het moeilijk; of zijn mensen moeilijk. Dan is “wat werkt” voor gezinnen in scheiding het uitgangspunt voor alle professionals. Die spreken meer dezelfde taal. Effectieve interventies bij scheiding komen in een behandelrichtlijn. De kwaliteit gaat daarmee omhoog.
De nieuwe werkwijze wordt online ondersteund.
Dit plan versterkt andere initiatieven om echtscheidingen in goede banen te leiden, maar is ook uniek. Het gaat hier voor het eerst om het (wettelijke) fundament van de juridische procedure, de basis manier van werken in (v)echtscheidingen. Ook is er de omslag naar evidence-based werken en een nieuw model voor financiering. Kosten voor de overheid verminderen en worden beheersbaar. Juristen en andere dienstverleners gaan een veel waardevollere bijdrage leveren. Hun interventies gaan mensen beter helpen. Gespreid over een langere periode, kunnen ouders dan meer meebetalen aan een steviger fundament voor hun eigen toekomst.
We streven naar een Rechtsplegingsakkoord Scheiding om dit waar te maken. Het plan is een innovatieplan. Dit betekent dat wordt ontwikkeld en samengewerkt volgens methodieken die zich in de IT industrie en in de productontwikkeling hebben bewezen, en inmiddels ook in de juridische innovatie. Ontwikkelteams, met een brede spreiding van kennis, vaardigheden en achtergronden, werken aan de resultaten die moeten worden gerealiseerd. Deze ontwikkelroute is ook gekozen, omdat deze vernieuwing niet vormgegeven kan worden via de gebruikelijke middelen van wijzigingen in de vele toepasselijke wetten en de bestaande financierings-knoppen.
Deeze samenwerking is urgent: jaarlijks worden nog duizenden kinderen en ouders getraumatiseerd door scheiding. Wie zich nu tot de rechter wendt, moet bang zijn voor meer conflict, kosten en escalatie. Dat is een belemmering voor de toegang tot een eerlijk proces met een onafhankelijke rechter. De rechten van het kind en het recht op familieleven dreigen te worden geschonden. De kansen om het beter te doen zijn groot. Want hoe je uit een scheiding komt, bepaalt de kwaliteit van leven van jou en je kinderen voor de volgende zestig jaar.
Het plan is ingediend in de divorce challenge, en is daaruit als een van vijf koplopers geselecteerd. Dit is versie 9 van het plan, dat steeds is geupdate naar de laatste stand van zaken. Het team dat aan het plan werkt wordt geleid door Maurits Barendrecht, Carla Goosen en Krijn van Beek.
On 18 May we launched our latest Justice Data Report on Family Justice in Uganda. This was done at a workshop hosted by the Swedish Embassy in Kampala, Uganda. We were honoured with the attendance of representatives from the key actors from the justice system who are concerned with family justice.
This latest HiiL report follows the outcomes of nation-wide justice needs and satisfaction survey that HiiL conducted in Uganda in 2016. That report showed that justice problems relating to the family rank constitute the most prevalent justice problem for Ugandans. More than 1 million serious family justice problems occur in Uganda every year: most of them are domestic violence and separation related. As in other countries, our survey shows high impact of family problems on people’s lives. Impact on women is more severe than impact on men.
The Family Justice report contains a deeper understanding of the family-related problems that Ugandans face. This includes the processes people follow to solve these problems and the outcomes that they obtain when attempting to get a solution. It sets out the foundation for an agenda for innovation that builds on the needs of users of family justice processes.
Instead of proposing new legislation or financing additional services, the report outlines terms of reference and user stories: what should the family justice process achieve for women, men, girls and boys? What do justice providers from the informal or formal sector need, in order to help solve family problems more effectively?
The launching workshop concluded that the results of this study should become building blocks for an action plan to improve the treatment of family disputes in Uganda and first steps were taken to make this concrete.
The voices of just over 7500 Tunisian citizens from all over the country were heard as we launched our latest justice data report in Tunis on 9 May. The first copy of the report was presented to H.E. Minister of Justice Jeribi, in the presence of the Dutch ambassador to Tunisia, H.E. Hans van Vloten Disselvelt, senior judges, prosecutors, the president of the Bar Association, leading academics, ministry officials, and representatives of the media.
In his address to the meeting Minister Jeribi commended the efforts by HiiL for this very important study. The first step in any reform, he said, is to have a sound diagnosis of the reality on the ground. We need to have the accurate data and dashboards in order to be able to design the efficient and effective tools for reform. He also emphasized the importance of making real change, in ways that benefit citizens.
The report is available from our website in Arabic and English. A French summary is also available.
For our French readers:
Les voix de plus de 7500 tunisiens de tous les coins du pays ont été entendues durant le lancement de notre dernière rapport sur les données judiciaires à Tunis le 9 Mai.
La première copie du rapport a été présentée à son
H.E. Ministre de la Justice Jeribi, en la presence présence de l’ambassadeur Néerlandais en Tunisie son H.E. Hans van Vloten Disselvelt,des juges supérieurs,des procureurs, du président du barreau, des académiciens et des représentants du ministère et des médias.
Dans son interlocution, le Ministre Jeribi a félicité les efforts de HiiL pour cette recherche combien importante. Il a dit que la première étape dans n’importe quelle réforme est d’avoir un diagnostic approfondi de la réalité sur terrain. On a besoin de données fiable et des dashboards pour élaborer des outils efficients et effectives nécessaires pour bien mener les réformes.
Il a aussi insisté sur l’importance de faire des changements réels utiles pour les citoyens.
Le rapport est disponible en Arabe et en Anglais. Un résumé en Francais est aussi disponible.
For our Arabic readers:
تم سماع أصوات ما يزيد عن 7500 مواطن تونسي من جميع أنحاء البلاد في احدث تقرير حول الاحتياجات في مجال العدالة ومستوى الرضا والذي تم اطلاقه في تونس في 9 أيار / مايو. وقد تم تقديم النسخة الأولى من التقرير إلى معالي السيد غازي الجريبي، وزير العدل، بحضور سفير المملكة الهولندية في تونس هانس فان فلوتن ديسفلت، كبار القضاة والمدعين العامين، عميد المحامين، كبار الأكاديميين، ومسؤولي الوزارة، وممثلي وسائل الإعلام
واثناء كلمته خلال اللقاء أثنى الوزير الجريبي على الجهود التي بذلها معهد لاهاي للابتكار القانوني- العدالة الخلاقة لإنجاز هذه الدراسة الهامة جداَ. واعتبر إن الخطوة الأولى في أي إصلاح، هي أن يكون هناك تشخيص سليم للواقع على الأرض. واضاف ان هنالك حاجة إلى أن يكون لدينا بيانات دقيقة ومنصات الكترونية من أجل أن نكون قادرين على تصميم أدوات فعالة وفعالة للإصلاح. كما شدد على أهمية إحداث تغيير حقيقي بطرق تفيد المو اطنين
.التقرير متاح من موقعنا على الانترنت باللغتين العربية والإنجليزية. كما يتوفر موجز باللغة الفرنسية
Some highlights
The data tells us that four out of ten Tunisians encountered one or more serious justice problems in the past 4 years. This highlights a high demand for effective, accessible and efficient journeys to justice. The most prevalent justice problems occur around matters that relate to basic livelihood: employment, public services, and social benefits. People obviously need the law to protect their ability to work and sustain their families, to use basic public services or to receive vital social benefits. Legal problems in these areas are not only frequent, but are also very impactful.
Men report a higher prevalence of problems around employment, land, and police problems, while women report a higher prevalence around problems relating to social welfare, neighbours, and family. The most serious justice problems reported by youth concern employment, crime, and harassment by the police. There is a clear need for adequate and timely legal information and legal advice for Tunisian citizens who encounter legal problems. Although Internet penetration in Tunisia is relatively high and the country has one of the most developed telecommunication infrastructures and the lowest prices in North Africa, the Internet remains an untapped source of legal information and advice. This can be an area in which innovative approaches can be developed to provide legal information.
For more than half of the legal problems, attempts are made to resolve the dispute through some sort of self-action, i.e. asking the other party for compensation, contacting a public office, taking some action to remove the cause of the problem, etc. Around a quarter of significant proportion of legal problems are presented to courts for resolution. In general, the users of justice are not fully satisfied with the quality of the justice journeys and the quality of the outcomes of such journeys. They indicate a lack of ‘voice’ in the procedures and seeing that their concerns have been taken into consideration. Procedures are seen as complex and unclear. There is a desire for a fairer distribution of the outcome for the different parties. People also report high costs, in terms of time, stress and emotion. In one area the procedures score very well: costs in terms of money are considered low.
The data also shows that people use the help of family members, friends, colleagues and employers to deal with their justice problems. There is also a culture of collaborative problem solving. Almost 60% try to solve the problem themselves. A third even contacts the other party independently. Hypothetical questions also show that many trust they would be able to solve simple problems they might encounter.
Tunisia is undergoing profound change and its justice system needs to reform as well. But not everything can be tackled at once. Resources are not unlimited. For this reason, focusing on the most prevalent justice problems that affect most people can be helpful. Our data suggest that significant results can be achieved if the focus of the stakeholders is directed towards innovating and improving justice journeys for employment, public services, and family justice. We also see that Tunisia has a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem for legal and justice innovations. This should be put to use.
Burgers steunen het idee van de rechtsstaat volmondig. Maar bij mensen die een beroep op de rechtsstaat deden, overheerst onvrede. Dat is te begrijpen. Ons rechtssysteem is kostbaar, levert niet wat mensen nodig hebben, en is soms ronduit schadelijk. Dat ligt niet aan de spelers, maar aan het spel en strakke, sterk verouderde spelregels. De kennis en technologie om dat te verbeteren liggen klaar.
Maar de juridische infrastructuur zit muurvast. Rechtvaardigheid moet de ruimte krijgen, juist nu. HiiL pleit voor drastische innovatie van de juridische infrastructuur, gericht op tien routes die voor de burger het belangrijkste zijn.
HiiL bracht data bij elkaar over hoe de rechtspleging het doet voor mensen. Het gaat om situaties waarin iedere burger terecht kan komen: een noodlottig ongeval, scheiding, ontslag, schulden of mishandeling. Soms zwaar, soms tergend, zoals een burenruzie, een conflict met de gemeente of een misse actie op sociale media. Helpt de overheid de meest voorkomende conflicten effectief op te lossen? En voelen mensen zich rechtvaardig behandeld?
Op geen van deze terreinen lijkt de rechtspleging echt toegerust om de rechtsproblemen van deze tijd aan te kunnen. Procedures zijn verouderd. Ze vergroten tegenstellingen, maken ze complexer en bieden mensen geen begeleiding bij het slaan van een brug. Moderne technologie blijft ongebruikt. De oplossingen komen niet op tijd en passen niet goed genoeg bij de behoeften van mensen.
Alle spelers muurvast in eigen spel
De rechtsstaat zou er moeten zijn voor mensen. Alle actoren in het rechtsstatelijke bouwwerk zullen dit zonder voorbehoud bevestigen. Zelf zien ze ook wel dat het niet zo uitwerkt als het ooit was bedoeld. Maar wat kun je er aan doen? Als rechter? Als advocaat? Als ambtenaar? Als minister?
Lees hoe het Ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie klem zit in eigen werkwijzen. Hoe politici daarop stuklopen. Hoe de advocatuur zo is dichtgeregeld, dat er geen goede gestandaardiseerde diensten voor de problemen van gewone mensen kunnen ontstaan. Hoe innovatie stuk loopt. Hoe de rechtspraak wettelijk verplicht is om te werken met procedures die ongeschikt zijn voor de problemen die mensen als individu ervaren. En hoe de overheid vervolgens het gebruik ontmoedigt van de meest basale rechtstatelijke voorziening, de toegang tot een onafhankelijke neutrale rechter.
Ruimte voor rechtvaardigheid in nieuw Ministerie
Nederland heeft nieuwe wegen naar rechtvaardige oplossingen nodig. Routes waarop mensen zich gehoord voelen en waarop ze tijdig en effectief hun bestemming kunnen bereiken. Tien van die routes, voor de meest voorkomende situaties, zouden al snel tot een soort hoofdwegennet kunnen leiden.
Maurits Barendrecht, Krijn van Beek en Sam Muller kennen als geen ander het functioneren van de rechtspleging in Nederland en daarbuiten. Hun rapport beschrijft hoe de juridische infrastructuur moet veranderen. Het bevat een schets voor een nieuw ministerie dat vol kan inzetten op een rechtvaardige samenleving, waarin burgers zich werkelijk als mensen gehoord en verbonden voelen. Met name als het er echt om spant. Dat is de inzet.
Innovators working on justice and legal issues worldwide can apply for up to 20,000 EUR in equity-free grant money as part of the HiiL Justice Accelerator’s Innovating Justice Challenge.
The Call for Applications, which opened March 1 and remains open until June 30, encourages two types of application: first, startups with an idea and team may apply for funding in the Call for Innovations; second, individuals without a team or idea can apply for the Call for Talent.
The Call for Innovations has, over the last five years, awarded funding to over 60 innovative justice/legal technologies from all over the world. It is open to applicants with both a team and justice innovation idea.
The Call for Talent is a search for individuals with a particular skill that they wish to apply to the cause of justice innovation. Up to 10 individuals will be selected and supported through innovation training, some travel to local events, support for their ideas, and future support.
Ten justice innovations will win training, up to 20k EUR in equity-free funding, access to a mentor network, and potential future funding.
Applications are particularly encouraged that address six main pain points of justice: employment justice, family justice, neighbor disputes, land disputes, crime and law enforcement, and migration/human trafficking. Applications are also welcome from other areas.
The Call for Innovations is primarily focused on Africa, the Middle East, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. Innovators in The Netherlands, Ukraine, Tunisia, and Uganda are particularly encouraged to apply as these are countries in which HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction Surveys have been carried out.
The criteria for selection include: innovations must be strictly justice related, and present viable routes to sustainability, scalability, and the ability to create social impact in their communities in providing access to justice. The innovations should provide a unique idea that does not already exist in a particular region.
To submit an application, innovators and individuals should visit Innovating Justice website. The Call for Application closes at 16:59 Central European Time on 30th June 2017.
With the technological dawn the avenues, through which citizens seek conflict resolution, have developed accordingly. Part of this movement is also the e-commerce website, Legal Legends, which provides legal services for entrepreneurs and small start-ups in Africa. Kyle Torrington, one of its founders, explains that they bring a far more quirky, and far more approachable take on legal services and provide start-ups with a legal help, as the high rates set by regular practitioners are rather discouraging. So how well does this initiative fit into this new approach to the provision of legal services?
Nowadays, consumers are aware of a number of different ways in which they can purchase legal services, including online forms and fixed fee options. They are increasingly attracted to unbundled services, and a la carte solutions for their legal issues. This is reasonable as the Internet gives legal consumers potential to be more informed than ever before. As many as 42% consumers are doing their own legal research online (Avvo 2015) and thus, it has become a question of survival to be a user-centered firm for the sake of competition. A new era for legal services has risen, it’s hailing transparency, convenience and carries the potential for a better value-price alignment.
Yet, even though law firms have adapted to the technological progress, by providing the modern customer with a digitalised version of existing processes, they usually come at a high cost for small-scale traders and newly established companies. In this setting of a clear disconnect between the value and the price of legal services, an online legal services platform Legal Legends, comes into play by offering a legal coverage specifically for these new innovators. As the first platform of its kind in South Africa, it had an impressive turnover of around €10 000 on an advertising budget of about €1500 since their soft launch in February 2016.
Its success is even more remarkable in light of its simplicity. “The science behind it is very simple and intuitive,” says Kyle, “what you don’t see there is a live chat facility, a person can have a live chat with, a qualified attorney who can guide through exactly what service you need to purchase and how to go about it, so once again it is this quirky, demystifying approach to law.” Essentially they have coupled a complex problem (law in this case) with a simple interface that everyone is familiar with and allows for a far easier way to overcome such complexity.
The advantages go beyond the quality services provided at fixed upfront prices. In its legendary style, the website also offers the possibility of a legal health check, which provides an automated way to get a snapshot of where a business currently is, and where it needs to be legally. Thus, Legal Legends has discovered an unmarked territory in which it can freely showcase its commitment to the ‘new legal consumer’. The business model “allows them to rapidly respond to new market demands, listen to their customers, and adapt to changes in legislative requirements while taking Mzansi’s legal landscape to new frontiers.”
In the words of Connor Sattely, HiiL’s Justice Accelerator agent, “Legal Legends can potentially expand their service across Africa or wherever there is latent demand for start-up/SME legal services.” Their success came after their win at the Innovating Justice Award in Johannesburg last September. The HiiL’s Justice Accelerator can similarly help other innovation start-ups to scale beyond the prototype stage by fostering justice innovation and associated advancements in selected geographies through funding. Currently, they have issued a new Call for Innovations and Call for Talent for 2017. The requirements for successful applicants can be found here. The success story of the Legal Legends should inspire all potential innovators to turn their ideas into a concrete business story that can with HiiL’s help become a valuable contribution in the communities in need.
This will be a bit of an odd column: I’m going to talk international relations. Yes – I know I am a lawyer and not a foreign policy wonk. But I am worried about Europe. No, I don’t mean Brexit, Greek debts, or German, French and Dutch elections. A much bigger challenge lies more to the South, below Italy’s boot. I call that challenge the Belt. It’s a bit of a crude word, because it gives the impression that it’s a single challenge. It’s not. Justice is a large part of it.
Picture yourself on the top of the Mont Blanc. Look southwest to Morocco and then slowly turn eastward to Yemen. What stretches out before you is a belt of instability: states that rumble, like Tunisia and Egypt, and states that have crumbled, like Libya and Yemen. Further in the distance you will be eyeing the Sahel region and the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, where the crumbling and rumbling is complemented with extreme poverty. The demographics within the Belt are rather specific: the population is growing extremely fast and the vast majority of the current population is young – in the range between 15 and 25 years old. Most of these countries have minimal education capacity. Economic opportunity is limited – unemployment is very high. More mouths to feed and more people to take care of nullify almost every percentage of economic growth that is achieved. The social contract in most of the countries of the belt is absent, weak or under heavy negotiation. Most of the states within the Belt are categorized in the ‘warning’ and ‘alert’ cohort of the 2016 Fragile State Index. Already now, many of the people in the Belt have access to the Internet. Very soon all of them will, which will give them means to connect, communicate, and coordinate, and eyes with which to look at us, in cosy Europe.
What you see, standing there on Europe’s highest summit, is a serious zone of instability. That instability, we already see, tends to flow northwards. Leaving concern about human suffering aside, we Europeans have a very direct interest that the Belt becomes a region with at least somewhat stable states. Now here’s the rub: when that which threatens you is power, you can face it with power. In the good old days of the Cold War that is what the US and Russia did. But power means very little in the face of weakness: fragile states, regions, and even cities. The Internet and other forms of connectivity compound this: we live in an age in which a single person can spread ideas to thousands. And thousands can coordinate to become a movement. To deal with state weakness in a hyperconnected world something different is needed and we have not fully yet worked out what. Worse: we are not even putting together a strategy to figure that out.
Sustained peace and stability has many essential elements. A basic level of economic opportunity, social cohesion, security, and good governance are some of them. A critical component connected with each of these is the rule of law. This is recognized in Sustainable Development Goal 16, which is seen as a key foundational component of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
I won’t say rule of law is the whole answer to the Belt challenge, but it most certainly is a very important part of it. A well-functioning justice system resembles the operating system of a computer. It provides the rule system that allows citizens to coordinate, agree on ways to organise governance, international relations, commercial transactions, family relationships, and livelihood arrangements, and to settle differences in these fields. All along the Belt, from east to west, justice systems are not providing what they should. In Yemen, where we did a nation-wide justice needs survey before the war broke out, 94% of the population experienced a serious justice problem in the previous four years. In Mali the figure was 30% – at an average rate of one serious justice problem every two years. Most of these justice problems were connected with the most basic social and livelihood needs: safety, land, family, and housing. It is obvious that the operating system is not working. For these populations it is not a question about how much justice you get but how much injustice you can live with. Serious justice problems are known to lead to significant health issues, and they hit the poorest hardest. Research has confirmed that legal insecurity leads to lower investments in households, businesses and the specialised skills required to obtain better jobs. Every dollar and hour spent on protection against crime or extortion is a dollar less that is spent on education, sanitation or health care. Sustained feelings of injustice can lead to violence and ultimately distrust in government, which, at best effects compliance and tax returns and at worst leads to insurgency.
So what is happening? Not much, really. The European approach to the Belt Challenge is largely restricted to patrolling the Mediterranean with navy ships, going after smugglers, the same-old-same-old development aid, and deals on migration. This will not make the problem go away. It is fair to assume that the Belt will continue to be one of the most serious stability challenges for Europe in the next 20 years, if not more. And what do we have to go by? Not much: despite efforts over many decades, the international community has not been very effective at rebuilding stability through rule of law.
So is it not time for a Deep Multilateral Think on how to meet this challenge, followed by a long-term, sustained commitment to action, based on that Think?
To start things off, a few elements that may point in some of the right directions:
It would be good to adopt an evidence-based approach. A lot of good and different data about justice seems critical.
The health sector has taught us: keep people and their needs at the centre. That’s the way to get to cures – even justice cures.
It will not only be about building capacity and sharing best practices; it will also be about politics. Power asymmetries will need to be addressed; incentives will need to be realigned. Read the 2017 World Development Report.
Local context is key. Foreign legal concepts only go skin-deep in many areas. And, see above, its always also about politics. Local politics.
International context is key. It’s also about international and regional politics. Good progress was being made on rule of law development at the national level when Yemen was suddenly engulfed in an international and violent conflict in which Iran and Saudi Arabia were the main actors. The UN was powerless.
Work iteratively and learn. Build in room to fail, learn, and start again.
Use the latest technology and science – it can make a huge difference.
Embed the rule of law building in a smart, still to be designed financial ecosystem. It has to make economic sense to invest in justice.
And, lastly: be there for the long run.
In the past three weeks I met three ministers of justice/assistant ministers of justice, all connected to the Belt. All of them faced tremendous challenges. All of them sat a little more upright when I raised the possibility of new approach. All them let their shoulders drop a little when they spoke of the institutional resistance ‘new approaches’ face. Lets reach out and get cracking. For the future of Europe.
Eve is one of the coordinators of Ufulu Wanga’s daily activities. She brings her experience and research into the social development and human rights issues in Malawi, to deconstruct the justice issues women in particular face. Ufulu Wanga means ‘my rights’ or ‘my freedom’. I interviewed Eve about this justice startups’ vision and enterprise model.
“In African culture, not just in Malawi, there is a culture of silence, submissive fear, not speaking up.” Eve tells me. “The biggest challenge in Malawi are cultural practices that, even in 2017 I am sad to say, are still practiced.” The cultural practices Eve describes are detrimental to the human rights of women and girls, for example forced child marriage or gender-based violence. Ufulu Wanga exists to address these challenges faced by Malawi society. A team of three women; Rachel (founder and CEO), Eve and Monica, assisted by a team of software developers and community manager, Vincent, created an innovation that advocates the rights of women and girls. Through awareness campaigns they raise the profile of rights in rural areas, increase availability of information, and use information technology to puncture the culture of silence.
Ufulu Wanga developed a means for citizens to access information and help in a convenient, affordable way in real time no matter where they are based in Malawi. “When they are faced with cases of gender-based violence, women should know where to go, what to do and how to go about it.” Rights awareness is low in regions across Malawi, so it is of fundamental importance that Ufulu Wanga provides women with free information. Information is available on the web portal, via SMS and USSD – for very basic phones. “So if a woman is in a situation where her husband is drunk and beating her, she can send an SMS message and get a response providing her with information about local services available to her” Eve explains. “Many hear about legal protections or services the state can provide for the first time from Ufulu Wanga.” Information is power, and Ufulu Wanga provides it in the most efficient and accessible way.
It’s so simple, it’s a wonder why it hasn’t been tried before. Rachel is a ‘techy’, Eve tells me. “She is a PhD candidate in Computer Science, but she wanted to use her skills for good.” Rachel founded mHub, Malawi’s first technology hub committed to creating innovative technological solutions. I ask them how they met, “Rachel is smart, driven and ambitious and working hard to change Malawi for the better. It was natural we were drawn together to work on Ufulu Wanga. When she told me about the project I couldn’t wait to work on it,” Eve says. Eve’s previous working life brought her into direct contact with the injustice faced by women and young girls all across Malawi. She hopes Ufulu Wanga will be successful in reaching all women, empowering them by creating a culture of rights talk around women’s issues. For this reason, they take the message of women’s rights to communities, organising awareness campaigns with societies of human rights lawyers, targeting areas with high levels of gender-based violence and child marriages.
Developing a business model for a service like Ufulu Wanga is tough; the team is absolute on the fact that this information should be free to women. They exist for social impact rather than for profit. But is this sustainable? This is what the HiiL Accelerator Program can do for them; as one of the winners from the Innovating Justice Awards 2016 they have started HiiL Accelerator Program. Thereby hold regularly discussions about potential funding revenues with HiiL experts, as well as receiving seed money to launch the platform in March 2017.
This year, on February 7th in Tunis, HiiL gathered judicial experts, judges, lawyers, academics and representatives of civil society, to dive deep into priority categories of legal problems faced by Tunisians. The sessions’ aim was to present and discuss the findings of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey HiiL conducted at the end of last year.
The triangulation session has been marked by open discussions with a distinguished group of experts who reviewed in detail the most critical legal problems faced by Tunisians. This helped us to deepen and widen our understanding of these issues and it has provided the participants with precious time to reflect on the findings in the light of the fundamental achievements in the Tunisian legal system since January 14, 2011.
Several years after the Tunisian 2010-2011 revolutionary movement many ideals have spread across the country. One of the goals has been to reform the legal system and over the past years Tunisians have demonstrated their keen interest in the development of their justice sector. They have worked relentlessly to build the capacity to understand and address the justice needs of the people. HiiL has supported them throughout this process while closely collaborating with the Dutch Embassy in Tunis and other relevant stakeholders.
The legal issues faced by Tunisians are mainly connected to employment, public services, land and social welfare. Having an overview of these problems significantly helps the decision-makers in designing strategies which properly address them. An open space for discussions also fostered conversation about general legal problems such as access to justice, trust in judicial institutions, dispute resolution strategies, the quality of procedures and outcomes and costs of the justice journeys as experienced by residents.
A full and comprehensive report will be published within the next few weeks here. HiiL is grateful for all the valuable feedback it has received from the experts who attended the session. This helps us to finalise the report which we view as an evidence-based eye-opener for discussion and cooperation in justice innovation in Tunisia. Our hope is to strengthen our ties with the justice representatives in Tunisia and to help the citizens identify and materialise their ideas on the innovation of their legal system.
To make legal empowerment into a reality, collaboration between the Ministry of Justice in Tunisia, the Bar Association, vibrant civil society organisations and national and international stakeholders is therefore needed. Thus, it takes a strong partnership to start, but a planned action and commitment to move forward. Both are possible since the data is now available to inspire and secure access to justice in Tunisia.
The first Impact Report of the HiiL Justice Accelerator has indicated that, through supporting a community of 384 innovations over 5 years, the Accelerator has provided access to justice to more than 1.4 million people.
The report looks back at HiiL’s impact on improving access to justice through the Innovating Justice Awards. Thanks to the continued support from our partners like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ford Foundation, HiiL has been providing Awards to the most promising justice innovations since 2011.
Measuring social impact is notoriously problematic, and through this process we became very aware of this fact. Existing frameworks, methods and indicator databases for measuring impact exist (see the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) and the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS)), but very few provide metrics for measuring ‘improved access to justice’. As was rightly pointed out by Acumen’s Impact Team, the problem in current impact assessment methods is that neither the tools of emerging market investment nor the measurement practices of traditional international development are appropriate to early-stage social enterprises. IRIS provides a catalogue of standardised metrics that any impact investor can choose to track, but we see that impact investors typically collect data only on the financial or operational metrics in the catalogue.
Despite these challenges, HiiL was able to combine our experts’ input with best practices distilled from years of research into citizens’ justice needs and innovation efforts to develop a framework for classifying the type of impact our justice entrepreneurs make. This framework resulted in a few core indicators that show justice entrepreneurs improve access to justice through (a) creating rights awareness or educational platforms (b) providing legal services or dispute resolution and (c) more efficient and inclusive justice policies. Our data shows that our justice entrepreneurs were able to provide access to justice to more than 1.4 million people through these avenues.
Although we recognize the self-reporting and retrospective bias our impact data inevitably has, we see this report as a first attempt to show where and how justice innovation makes an impact. In addition, it shows what justice entrepreneurs need in terms of support and where HiiL’s support has provided the most value. The report provides an interesting baseline against which we can compare the outcomes and impact of our future programmes.
Of course, we are excited to develop more accurate and effective methods of measuring our impact – and exploring such avenues with our partners. For instance, we are keen to empower our innovations with lean data methods and apply these to our own impact assessment programs. The road to measuring impact of access to justice innovations is long, but we are on the right track to prove that justice innovation works!
Informal cross-border trade is a 2 billion US dollar industry to African economies. It creates jobs, contributes to food and energy security, and alleviates poverty. 60% of informal trade in the East African Community (EAC) is carried out by small-scale traders and is often the most important income-source to rural livelihoods. 70-80% of these traders are women who have on average 7 dependents in their household.
The EAC rules are complex. Cross-border traders often lack an understanding of their rights and obligations as citizens of the EAC. To the benefit of smugglers and corrupt customs, police and local government officers who are known to bribe and extort traders along the border. Information asymmetry makes people’s livelihoods vulnerable, as they try to conduct their business in the face of uncertainty. Women traders are extremely vulnerable to gender-based violence. Estimates place the population of the EAC at almost 169 million inhabitants, and trade is thought to be important for raising living standards.
So what to do?
Sauti was founded as an SMS-based trade and market information platform for small cross-border traders and SME’s in East Africa. Julia Lipowiecka, a co-founder of Sauti felt compelled to act, “It struck me that even though traders were entitled to all these rights, they don’t know about them. They don’t know where to get information.” Julia and her team held focus group discussion, “Through talking to traders it became clear that corruption and harassment were prevalent issues that no one was doing anything about.”.
The platform Julia and her team developed empowers traders with the right information and enables traders to easily and anonymously rate their border experience. “Traders love the name ‘Sauti’, which means ‘Voice’ in Swahili, which they appreciated because the platform would give them a voice. They also appreciated being asked whether our solution would work to address the issues they faced, rather than being presented with a ready-made solution,” Julia shares.
The benefit of the platform is traders are enabled to trade legally and profitably across EAC borders. The founders hope the digital reports sent to the platform will be used in advocacy, bringing more justice for victims of border-related crimes. They have the full support of civil society groups who have been stuck to make meaningful change as people are too scared to report what happens to them. Julia says, “Their number one fear is retribution. They couldn’t ensure their report would be kept anonymous, or they weren’t always aware of the mechanism they should engage”. The real-time reports on incidents of harassment and bribery experienced will be used for evidence-based advocacy by their civil society partners.
It is a rarity to meet individuals, like Julia, who are willing to go to great lengths to solve a particular problem. The Justice Entrepreneurship School created by HiiL was meaningful to Julia, “It was really encouraging to meet other innovators. It was great hearing what others are doing across Africa to make access to justice more available.” The school hosted justice entrepreneurs from around the world, including other innovators from across Africa.
“We have to democratise the law and the right to access to justice and reduce the inequalities” as expressed by Oumar Dembele, the Coordinator of Plea and Communication at Deme So in late 2015. A long way we have come since his last visit to The Hague. Since Oumar’s visit in 2015, HiiL has been working hard on the development of the Paralegal Dashboard – an online tool, tailor-made for Deme So, that enhances file management and track the progress of their work on an online platform.
This interactive Dashboard organizes the available justice data around the justice needs of citizens. It will allow users to link various types of justice data in order to obtain a better idea about the performance of the existing justice processes. Next to user empowerment, Deme So will be endowed as well, in order to monitor justice from the people’s perspective and the work of their paralegals, that will give way to hold Malian justice providers accountable.
It was a pleasure to have Oumar back with us in our offices this December. During an intensive work week filled with testing and brainstorming, HiiL and Deme So have come to the final phase of the Dashboard. Oumar pointed out that HiiL’s expertise is what will make the Dashboard feasible and successful. “[…] we are used to working together and we need HiiL’s expertise to accompany and guide us in the deployment of the tool and aimed change. This is one of the essential dynamics of the improvement of access to justice in Mali – HiiL and Deme So share this perspective”. The work that is being accomplished will not only bear fruits for citizens, but will pave the way for future partnerships with Malian authorities and policy-makers. Ultimately, it results in mirroring the bright spots and improvement points in the justice sector within the country.
Deme So envisions to evaluate and demonstrate the impact of the paralegal’s work in the Malian judicial system by the help of the Dashboard. “First, we can reinforce the technical capacity of Deme So by means of implementing the tool and follow-up with the interventions of the Paralegals and our capacity to influence the justice environment”. HiiL will guide and assist Deme So throughout the process of understanding citizen’s rights, being able to fulfil citizen rights and to enhance the work of the paralegals. The dashboard will incorporate case data, individual level perceptions and evaluations of sensibilisation campaigns that can help Deme So to track the process of their paralegals. This process is in line with HiiL’s value: a citizen-centered bottom-up approach.
Citizens are at the core of this mission for justice. “[…] promoting and defending the marginalised people is the principle targeted result.” Mr. Dembele illustrated a recent case about an old Qur’anic mayor who lost everything. The man does not have any money or property and lives on the street. The mere fact that a paralegal listened to his story gave him inner peace, he told Deme So. It gave him hope. Though his case is still pending and the outcome remains unclear, the man feels he’s in a better position on account of the paralegal’s help.
Drawn from our last Mali JNS Survey in 2014, 30% of Malians have experienced one or more problems in the past 4 years, and those people who reported one or more problems, had to deal with 2,15 problems on average in those 4 years. Peculiarly, only 4% brought their case to a paralegal and yet another 25% didn’t take any action. These numbers are expected to change once the Dashboard is accessible. Once launched, people own the chance to read and watch justice stories, similar to that of their own, and will become informed and empowered. Drawing from these percentages there is a pressing need for access to justice and information for all.
The Dashboard will be launched and deployed on the web in early 2017. A formal announcement has yet to follow, so stay tuned!
Hundreds of thousands of employment disputes occur every year in Ukraine. Most of these disputes are about people’s most valuable human capital – their ability to work, earn stable income and guarantee the future for themselves and their families. Fair and secure employment relationships are the backbone of inclusive societies and prospering economies.
The human face of employment disputes
Vasiliy is 34 years old marketing specialist working for a young and ambitious Ukrainian company. His main responsibility is to promote one of companies major brands. Vasiliy works hard and achieves results. To do so he regularly skips vacation days and weekends.
His managers, however, had different ideas. Vasiliy received a termination note which stated that his position has been eliminated. He complained to HR and the notice had been withdrawn. Soon after that Vasiliy received another termination note that he did not meet the position’s requirements. He countered that he has never been evaluated so there is no ground for termination. Finally, the company found a way to get out of the employment contract and lay Vasiliy off. As a sort of retaliation for all the troubles the employer denied to pay any compensation – neither for the termination, nor for the many vacation days that Vasiliy forewent during his employment. Vasiliy checked the options for resolving the disagreement in a fair manner. There are not a lot of choices and at the end after difficult deliberations he decided to do nothing, shoulder the damages and just look for a new job.
Questions about the state of employment justice in Ukraine
Vasiliy is not alone. A recent HiiL Justice Needs and Satisfaction study shows that in Ukraine every four years there are more than 1 million serious employment disputes. Most often the people have to deal with termination of employment contracts, discrimination (mostly based on age) and non-payment of wages. After consumer disputes, employment-related disagreements are the second most frequently occurring legal problem in the everyday life in Ukraine. If employment disputes are so important at many different levels, the logical questions are: How does employment justice functions in Ukraine? Do the people receive fair solutions? Who ‘owns’ the employment justice infrastructure in Ukraine?
The most prevalent response strategy in the cases of employment disputes is to contact the employer – about 40% of the employees do so. But when it comes to formal dispute resolution methods the survey data shows a big gap. Less than 1% of the people who had disputes around their employment relationship brought it to court! Small proportion addressed some sort of public authority and very few used the services of a lawyer to resolve the problem.
The Ukrainian employment legal framework recognises the existence of semi-formal employment dispute resolution commissions. Such commissions are compulsory for employers who employ more than 15 individuals. The survey did not find a lot of people using these commissions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that these are seen as biased towards the employers.
In this environment it is not surprising that the employees find little justice. We measured 10 aspects of the quality of the procedure, the quality of the outcome and the costs of employment justice dispute resolution (1 is negative; 5 is positive). On most dimensions, particularly in procedural fairness, stress and negative emotions we see rather low scores.
The Way Ahead: Innovation and ownership
The users of justice do not perceive the existing processes for resolving employment disputes as fair and accessible. Better procedures for resolving employment disputes are needed. Innovative procedures can provide accessible, affordable and fair solutions at a large scale. At HiiL we believe that these new procedures will come from the ever-growing community of Ukrainian justice innovators. Start-ups, civil-society organisations, lawyers, judges and public officials are capable of great innovations.
But employment justice also needs ownership – institution or coalition of institutions who have at the core of their mission the establishment and maintenance of a well-functioning system for employment justice in Ukraine. A system which delivers accessible, affordable, effective and quick justice to employers and employees.
Now the challenge is to discover and stimulate bold innovations in the field of employment justice and at the same time to vest ownership in committed and capable stakeholders!
Life always continues and is interconnected. So drawing a line in the sand of time and saying “this is 2016” and “that is 2017” is a bit odd. At the same time that line is useful. It creates a moment to look back, and based on that, move forward.
In a world where rule of law as we knew it is not taken for granted anymore, we had a volatile year ourselves. We succeeded in some things, failed in others, and like to think that we learned in both instances.
We close the year working in eleven countries: Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Jordan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Mali, Bulgaria, Ukraine, The Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates. In each of these countries we aim to contribute practically to more access to justice. It took us while to come up with our definition of access to justice, but we think we have it now: a sustainable solution for a basic justice need through a respectful process. What do you think?
It is what we have been measuring all year with our JNS survey tool: the justice needs and the respectfulness of the processes that are supposed to help deal with those needs. Two reports concerning Uganda and Ukraine show that the needs are plentiful and the justice journeys to meet them are full of potholes, nasty bends, and sudden dead ends. They show what we have also seen in other countries: there are so many unmet justice needs. Too many people give up (for example: a staggering 43% of Ukrainians don’t even try, or can’t find their way). Too many people don’t understand the complex procedures. Women get a lot less justice than men. For both countries, we also did in-depth reports on the two most serious justice: family justice in Uganda and labour disputes in Ukraine. Both make worrying reading. As I write, data collection in Tunisia is completed and has started in Jordan, Lebanon, and Kenya. In Uganda, and Ukraine. We hope to start in Mali, which we surveyed in 2014, for a follow-up survey early 2017. We are learning how to build coalitions for change around our justice needs data – which is not always easy. But, generally speaking we see the magic of data: it gets people talking about developing better justice journeys for the most serious justice needs.
The justice needs data was also used as the foundation to scout promising justice entrepreneurs. Some good news here: we keep finding more of them, of better quality. We will work hard with them to achieve nation-wide breakthroughs – the real challenge. Out of the six award winners of 2015, we were able to guide two justice entrepreneurship teams to scale-up and to increased investments: DIY Law (Nigeria) and the MSME Garage by Barefoot Law. Both offer access to justice for SME’s, the biggest employer of Africa. For 2016 ten top teams were selected as winners. As part of our own scale up strategy, we launched a new initiative – the Justice Entrepreneurship School. The ten winning teams were put through an intense week of learning and exchange on the basis of which they prepared the Acceleration Plans that will guide our support to them in the coming year. We were able to raise more seed money than ever, which will greatly help us with maximising scale-up and impact. As we shared during the 2016 innovating Justice Forum, we learned this year that the HiiL Innovating Justice Award winners have contributed to various forms of access to justice for a staggering 1,4 million people since 2011.
The platform has received acclaim in over 60 national and international media outlets, including The Economist. We learned that getting to a mutually reinforcing partnership with the traditional justice institutions to scale up a platform like Rechtwijzer is difficult. So we decided to run it as a separate legal entity, with separate management, and funded separately from HiiL through social impact investors. The expertise and knowledge that we built up around designing innovative procedures will remain within HiiL and be developed as a product going into 2017. Two results we are already very proud of in this regard. Firstly, the Trend Report we published on online dispute resolution and the courts, which was widely read. Secondly, an innovative plan we developed to deal with the problems caused by the current divorce procedures in The Netherlands, which was selected as one of four winners from 500 submissions in the Dutch Divorce Challenge.
HiiL was very proud to see two initiatives it helped develop in previous years prosper. The Wildlife Justice Commission completed an investigation on Vietnam and held a successful first public hearing the Peace Palace. I pay tribute to its brave and extremely dedicated team. The Justice Leadership Group – with whom HiiL has worked closely in the past year and will continue to do so in 2017 – organised a Justice Dialogue in Amman to already start the thinking about rebuilding the justice system in Syria, based on the needs of citizens.
I started this note by expressing concern regarding the state of rule of law. In this time of polarisation, rule of law as a way of building bridges to fairness is more important than ever: between people and between people and their governments. Many of the procedures that justice systems offer are still not accessible enough and polarize themselves. We end the year with more worry about the responsiveness of state justice institutions to justice needs of their citizens and less optimistic about how this can be changed compared to our earlier trend reports. One moment stands out for me: when, during one of the sessions of the Justice Entrepreneurship School, we asked the ten winning innovation teams what their experiences where from the formal justice system institutions – the ministries of justice, the judiciaries, the bar associations, the legal aid boards, and the like. Sadly, not one of them could mention anything positive they had experienced. In all of the ten countries these institutions were seen as hurdles to overcome or to actively avoid dealing with. Though the need for change is bigger than ever, resistance to change remains tough. This is something we urgently need to deal with.
We take heart at the fact that our message is increasingly being noticed. Some highlights: HiiL featured in a documentary on innovation and access to justice made for a high quality Dutch television program – with both a Dutch and English language version. And at the last day of the year we were on the front page of the Financieel Dagblad in the Netherlands. As the year ends, the HiiL cry for justice innovation also featured in a blog on the website of the World Economic Forum.
What we were able to do in 2016 would also not have been possible without our strong strategic partnerships with the Dutch and Swedish ministries of foreign affairs, the Ford Foundation, the municipality of The Hague, the ministry of justice of United Arab Emirates, and the Justice Leadership Group. We thank them.
And we also deeply thank you for being with us during the past year. We have a lot of work to do and look forward to doing it with you.
My very best, on behalf of the whole HiiL team, Sam
It has been a very intense, interesting and fruitful time lately for HiiL in Ukraine. We’ve been trying and pushing hard to uphold the justice entrepreneurship spirit in Ukraine in 2016. Since it is the end of the year I’ve decided to wrap-up main stepping stones of this not even full year of HiiL’s activities.
A Great Start
First of all, it is a great pleasure for me as a local Ukrainian guy to see the level of interest in the high-quality innovations coming out of Ukraine. Ukraine was the leading country by the number of innovators submitted to the international HiiL Justice Accelerator with almost 50 applications. 17 of those were put on the shortlist as they already had some progress. The best 8 of those shortlisted presented their ideas in the end of September at the first Innovating Justice Boostcamp held in Kiev. They were pitching in front of the wide audience of progressive lawyers, representatives of IT, academia, government officials and investors. It was especially pleasurable to see the deputy justice minister, Gia Getsadze and other distinguished justice sector agents taking an active role in the process. It was the very first event that showed the huge potential of justice entrepreneurs in Ukraine. The jury also choose one winner based on different criteria (social impact, uniqueness, sustainability and scalability) to receive the grant of $20k and represent Ukraine on the international Innovating Justice Forum at the end of the year in the Hague. That happened to be the Legal Alarm app team.
Building the Community Further
Following the momentum of the Boostcamp, HiiL partnered with the local accelerator and investment company GrowthUp, which is known locally as a locomotive of startup community. As a result of this partnership a regular meetup for the legal tech startups called Legal Startup Crash Test was launched. It is a series of regular, informal pitching events for entrepreneurs in the field of law and those whose objective relates to making justice more accessible. The first Legal Startup Crash Test was held on 3 November in the most active community building co-working space Chasopys right in the heart of Kyiv. It was a success, there were 3 high-quality pitches, and consequently we had lots of positive responses and encouragement to immediately started planning the second meetup of the Legal Startup Crash Test.
International Recognition
Because of the significance of these innovations in the justice domain, HiiL annually holds a final international Innovating Justice Forum to showcase the best innovations from all over the globe, give innovators access to an international network, build partnerships and learn from other attendants at the Forum. This year, on 2 December, Ukraine was represented at the Forum for the first time in the seven years of its existence, by the selected finalist, Legal Alarm app. The app is basically an S.O.S button to call for legal help. If you are illegally detained or just stopped by the police in a distant city your lawyer will know where to find you with the GPS coordinates of your phone. It has a great potential to provide access to emergency legal help in different parts of the world when used by travellers for example. Valentin, the CIO of this impressive innovation gave an inspiring pitch and received a special recognition from judges. I believe it gave a lot of enthusiasm to the team and to me personally. In addition to the forum, Valentin alongside ten other top-notch justice entrepreneurs from Middle East and Africa had an intensive week of training at the Justice Entrepreneurship School organized by HiiL.
More Impact Back in Ukraine
Moving on, December was full of occasions where HiiL took an active role. It started on 6 of December when YurPractika, the most recognized legal publishing house in Ukraine was organizing a TMT (Technology. Media. Telecommunications) Forum. Wilfried De Wever, the Head of the HiiL Justice Accelerator, was invited to Skype-in and take part in the panel discussion. More and more Ukrainian justice and legal sector players recognize innovating justice to be an important topic. With this regard, it was especially valuable for Wilfried to share his global experience in innovations and talk about investing in legal tech startups.
Shortly after, on 9 December we had a Legal Startup Crash Test #2. The second meetup was full of insights presented in a relaxed, informal atmosphere with plenty of stimulating conversations. To kick off the pitches a partner of the leading investment company, Viktor Kompaneyets, shared his views on the future of the legal services. It was good to hear that Viktor anticipates the future “unicorn” startups to solve people’s everyday needs, rather than technological problems. And access to justice is definitely among the former group.
Just few days later HiiL was organizing another event – an interactive workshop on employment justicedisputes. Top Ukrainian experts in employment issues, Dr. Maurits Barendrecht, Research Director at HiiL, Dr. Martin Gramatikov, Head of Measuring Justice at HiiL and myself gathered in the centre of Kyiv, next to the Golden Gate, for a first-of-its-kind “Innovations in Ukrainian Employment Disputes” workshop. According to the latest study of HiiL employment disputes are among the most popular justice challenges that Ukrainians face. So, together with different stakeholders we were working on setting goals of an innovative procedure to settle employment issues, discussed user stories, formalized qualities of the perfect procedure, thought of how we can implement it in the next year and drafted the action plan based on multiple terms of reference. It was extraordinary to hear points of view from no fewer than 15 experts who deal with employment issues from completely different perspectives: governmental body, lawyers, mediators, a judge, University professors and HR practitioners. We had a very thoughtful co-creation workshop and a concrete guide to move forward with in the New Year.
Discussion about the Future
On 13 December, the already mentioned YurPractika was holding the 4th Annual International Forum on Promotion of Legal Services. I felt very honoured to be invited to the panel discussion dedicated to the future of legal services. It was great to sit among some semi-finalists of HiiL Justice Accelerator other key opinion leaders in the legal field to discuss how the future of the justice and law will look like. I received a lot of insights, figures and examples of the law practices that few years ago could be a only described as a science fiction. Just one example – we started our discussion right after the presentation of the Paralegal Bot that can help in the business of registering companies and other simple legal questions only for 1 bitcoin per year.
So, all in all it was a busy months, but very exciting developments were made indeed. The positive reaction of the legal and IT community to initiatives that HiiL is starting in Ukraine reinforces the belief that the justice will be more accessible to the people of Ukraine. It will flourish on the great demand for the fairness in the society, strong IT sector and by connecting innovative thinkers with doers. Thus, I am convinced that 2017 will definitely will be the year of legal tech and innovating justice uprise in Ukraine. And we at HiiL will put our best to make it happen. Join us!
P.S. we greatly appreciate help and support of multiple people and organizations that were not mentioned above but stand to make innovations in justice happen, just to name a few, that is National Association of Mediators of Ukraine, Ukrainian Venture Capital Association (UVCA), UAngel, LigaZakon, Odessa IT Cluster, Lviv IT Cluster and last but not least we are grateful for the continuous support of Ukrainian Bar Association and its ICT committee which we found to be crucial. Thank you.
Stay tuned with HiiL, and refer your friends, let’s make your justice ideas and wishes come true in 2017!
Simple ideas really can be powerful. This is elegantly demonstrated if one observes the impact of Deme So’s innovation to deliver access to justice to Malians, Tien Sira. The innovation is conceptually simple, yet provides access to justice in rural areas and upholds human rights by its functional service and protection extended to vulnerable groups of women, children, victims and witnesses.
Since 2011, the crisis in Mali has highlighted the inadequacies of its judicial system, and the desperate plight of citizens denied access to justice. HiiL’s survey of the perception of justice by individuals in 2014 revealed that more than 80% of legal disputes in rural areas are solved outside of the formal system. The literacy rate is poor. The legal consciousness in society and access to the very basic legal information is poor.
Tien Sira provides people with information that is accessible, transparent and affordable. It offers people guidance through the beginning to end of the legal process and works for the most disadvantaged members of society whilst promoting the justice needs of rural communities.
Citizens can get their information in one of two ways, through a male or female paralegal -volunteers are chosen by the community they serve who offer assistance in the form most helpful to the user – or via a text message. Tien Sira is supported by an IT platform through which citizens can ask justice questions and the responses are stored in a database and openly shared. This is completely transparent justice.
To date, the associated Judicial Clinique in Bamako has held 12300 judicial consultations, 4900 cases have been handled in courts and tribunals, and of those more than 8500 cases resolved satisfactorily. Disputes have a clear access to justice path. Basic legal services are sought and delivered to; 300 marriage certificates and 100 women have been provided with identification cards. Citizens are becoming accustomed to seeking and following up legal issues, and consequently, their trust in the states’ function as justice provider is growing with that trend.
Awareness campaigns are still a fundamental function of Tien Sira’s band of paralegals, encouraging citizens to believe in and demand justice. These results show this is happening. In total, Tien Sira will touch around 3million citizens in Mali, particularly the populations of rural areas. The commitment to upholding human rights and ensuring a quality of service accepted by all judicial stakeholders renders this example a successful one, and one that shows great potential to be imitated in different countries.
The 21st century is a new era in how to think about the worlds most pressing challenges; the big players in development realize that aid failed to help the world’s most vulnerable in meaningful ways. We also realize that strong rule of law and access to justice are vital to smooth economic development and upholding human rights.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator comes across hundreds of practical justice solutions every year that can really make a difference. HiiL is proud that through the Accelerator program, in a span of five years, our fellows, reached a total of 1.424.100 direct users. This is an incredible number.
mSME Garage was founded by the Barefoot Lawyers situated in Kampala, Uganda and were second place winner of HiiL’s SMS Empowerment Innovation Challenge 2015. They provide legal information and guidance to mirco, small and medium enterprises’s through social media, text to an online platform and office consultations. One Barefoot client, Latim Fassie, had spent all his money fighting for workers’ compensation after a motorbike accident left him hospitalized for months. He said lawyers at Barefoot Law were the only ones who would tell him his rights and explain to him how to proceed when he couldn’t find proper representation. In Uganda, he said it’s a rare thing, indeed, to get this kind of help at no charge. “They are lawyers that even will call you at their own cost, give you technical advice, call you to their offices, share with you, even share with you breakfast on the table while you discuss papers,” said Fassie. mSME Garage raised $20.000 US through HiiL, and are helping businesses survive their first year and beyond, thereby supporting economic development in Uganda.
Through our different activities of online campaigns, local boostcamps, crowdsourcing, Justice Entrepreneurship School and Innovating Justice Acceleration and Validation programs we helped 384 short-listed entrepreneurs across 79 countries grow and develop a sustainable justice innovation with social impact with 460K in seed funding made available, besides enabling access to HiiL’s international network and access to further investment.
We measure our impact on the basis of three core indicators (Rights Awareness and legal information, access to justice and legal services and inclusive justice policies) and three sub indicators (gender, employment and sustainability).
It is interesting that justice entrepreneurship is an attractive field for women to emerge as key players. One third of our justice entrepreneurs are women, 127 out of 384 of innovations are female-founded! This is an incredible feat, and it should also be notes that even where the founder is male, co-founders and core team members are often female. There is a direct impact on gender equality as number of innovations are focused on women empowerment, and seeing bold women supporting their community through smart innovation counts for something too.
The ten Innovating Justice winners 2016 are about to embark on the Accelerator program that will start the process of scaling their business, expanding services from SMS registration birth (Moh Ni Bah) to tracking court cases via SMS (Famalia) to tech-solutions to abuse of power (Legal Alarm). All are more effective protection mechanisms of citizens’ rights or more participative, accountable and transparent decision- and rule-making processes. HiiL will keep finding and supporting Justice innovators who too often are isolated. They feel trapped in rigid systems and too often lack the necessary skills, connections and support. Effective innovations need to be integrated in existing systems much faster and successful practices need much more exposure around the world.
Tel était le message central du discours d’ouverture du ministre Mamadou Konaté à la première conférence des procureurs du Mali tenue sous le thème du «ministère public pour l’action publique» au début du mois. «Vous êtes, disait-il aux procureurs, des défenseurs clé de l’intérêt public et un poste de premier plan dans la société pour la justice.» Le ministre Konaté souhaite que cette conférence ait lieu tous les ans – sous forme d’une réunion qui sert à parler de la défense de l’intérêt public et à comment mieux servir les citoyens du Mali.
Le ministre est un personnage impressionnant et très motivé. Un avocat qui a plus de 25 ans d’expérience dans les affaires internationales et l’homme qui est maintenant politiquement chargé du système judiciaire d’un des pays les plus pauvres du monde. Le pays a un pouvoir et une légitimité limitée, des recettes fiscales limitées, des tensions liées au conflit dans le Nord, des tensions dans la région et des défis liés à la corruption. En outre, le pays est face à un immense défi économique et social: sa population compte un peu plus de 18 millions de citoyens dont 50% ont moins de 15 ans et celle-ci croît rapidement de 3% chaque année. Cette augmentation de la population jeune correspond à un faible taux d’alphabétisation des adultes de seulement 34%. Pour chacun de ces défis individuellement, avoir un système judiciaire qui fonctionne correctement est essentiel. À cet égard, le ministre Konaté a un des emplois les plus important au sein du Cabinet.
Les jeunes auront besoin d’éducation et d’emplois. Il est impossible d’imaginer qu’ils créent des entreprises, qu’ils aient accès à l’achat et la vente, qu’ils deviennent propriétaire, qu’ils obtiennent des comptes bancaires, qu’ils enregistrent des droits de propriété intellectuelle, qu’ils embauchent et licencient du personnelle, qu’ils aient un environnement de travail sûr, qu’ils payent des impôts et dirigent eux-mêmes sans un système légal. Et cela n’est pas le seul manque justice. Un sondage sur les besoins et la satisfaction concernant la justice que nous avons mené auprès de 8000 citoyens du Mali en 2014 montre que les problèmes liés à la propriété figurent parmi les problèmes judiciaire auxquels les gens sont confrontés le plus fréquemment: propriété foncière, utilisation des terres, conflits d’irrigation, droits d’accès ou de passage et vol de terres apparaissent majoritairement. Les chemins vers la justice (formelle et informelle) dans ce domaine sont mal évalués quand il s’agit de prix (trop cher), de voix, de respect, de stress et d’émotions, de clarté procédurale et de réparations des dommages. Dans les régions rurales, l’évaluation est plus faible que dans les zones urbaines. En fait, le problème est encore plus sérieux: ce sondage nous indique également que 18% des problèmes concernent la justice familiale qui se rapportent à l’héritage, qui comprend souvent la propriété de terres. Qu’il s’agisse d’affaires commerciales ou de propriété de terres: pour des raisons de stabilité et de cohésion sociale, il faut des règles claires et des systèmes efficaces de résolution des conflits, et l’application de la loi.
Le ministre Mamadou Konaté n’est pas seul; il a de l’aide. Sous la direction de Roelof Haveman et son collègue Malien Mamadou Ba, tous les deux venant de l’ambassade Hollandaise à Bamako, un programme innovant qui soutient des efforts du ministre a été mis en place. Celui ci place les données sur les besoins des citoyens, la transparence sur la qualité de la justice rendue, les efforts des organisations de haute qualité de la société civile en son coeur. Plus important encore, il ne fonctionne pas sur la base d’une planification «grand design» (comme «la réforme des tribunaux dans un grand plan triennal »). Au contraire, il prend une approche itérative: voir ce qui est cassé, voir qui peut avoir des solutions, les essayer et si elles fonctionnent, les mettre à l’échelle, sinon, essayer autre chose. Il s’agit d’un mode de travail de pointe, appuyé par la recherche de pointe qui jusqu’à présent n’a jamais été appliquée dans le secteur de la justice. Un autre partisan de cette approche est Ibrahima Koreissi, le leader extraordinaire de Deme so. Avec ses collègues, il a mis en place un réseau incroyable de parajuristes, dans tout le pays. Ce n’est pas un programme parajuriste ordinaire. Il est aidé par une plate-forme informatique appelée Tien Sira dans laquelle les données sur les questions judiciaire posées aux parajuridiques et les réponses qu’ils donnent sont stockées dans une base de données et partagées ouvertement. Ceci sert, comme le dit Ibrahima Koreissi, « pour une justice transparente ». L’avocat général Diawarra de Mopti a partagé une autre pratique transparente qu’il a appelée «contrôle citoyens». L’idée principal est d’avoir un mécanisme pour invite périodiquement des citoyens aux tribunaux pour faire des commentaires sur leur fonctionnement. Il l’avait mise en place dans un tribunal où il travaillait précédemment, mais quand il est parti la pratique a été abandonnée. Il veut désespérément la voir remise en service dans tous les tribunaux du Mali. L’avocat général tient également une émission de radio hebdomadaire dans laquelle les gens peuvent poser leurs questions sur le système judiciaire. Sa popularité est un signe de la soif pour la justice et il est évident que les choses relativement simple peuvent faire une très grande différence.
Ces examples montrent clairement que des individues compte dans le Mali d’aujourd’hui. L’état n’est pas encore très fort. Son pouvoir est limité. Donc, les entrepreneurs de la justice doivent être employés à temps, soutenus dans leurs efforts, fourni de l’espace dont ils ont besoin. Le ministre Mamadou Konaté est quelqu’un dont on a besoin au Mali. Il est un homme politique impressionnant, qui peut établir des priorités, inspirer et donner de l’espace aux nombreux autres entrepreneurs de la justice. Il a une vision claire d’un système judiciaire qui fonctionne pour les citoyens. Il donne la priorité à une approche fondée sur des faits qui impliquent des sondages et des indicateurs pour soutenir les objectifs des mesures politiques. Il sait ce qu’il veut et pourtant demander de l’aide et des conseils ne le dérange pas. C’est un nouveau ministre rafraîchissant qui mérite tout le soutien possible.
What: An international justice event in The Peace Palace catering to more than 100 participants, organised by HiiL to discuss and support innovative ways of approaching justice systems worldwide. During the Forum 10 highly promising entrepreneurs from all over the world will pitch their justice innovation to compete for the Innovating Justice Awards 2016!
Who: We welcome entrepreneurs, governments, academia, NGOs, international organisations, corporations, civil society, IT developers, and all other justice enthusiasts!
Why: To discover what innovation in the justice sector means in practice, to build partnerships and to network with a world of creative minds.
This was the core message in the opening address of minister Mamadou Konaté to the first conference of public prosecutors of Mali held under the theme ‘the public ministry for public action’ earlier this month. ‘You are’, he said to the prosecutors, ‘a key advocate of the public interest and an advance post into society for justice.’ Minister Konaté wants this conference to take place every year – a gathering at which to reflect on standing up for the public interest and better serving the citizens of Mali.
He is an impressive and hugely driven figure: a lawyer with more than 25 years of experience at the international business level who is now politically in charge of a justice system of one of the poorest countries of the world. The country has limited state capacity and legitimacy, limited tax revenues, tensions connected with the conflict in the North, tensions in the region, and corruption challenges. In addition, the country is on the cusp of a huge cusp huge economic and social challenge: it has a population of just over 18 million citizens of which 50% are under 15 years old, and is growing at a fast pace of 3% annually. This youth bulge corresponds with low adult literacy rates of just 34%. For any one of these challenges, let alone all of them together, having a well functioning justice infrastructure is pretty crucial. In that respect, Minister Konaté has one of the most important jobs in the cabinet.
The youth will need education and jobs. It’s impossible to see how registering businesses, making it easy for them to purchase and sell, own, have bank accounts, register intellectual property rights, hire and fire people, have a safe working environment, pay taxes, and govern themselves is possible without a legal system. And that’s just one justice needs area. The Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey we did among 8000 citizens of Mali in 2014 shows that land-related issues rank amongst the most prevalent justice problems people face: land property, land use, water irrigation disputes, rights of access or passage, and land grabbing feature prominently. The journeys to justice (formal and informal justice) in this area are evaluated low when it comes to price (its too expensive), voice, respect, stress and emotions, procedural clarity and damage restoration. In rural regions the assessment is lower than in urban areas. In fact, the problem is even bigger: the survey also tells us that 18% of the family justice problems relate to inheritance, which often includes land. Whether it is business or land: for the sake of stability and social cohesion you need clear rules, effective conflict resolution systems, and good enforcement in both areas.
Minister Mamadou Konaté is not alone; he has help. Under the leadership of the seasoned rule of law advisers Roelof Haveman and his Mali colleague Mamadou Ba, both of the Dutch embassy in Bamako, an innovative program to support some of the minister’s efforts has been put in place. It puts data about the needs of citizens, transparency about the quality of justice delivered, the efforts of high quality civil society organisations at the core. Most importantly, it does not operate on the basis of ‘grand design’ planning (like ‘reforming the courts in a grand ‘three year plan’). Rather, it takes an iterative approach: see what is broken, see who may have solutions, try them out and if they work, scale up, if they don’t, try something else. This is a cutting edge way of working, supported by cutting edge research until now not applied in the justice sector. Another supporter is Ibrahima Koreissi, the extraordinary leader of Deme So. With his colleagues he has set up an amazing network of paralegals, all through the country. This is no ordinary paralegal programme. It is supported by an IT platform called Tien Sira in which data about the justice questions asked of the paralegals and the responses they give is stored in a database and openly shared. As Ibrahima Koreissi puts it: “pour un justice transparante”. Advocate General Diawarra from Mopti shared another transparency practice that he called ‘control citoyens’: periodically inviting citizens into the court to provide comments on its functioning. He had it up and running in a previous court he worked but when he left it petered out. He desperately wants to see it put into operation in every court in Mali. The advocate general also does a weekly radio show in which people can call in with questions about the justice system. Its popularity is a sign of the thirst for justice and the relatively simply things that can make a huge difference.
These examples clearly show that people matter a lot in the Mali of today. The state is not that strong yet. Capacity is limited. So justice entrepreneurs must be spotted in time, supported in their efforts, given the space they need. Minister Mamadou Konaté is somebody who matters in Mali. He is an impressive leader, who can set priorities, inspire, and give space to many other justice entrepreneurs. He has a clear vision of a justice system that works for citizens. He prioritizes an evidence-based approach that involves surveys and indicators to support policy objectives. He knows what he wants, but he is also not bothered about asking for help and advice. He is a refreshing, new kind of minister, who deserves all support.
You have probably heard about Rechtwijzer (or you certainly will be if you have visited the HiiL website!) Our online separation platform has been live in The Netherlands for the past year and a half, guiding couples through the difficult process of separation step by step. It was born out of a Justice Needs Survey completed in Holland in 2014 which clearly spelled out the impact divorce has on Dutch society. ¾ of all divorce related problems result in mental health problems, be they stress or something more severe. 22% result in violence. Citizens reported financial worries, confusion as to the complexity of the process, and that agreements certified by courts do not always work for the couple when acted out in real life. And this impact stretches further than the separating couple themselves, but reverberates through their children, family and friends.
The mission of Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar has been to seek to reduce this burden. Through innovating the legal process of divorce itself, by reducing the adversarial nature of the process, and by making it clear and easy to follow. But for us the ultimate test comes down to whether it works for our users. For the first time we have been able to accumulate user data looking back over 6 months following their separation and we are excited to share with you what it has to say.
As previously mentioned, stress and related mental health problems have had the single biggest impact on separation proceedings. For us it was vital to find out whether our users reported reduced or normal stress levels throughout our procedure, giving us a clear indication that our choice to reduce the adversarial approach of traditional divorce can lead to an improved procedure. Using Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar led to over half of the participants experiencing low or very low stress levels during their separation, with 36% experiencing normal stress levels.
It may be difficult to believe that users experience less stress when using a platform with an average completion time of 24.3 hours. However, users can spread out these hours as they like, so as to deal with each step of the divorce at their own pace. Our users have reported as a result that they have more control over when and where they utilise the platform. In fact 84% of participants felt that they have more control over their separation as a direct result of this user empowerment.
“The process is clear and Rechtwijzer takes finding, helping with and resolving issues seriously”.
Traditionally, control is left in the hands of the lawyers hired by both parties. The Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar process does not seek to remove lawyers from the equation, but instead to integrate them in the platform. Legal professionals are vital to ensuring the quality and fairness of the agreements, and to provide guidance and support where needed, at the click of a button. What Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar seeks to do is empower legal professionals to maximise their interventions in such a way as to aid our users, but not supersede their judgement. As a result, 82% of users felt respected or very respected by lawyers or mediators on the platform.
Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar set out over five years ago to make the process of separation as clear and stress free as possible for our users. Divorce is a monumental upset in anyone’s life and the legal process should not make that undertaking more difficult than it already is. That almost 70% of the participants state that to a great or very great extent the emotional pain they felt before using Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar was healed after separating on the platform is hugely encouraging for this mission. Indeed, over 70% of the participants found the process fair to a great or very great extent. As a result, it has been hugely positive to hear the improved emotional impact of Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar on our users lives.
It is equally important to ensure that the quality of the agreements couples have been guided to making are a marked improvement over those of a traditional divorce process. When asked 72% of the participants rated their experience on the platform with 8 out of 10 and 70% said that its use led to effective and sustainable solutions.
We are thrilled that initial data indicates so clearly that Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar is managing to provide a better pathway for users going through a divorce both emotionally and in terms of the quality and sustainability of their agreements. We will continue to innovate, evolve and expand this offering both for our separation platform and for different disputes such as landlord tenant in the coming years.
Gillian Hadfield just came out with a fabulous book ‘Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy’. In it, she argues that the design machine we have for making rules that work for people in the world of today is broken. What it produces is of inferior quality: often out-dated, too complex, and it does not always solve the problem.
No wonder: the fast-moving, internationalized world of today with its technological developments and daily outpours of new, profound knowledge about our very being as humans is a very different one than the one Montesquieu and Jefferson lived in. Take the past 14 years: the first TomTom navigator in 2002, Skype and LinkedIn in 2003, Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, the iPhone in 2007, AirBnB in 2008, WhatsApp and Uber in 2009, Bitcoin in 2009, the iPad 2010, blockchain technology in 2014, the invention of CRISPR/Cas9 with which we can manipulate DNA. We saw the emergence of complex global supply chains, cyber-crime, fintech, and the recognition that our carbon based economy must be transformed. These things have and will radically change the world. We have no clue what the next 14 years will bring.
This change will need to be supported by rules-regimes that work. Not fixing the design machine problem is having and will have very negative consequences for economic growth and social harmony, says Hadfield. And she has some innovative ideas to do so. Read the book.
What I want to talk about now is separation and divorce. Not only because it is a serious matter, but also because I have become involved in an experiment in innovative rulemaking around the justice procedures for separation that is at least one practical answer to Hadfield’s challenge.
Separation and divorce affects many people. It has a prevalence of around 5000 per one million inhabitants. They are difficult in and of themselves, but also cause many other problems: reduced health, loss of income, children doing worse at school, long-term psychological damage, and even violence and suicide. Most of the justice procedures that manage them now on offer are adversarial, which results in conflicts that are intensified. They start with complaints, claims and accusations that are quickly exaggerated or based on information that is one-sided. Win-lose dynamics dominate the dispute resolution arena. They are complicated. Lawyers are needed as a guide, which makes the costs hard to predict. People do not feel in control of their own process. So there are a lot of reasons to want to have the best possible procedure in place to deal with divorce.
So how do you design a better divorce procedure, using the best knowledge and the latest technology? The traditional way is law reform: a committee filled with mostly lawyers, legal drafting experts from ministries of justice, civil society consultations, advice from councils of state, parliamentary commissions, and adoption of a rule regime in parliament. This is the machine that Hadfield shows does not really produce what we need.
In the Netherlands they tried something new, borrowed from the innovation world: they implemented a right to challenge. A motion was adopted by the Dutch Parliament asking the ministry of justice to issue an innovation challenge on the topic of divorce. The motion asks the ministry to invite civil society to submit ideas that lead to a reduction of contentious divorces by 50%. Through such a ‘right to challenge’ anybody who has a better solution for the problem than the one the government has, is welcomed forward. Because a parliamentary motion backs the challenge it’s not a gimmick that the executive or government bureaucracy can easily pretend to take serious but in reality will shove aside. It’s an approach other parliaments should try out as well.
Then, the actual problem itself: As part of a diverse but determined coalition, HiiL has submitted a response to the divorce challenge. The online supported procedure takes a very different approach to court procedures: it empowers the partners to take control and design their own agreements, with the help of experts. It is aimed at building bridges and getting to solutions rather than the traditional adversarial model of claims and counterclaims. It includes a maintenance module, to keep the agreement up to date and functioning, even after the separation has been formalised. It is based on a sustainable funding model and, if it is successful, it is linked to the formal justice system, as one of the other routes citizens can take. A reduced version of it is running in British Colombia. We shall keep you updated how this challenge to the procedures on offer by the state will be responded to.
In response to the major justice leadership challenges ahead in countries in the Arab world, such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, where rule of law needs to be rebuilt when a viable peace process gets underway, the Justice Leadership Group held a Justice Dialogue in Amman, Jordan.
This forward-looking dialogue on what kind of leadership is needed to rebuild the justice system in the region, with special focus on Syria, took place in the framework of the Annual Meeting of the Justice Leadership Group in Jordan on 3 September and was chaired by Dr Salaheddin al-Bashir, founding member of the Justice Leadership Group and former Minister of Justice of Jordan. Bringing together distinguished justice leaders from the region, among others the Chief Justice of Iraq, H.E. Mr Medhat al-Mahmoud, as well as high-level representatives of UN Agencies and the EU and representatives of local NGOs, the Justice Dialogue provided the first opportunity to initiate the conversation on post conflict rule of law building in Syria and how to best promote justice leadership in the region.
There is an urgent need to find innovative solutions to address the tremendous justice challenges ahead in Syria. Therefore, it is crucial to think ahead about what will be required to rebuild rule of law when a peace settlement is achieved and what can be done now to prepare this, and to provide the necessary building blocks for post conflict rule of law building. The Justice Leadership Group initiated this agenda setting process by facilitating the first of a series of Justice Dialogues on Syria, which focused on identifying key challenges for justice change, what kind of leadership is required to build the rule of law, and what can be learned from justice leaders in the region and the challenges they face.
The dialogue started with the identification of key challenges for justice change in Syria and the region, such as safety and security. Based on earlier experiences, we know that in post conflict situations people are prone to suffer from land and family disputes, limited freedom of movement, and restitution and registration issues. It was highlighted that these and other urgent justice needs of citizens should serve as the starting point. As regards justice leadership, participants recognized that leadership could play a crucial role in organizing ownership for justice change processes in Syria and the region. There was a broad consensus that it is needed to stimulate transitional leadership that pulls together reconciliation, peace, and stability. For this, education is crucial. Participants also agreed that it is highly important to identify, empower, support and connect Syrian justice leaders, and to start this process well in advance.
Some other issues that were highlighted are: constitution-building does not necessarily come first; accountability for past atrocities is essential for development and stability; it is needed to create incentives that make a rule of law culture shift possible; development, human rights and justice communities must work hand in hand; and it is necessary to prioritize gender-based violence. Moreover, it was concluded that since previous international efforts to rebuild the rule of law in other countries, e.g. Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Somalia, and DRC, have been mostly unsuccessful, and since rule of law building is the most challenging element of state building, new approaches and innovative procedures are urgently needed.
The Justice Leadership Group was requested to facilitate this necessary agenda setting process, by holding a further dialogue on Syria with local representation and key stakeholders, in order to come up with concrete, homemade and innovative solutions for the urgent needs of citizens in a post conflict situation as well as a roadmap how to implement these. The Group is pleased to announce that it agrees to facilitate this Justice Dialogue series on rebuilding the rule of law in Syria, resulting in a roadmap for transitional justice in Syria.
HiiL reaches a milestone as one of their innovations, the Rechtwijzer platform, helped 500 couples through their divorce.
Every year thousands of couples and children are traumatized as a result of divorce. This profound experience is often worsened by the divorce process itself. HiiL believes that a divorce should not be about me versus you; be cheap or fast. It is about making the right steps and choices that will have an impact on the rest of your life, and in some cases, the next generation.
That vision was fundamental in our re-designing of a legal procedure for divorce, now offered by the Dutch legal aid board (Raad voor Rechtsbijstand) and in pilots in Canada and England. The re-designed procedure is translated in an online service which provides empowerment to both parties throughout the divorce process.
The 500 couples who divorced via the Rechtwijzer platform were guided through a respectful, clear and careful process. Disagreement it possible, but it never turns into a legal battle, because lawyers and adjudicators always work as bridge-builders, never on claims or defences, Parents are assisted to create a solid base for a future for their children: free from conflict, anxiety, depression and problems at school. Separation agreements made by the couples are of a high quality and have a 100% approval rate by the courts, following the review phase by Rechtwijzer lawyers.
Lawyers oversee the solutions parties create on the platform, carefully reviewing the arrangements to ensure the solution is legally viable and fair. By optimising the interventions of legal service providers, Rechtwijzer enables legal aid boards, family courts and governments to serve more people, more effectively. Thus the benefits are clear for the families but also for the justice system itself. We look forward to supporting our users through the next 500 divorces.
Read more about the platform (in Dutch) and about the project.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator this week wrapped up a landmark 14-day marathon of six events across Africa and Ukraine, highlighting and judging the world’s most innovative justice entrepreneurs.
Justice entrepreneurship is a new field, and involves entrepreneurs who are developing new services, apps, websites, platforms, or community initiatives that expand access to justice systems. The HiiL Justice Accelerator scouts, supports, and accelerates these ideas into sustainable and impactful organisations that can scale worldwide.
The events – held in Tunis, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kampala, Kiev, and Lagos, supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands – were the culmination of a competition in which justice entrepreneurs compete for their part of 160,000 EUR in funding. A total of 36 finalists were pitching to juries of local experts in law, social impact, business, and technology in hopes to be one of 6-10 startups to win equity-free grant awards.
The events were a landmark success in all six locations, attracting top-tier media attention as well as standing-room-only attendance.
Those selected to win the awards will arrive in The Hague, Netherlands, in December to participate in the Justice Entrepreneurship School, the world’s only educational initiative for this field of startup. This week-long programme exists to introduce entrepreneurs to startup basics from finance to impact assessment.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator is a yearly competition. Next year’s call for entries will take place between March and July 2016. More information is available at www.innovatingjustice.com.
Our Fourth Trend Report is titled, ‘ODR and the courts: The promise of 100% access to justice?’. Following extensive months of research, and a conference involving some of the most senior members of the executive and judiciary from around the world, we are proud to present to you the results of our findings.
It is no secret that courts are facing increasing challenges. High costs, complicated procedures and, as a result, reduced access to justice are highlighting the need for innovation in our legal system. But whilst many agree that change is needed, there are few contenders ready to take up the mantle of innovation.
We believe; and this report aims to show the reasoning behind this belief; that ODR can offer the vehicle for this change. Already internationally successful in small claims disputes; think of Ebay and Paypal’s resolution portals; and gaining acceptance from governments in British Columbia, Europe and the UK, it has real potential to bring us to 100% access to justice. Furthermore, it can fulfil this promise in a financially sustainable way, without putting undue pressure on an already overstretched legal system.
In light of these promises, then, it seems a wonder that courts and legal professionals have been seemingly reluctant to embrace this revolutionary concept. We will examine the major barriers to change, identified through our own experience as providers of ODR platforms for governmental organisations within the UK, British Columbia and The Netherlands. Furthermore, we will be providing concrete solutions for how innovators, legal professionals and governments can work together to the benefit of all.
In an industry so rich with innovations, there are still a huge number of challenges to overcome. There is a long and complication ongoing discussion concerning the buying and selling of platforms, questions of appropriate ownership (by courts or by independent contractors) and the scalability of it all. There are no definitive answers, but this report has attempted to pool together our own collective wisdom, hard won through years of innovation, with that of the larger legal community. We look to provide insights and possible solutions for these challenges and we believe they are by no means insurmountable. In the interests of access to justice, we wish you to take these ideas as your own, and use them as guidance, or inspiration in your own endeavours towards legal modernisation. We have worked hard, not only to produce this report, but also to bring together a consortium of experts, legal professionals and businesspeople whose experience we would like to share with the greater community. Furthermore, we invite you to join us as part of our consortium and broaden our own horizons with your insight. It is only by working together, and learning from each other, that we can successfully bring about such a monumental change as complete access to justice.
Click here to download full trend report or summary of the report here.
What do Ukraine and Uganda have in common, besides the U at the beginning of their name? An elaborate justice needs and satisfaction survey was just done in both countries. The Ukraine results were presented on 1 March. The Uganda results on 14 April.
First, some observations to put this in a wider context.
I hope such surveys are a trend. They should be. The UN has announced that it will hold its first ministerial meeting in July to review progress regarding implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We are, of course, mostly interested in Justice Goal 16. As I pointed out in an earlier column: it is a tremendous advance that data is a core pillar for such a review, despite the fact that the decision of the UN member states to base such reviews “primarily” on “national official data sources” remains an area of concern. Not all governments have justice data, like justice data, or are transparent with justice data. From that perspective, it is important that governments, civil society and international organisations stretch the word ‘primarily’ to its full potential. In Ukraine and Uganda, this was done. Both surveys were conducted in consultation with the governments, with international organisations, and with civil society organisations. The multi-stakeholder process of doing and launching them was as important as the outcomes they produced.
A second observation concerns action. Collecting data about the functioning of a justice system has a purpose: it should form the foundation for better outcomes. Based on data, you have a good idea of what the justice needs of citizens are: by problem, by gender, between urban-rural, age groups, regions, and by procedure. By making that data public you make everybody aware of those justice needs and spur people into action. Informed by data you can target your limited resources to where they can have the most impact, for the most people. Informed by the data you can start creating change coalitions around specific justice problems. Leaders will emerge who want to bring people together to solve them. Data can help those change coalitions formulate good strategies, underpinned by sustainable funding models. And, lastly, data can tell you whether you are actually being successful in what you are developing as an improvement. But getting from data to action can be tough. Many good surveys and data sets have died a slow death on meeting tables and in desk drawers. It requires a critical mass people that can understand data. It needs political action, either led by able political leaders or pushed for by citizens. It requires management: making plans and executing them. And lastly, being creative about finding funding for actions plans is also a critical factor. In short: data is only the beginning.
So what can we say about the outcomes of these two surveys? This column does not hold enough space to do justice to the richness of the data, so I will restrict myself to a few key insights.
When we look at prevalence of justice problems we see that 88% of Ugandans and 54% Ukrainians encountered a serious justice problem in the last four years. That’s more than half. By comparison: in Yemen, a staggering 94% was measured in 2014. In the Netherlands it was 46% according to a 2015 survey. However, one must be careful with comparing such percentages: a higher percentage does not have to mean ‘bad’. It could also be a signal of a lot of legal empowerment, which, as such, is positive.
Both in Ukraine and in Uganda around 40% of the respondents said they gave up on finding a resolution for their justice problem. Different reasons are cited, of which not thinking it would result in anything, not knowing what to do, and being worried that it might aggravate the situation stand out. In Yemen the percentage of those that gave up was 22%. In Mali, it was 23%. These figures may be telling us that, generally, between a quarter and a third of citizens give up on pursuing a justice problem. That’s a lot of injustice being swallowed.
Then there is what I call the 5% problem: the fact that in most countries only 2-7% of justice disputes end up in a court. Ukraine and Uganda are like every other country: both hover around the 5%. And yet, in most countries most of the improvement talk, projects, and funding are directed at the courts. This probably has to do with the fact that doing improvement projects in the other 95% are much more challenging. There is no central organisation to talk to and deal with. Uganda has an interesting and innovative institution in the 95% space: the Local Council Courts (LCC’s) – locally constituted dispute resolution councils, whose members don’t have to be lawyers. A 2014 judgment has declared them unconstitutional, but the survey shows that citizens are quite happy with them. The 95% space is also where a lot can be improved by focussing on legal information and smart referral systems. In that respect, Ukraine and Uganda show entirely different pictures. In Ukraine, more than half of the respondents (59%) did not seek legal information, and if they did, they mostly turned to public authorities. By contrast, in Uganda, 65% of the respondents did seek legal advice, and mostly used their social network.
This is just a selection of some of the general conclusions. The data gets even more interesting when a deep dive is taken into particular problem areas, like family-, employment- or land problems, or comparisons are made according to gender, region, or education level. Diversity is so important; the studies show that a one-size-fits-all does not correspond to what the justice needs and satisfaction data is telling us. Yet isn’t that what we all learn at law school?
We need much more of this data. And we all need to learn to work with it and to turn it into action: more justice value for more citizens.
The 15th annual conference on ODR comes to The Hague, the place with the highest density of judges and courts you can find anywhere in the world. It takes place at the Peace Palace, on Monday May 23 and Tuesday May 24.
For previous editions, the most prominent practitioners, academic experts and dispute resolution entrepreneurs have met in high tech hot spots such as Haifa, Chennai, and most recently at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, and in New York City.
This year’s conference will be organized by HiiL Innovating Justice with the National Centre for Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
For more information, please go to the conference website, where you can register and follow the latest news on the conference! We invite you to join the Facebook event.
We are getting close to 23 and 24 May, when we will host the 15th edition of the Global ODR conference in The Hague. With more than 150 ODR practitioners, court professionals, policy makers, legal tech and legal services professionals, we will discuss how ODR can help our courts and improve access to justice. ODR offers great opportunities for making justice work for people. Its utilisation of new technologies, cutting edge knowledge on conflict resolution, and new forms of organisation and governance open new avenues to delivering high quality justice in a manner that is cost effective for citizens and for society.
During the conference, there will be demos from some of the world’s most cutting edge platforms. Some of them focus on domains where the business case for ODR is firmly established. Modria’s Resolution Center (that builds on the technology that famously worked in E-Bay and will be presented by its founders Chittu Nagarajan and Colin Rule) is perhaps the most well-known example.
During the past few years, some platforms have been developing the proof of concept that ODR can also successfully work for more complex, relational disputes like divorce, landlord-tenant disputes, and neighbour disputes. Our HiiL Rechtwijzer Technology (presented by Liselotte Maas from the Dutch Legal Aid Board, Sherry MacLennan from the Legal Services Society of BC and Laura Dowson from Relate UK) is one of the examples here.
Interestingly enough, ODR initiatives emerge from both the private sector as well as the public sector. The Civil Resolution Tribunal from British Columbia (which will be presented by its Chair Shannon Salter) is a strong example of the latter, which is deeply rooted in legislation. The EU ODR platform is another recent example.
Both the public sector and the private sector bring forth interesting ODR technology. Some examples are developed and run by solid government IT departments (and the IT consultancy firms they generally work with). Some examples are hosted in the cloud and are developed by companies that are specialised in developing and further innovating ODR platforms.
We will be able to discuss the challenges associated with all these different options from a large variety of angles. Our conference program brings together court leaders from Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia, as well as from our highest global courts like the International Criminal Court.
Read all about it on the conference website, where you can also still register. I hope to welcome you in the Peace Palace in The Hague on 23 and 24 May.
A narrow unpaved road in Bukoto, Kampala, leads to the African Innovation Centre where the Barefoot Lawyers are housed. Walking in, you are welcomed with a big smile by a small group of lawyers typing away behind their laptops, tablets and smartphones. Although the daily routine allows for lunch talks about the newest (political) scandals, most of the lawyers are nearly overburdened by a pile of inquiries, legal procedures and emergency cases that need urgent attention: ‘Please incorporate my business today otherwise it will be closed down by the authorities’.
Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play a vital role in the development of the Ugandan economy. MSMEs collectively constitute about 90% of private sector production and employ over 2,5 million people. The results of a recent survey carried out with over 1800 MSMEs in Uganda highlighted that one fifth of MSMEs have not registered, and three quarters do not have a tax identification number (NATHAN, FSD & TNS, 2015 National Small Business Survey of Uganda). Around a quarter say they do not know how to register, or that it is too complicated to do so. Other issues include becoming an employer, getting permits, paying taxes (or not agreeing with the tax authorities), all manner of contracts, provision of permits and services, IP protection, etc. Hence, there is a huge opportunity to sensitize and provide these businesses with legal guidance in making their business sustainable.
The mSMEGarage is a spin off lead by Barefoot Lawyers that provides legal services – in various stages of their development – to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Uganda. Founded by Gerald Abila and Michael Kwizera, the mSMEGarage is aiming to reach over 1000 SMEs in its first 6 months. One thing that makes them innovative, is that they leverage on Africa’s growing social media penetration and use those channels to provide legal support. Timothy Kakuru is the Garage’s project manager, heading the operations and providing virtual assistance to its registered members through Facebook, WhatsApp and via their website. The website content is constantly being updated with new legal information on business registration, contracting, patenting, licensing, taxation and legal procedures. Users have to register in order to download template legal documents or book an appointment for a face-to-face consultation with a lawyer. In addition, four field executives – business analysts – work full time to approach small business owners at various locations in Kampala to ask about their legal needs and interest in registering for the mSMEGarage.
During my visit to the Barefoot Lawyers, I had the opportunity to meet some of mSMEGarage’s first clients. One in particular struck my attention. Tambula is a boda-boda-tracking company that launched in 2014 to increase safety and security for Kampala’s thousands of motorcycles – many of which end up in accidents or are violently mugged at night. The founders developed a new software that can track the location of their member-boda’s via geo-tagging and automatically generates reports when accidents occur through a smartphone application. It turns out that the MSMEGarage was indispensable in making their business grow to a success. As its founder Ivan explains: “The mSMEGarage walked with us all the way through incorporation and the development of designs that could stand patent protection worldwide. With this we have been able to get a Microsoft grant of 25,000 USD and have now reached thousands more boda-boda riders in the country. » Apparently, newly developed companies are in particular need of affordable legal advice which seems to be simply missing in Uganda. « A team as intelligent and versatile as at the SME Garage is quite difficult to find this side of Africa, that is rooted to the ground and particularly understands the hurdles of new businesses in Uganda.”
The mSMEGarage won second place during the HiiL Innovating Justice Awards 2015 with an investment of 20.000USD and access to HiiL’s networks and expert advice. Almost halfway down its validation phase, the Garage managed to set up its online platform, adopt materials to facilitate 295 SMEGarage-registrations in its first weeks, conduct 2 legal seminars to a big audience and provide customized legal information to dozens of its clients. “All the advice, workshops and insights from the HiiL team have been incredibly valuable, and it opened a new world of opportunities to us” said Michael, Lead Strategy and Product Development, following a week of intensive workshops in their office.
With the experience of working with the mSMEGarage for a few days, I return home with 3 main take-aways. First. Access to justice is as necessary for (small) businesses as it is for human beings. Countries’ economies that rely on an enormous market share of small (informal) businesses, need their growth in order to provide employment and nurture welfare. I saw many of them during my stay: and most had no clue about the law, had never heard of preventive legal procedures (contracts, patents or licenses) and had no idea where to turn to without the budget for an expensive lawyer. Imagine what we can accomplish if we provide that huge group of informal African businesses with legal advice.
Secondly: measuring the impact on (access to) justice of start-ups such as the mSMEGarage is a great challenge in an environment that is dominated by fast iteration cycles and very limited resources. In particular: an affordable and simple tool that can manage systematic impact measurement is virtually non-existent and such assessments often depend on unreliable indicators. However, demonstrating your impact is essential in attracting impact investors and partners. But the effects of improving access to justice (for businesses) will most likely only appear after a year or more during which time the business may have become sustainable.
Finally: in a country like Uganda, business growth thrives on trust. On most street corners in Kampala, entrepreneurs are trying to sell, offer, provide and survive. Most clients only return to the companies, shops and businesses that they have good experiences with and whose owner’s face they recognize. Although online penetration is growing at a staggering rate in Uganda, it also provides opportunities for conmen to provide scam-services that Ugandan people increasingly victimize. It turns out: a service like the mSMEGarage can only expand if its critical mass of customers knows, in fact experiences their services, and notices its added value.
Companies like the mSMEGarage are the future LegalZooms’ that will in fact provide affordable access to justice for most (small) business owners in African societies. Now is the time to start engaging justice entrepreneurs in societies where people are ready to innovate. The former Chief Justice of Uganda, Benjamin Odoki, said during the launch of HiiL’s Justice Needs Report that Kampala should soon be turning to become ‘the capital of justice innovation’. Barefoot Lawyers are the avant garde entrepreneurs of their society. Who follows next?
Ground breaking survey shows that access to legal justice in Uganda is patchy and unfair; solutions urgently needed.
The justice needs of Ugandans have been extensively mapped for the first time. Ground breaking research carried out by HiiL (The Hague Institute for the Innovation of Law, based in The Hague, the Netherlands), in partnership with ACORD Uganda, shows that in the last four years nearly nine out of 10 Ugandans required access of some kind to the justice system, but their needs are not being met.
Of the nine people that needed help, three of them gave up right off the bat and their problems were not resolved. This was due to lack of knowledge, power or money, or some combination of the three. As for the other six, many found legal processes – and ultimately the solutions – to be unfair. As a result, it is clear that many people are needlessly suffering.
A total of 6.202 Ugandan citizens were interviewed over the course of the research. The findings have just been published in the report ‘Legal Problems in Daily Life’. The report discusses the difficulties of ordinary Ugandans in accessing justice and receiving fair outcomes for their daily justice problems. Most worrying, the 30% who receive no justice at all, disproportionally comprises the most vulnerable segments of the population: those with low incomes or who are unemployed, women, elderly people and people with low education levels and people from rural areas.
During the launch of the report today, Honourable Principle Judge Yorakamu Bamwine said: “[w]e should not be offended by these findings. (…), just focus on change, the rest will come naturally.” The Honourable Principle Judge mentioned several innovations that are already being implemented in the courts, but also stresses a need for further innovations and the role JLOS will take on to assure change.
Of the two thirds of people who pursue a solution to their problems, most seek help of the Local Council Courts, their families and their social networks. Only 5% of cases end up in a court of law. In practice, this means the formal justice system in Uganda is out of reach for the majority of Ugandans.
“Clearly these numbers need to be reversed: nine (if not 10) out of 10 Ugandans must be given access to justice. In doing so, individuals can secure their income and livelihoods, a positive effect that ripples through the economy and society, says HiiL’s CEO, Sam Muller.
The fact that this research reflects the experiences and concerns of everyday citizens gives it a legitimate foundation on which to build. HiiL is grateful for the commitment of JLOS to act on its findings and come forward with solutions.
Rachel Odoi, Senior Technical Advisor at JLOS stresses: “HiiL’s report could have a tremendous impact on the future of the justice system in Uganda. It is a useful baseline on which we can devise strategies on where we want to be in the next five years. The proposed solutions and tools provide a blueprint for action, specifically re-designing systems in a way that works for all Ugandans.”
Funding for this project was provided by the Embassy of Sweden in Uganda and The Hague Institute for Global Justice in the Netherlands. The project was carried out with the support of ACORD Uganda.
Click here to download full data report or summary of the report here.
Comparing legal phenomena between countries with different legal origins, legal cultures and frameworks is risky and more often than not leads to dubious conclusions. Therefore I am not going to compare the results from Ukraine and Uganda directly. What I want to discuss is the structure of the most prevalent justice needs – problems that occur in people’s lives and (potentially) can be resolved with legal means.
After interviewing 6.5 thousand randomly selected individuals from all over Ukraine we find that consumer problems, employment disputes and grievances around social welfare are the most frequently occurring justice needs. A study with similar parameters conducted a few months ago in Uganda yields somewhat different results. Land disputes, family conflicts and crimes are the most prevalent legal problems in the lives of the Ugandan people.
Empirical legal studies carried out by HiiL Innovating Justice and others discover similar pattern – in developed/transitioning societies consumer problems, employment, disputes between neighbours and public services are the most frequent types of problems. Land disagreements, family disputes and crime are the legal problems for millions of people in the developing world.
There is a marked difference between the types of legal problems that the people in Ukraine and Uganda encounter. However, a careful inquiry reveals interesting parallels. Indeed, disputes arising from purchase of goods and services are framed as legal mostly in the industrialized societies. Leaving the consumer problems aside we see that land and employment disputes are the most prevalent problems in Uganda and Ukraine respectively.
From a legal point of view real estate and employment disagreements belong to different legal domains which shape different legal theories, rights, legal actions and procedures. From the perspective of the users of justice, however, there are more similarities than differences. People need the law to protect their most important asset – their ability to work. Employment is key part of the concept of human development. The right to work is also one of the most important human rights (see art. 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). In Uganda around 75% of the adult population lives in rural areas and relies on subsistence agriculture. For these people land is a symbol of identity and belonging but also a source of production. Land is the most important economic asset of their families and communities. The industry and service-oriented economy of Ukraine follows markedly different structure. Around 25% of the workforce is employed in activities described as « elementary occupation » which includes but is not limited to subsistence farming. The vast majority of the working population is employed in white collar and professional jobs.
Hence we see that from the bottom-up most often the law is needed to guarantee stable relationships that empower the people to earn income and sustain their families and communities. This leads to additional questions – 1) how well the existing justice journeys empower the individuals to benefit from their skills and talents and 2) what does this mean in terms of justice innovation?
Figure 1: Costs and quality of justice
Disputes around land and employment are crucial for human development. People need procedures which produce fair and stable results when livelihood is at stake. Using the law to protect and promote stable, dignified and equal livelihood is (or should be) a priority for the justice systems around the world. Innovation of the existing justice journeys for employment and land disputes is a global urgency. This can happen through design and re-design of justice procedures which resolve the problems in affordable, accessible, fast and fair manner. The graph above shows how the people in Uganda and Ukraine perceive the formal and informal processes for resolving disputes around livelihood. Clearly, improvements are possible and very much needed in both countries. The big question is: which are the innovations that can increase the users’ ratings above the score of 4 and towards 5 on the 10 dimensions of justice?
Innovations in justice procedures around livelihood should target protection but also should create opportunities for equal and beneficial employment. The change should start with careful analysis of the needs of the justice users. Livelihood justice needs are an excellent candidate for using as a benchmark in the framework of the SDGs and in particular SDG 16.
Justice innovation is about creative combination of processes, rules, talents and technologies. HiiL Innnovating Justice has an ever growing database of justice innovations. One of the lessons from these innovations is that the process of change should start with a clear picture of people’s problems. The examples from Ukraine and Uganda are obvious – people need accessible, just and fair processes to protect their livelihood. With the right set up the next steps of justice innovation (see Figure 2) will follow!
Figure 2: Justice Innovation Process
Would you like to learn more about our study? Click here to download our latest data report on Uganda, or here to access all the the reports.
One of my highlights at Davos this year was a closed meeting with the newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. We were with a small group of international civil society organisations from the field of human rights, rule of law and peace. The meeting was held under the Chatham House rule so I will not disclose what others or the PM said. Nothing in that rule however prevents me from telling you what I contributed.
Each time I am at Davos I marvel about how many great ideas for solving global and national challenges I come across. Poverty, education, health, and the environment: each of these domains is awash with great initiatives to make the world a better place. Fintech that will make banking much more accessible. Blockchain technology that will virtually eliminate corruption. Education robots (I interacted with one) that will make education much more widely available. Cheap satellites that will beam high bandwidth Internet to the remote places that governments don’t reach. And I could go on. What bothers me is how little thought is given to the justice infrastructure that is needed to support all those great ideas. A functioning justice system is either assumed to be there or seen as a relatively minor and manageable task that can be done at the end of the design phase. It is not (on both counts).
Having a functional justice system is not a given. With ‘functional’ I mean two things. Firstly it should be accessible and generally produce decisions that are seen as just and fair by most people. These procedures and decisions can vary enormously: from a court decision on a divorce or breach of contract, to a procedure that produces a fair election or a good law. Secondly, functional justice system must have the ability to continue to consistently renew and improve itself to produce procedures that provide the best value for society.
What different rules will be needed if banks and money become mobile phones? What will the blockchain technology mean for criminal procedures? What happens if everybody in the world has access to the Internet? Can our current employment dispute procedures handle massive changes on the labour markets? How well can ministries of justice, parliaments, judiciaries, and the other pistons of the engine that produces justice systems ensure that they adapt, renew, and continue to provide the best value for society.
Here’s what I shared with the Prime Minister: Canada has a huge contribution to make. There is a small group, to which HiiL Innovating Justice belongs, that is pushing governments, international organisations, and investors to build real innovation capacity into justice systems. Not because it’s fun, nice, or fashionable, but because it is badly needed. Our future stability and prosperity depends on it. Canada has a few amazing people and organisations who belong to that group. They should be made part of a renewed approach to rule of law development by CIDA. An approach that goes beyond training judges and providing technical assistance to draft laws, as almost all rule of law development organisations generally do. Some of the impressive organisations and people I’ve had the pleasure of working with on justice innovation include the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, the ministry of justice of British Columbia, the Canadian Bar Association and its Equal Justice Initiative, and great thinkers like Gillian Hadfield (who will come out with a fabulous book on this issue aptly called Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent it for a Complex Global Economy).
Some of the elements of this new approach to rule of law development approach must build include (notes I took from a workshop at the Overseas Development Institute):
Always be guided by problems, not institutions. Focus on problems on which there is some consensus. From problems, build terms of reference for solutions. Include a wide diversity of experts – not just lawyers. Look for best practices, but embed whatever is done in the environment where it has to work. Build a clever business case for your problem. But be careful. You can loose the original focus as you build the business case. So: keep in touch with the problem.
‘Locally led’ is often an empty phrase. It means more than building ‘buy in’ or teaching civil society organisations to ‘hold government institutions to account’. You need local leaders; brokers who are also able to bring in government institutions. They connect and organize and drive multi-stakeholder conversations. They build constituencies for change.
Data is hugely important for knowing the problem, and for learning and acting on learning. This includes but is not limited to surveys. Radio shows, social media activity, are also important sources of information. This is not really used.
Justice is a risky sector to engage in. There is always the potential of doing harm. There are many actors. There are formal and informal ecosystems. All this limits the room for experimentation, which, at the same time, we need to effectively purposefully muddle. A key word in this approach is learning. This means: assure you can learn and communicate the learning.
Perspectives are not aligned. Donors want Big Programmes. It is said to save administrative costs. At the international level there is a tendency to lock into Big Targets (now Justice Goal 16 of the SDG’s). However: locally led is the opposite of donor driven. The challenge is how to support locally embedded actors to find solutions without being driving to solutions by the way money is being organised.
We don’t really have the budget rules, tender processes, logframes, and evaluation mechanisms to work in this way.
You’ll understand that I did not share all of this with the PM. Just the essence of it. I won’t disclose what he answered. But we do need the Canadians.
The Justice Leadership Group is excited and honoured to announce that former Minister of Justice of Peru, Judge and former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Diego García-Sayán, joins the Justice Leadership Group.
Having served justice and their citizens for a long period, the members of the Justice Leadership Group have come together to support others who have accepted the task and the challenge of serving justice in their societies. What they share is first-hand experience with leading justice change at the highest political level and a strong commitment to delivering justice. They make themselves available to those who are now in leadership positions, by using their experience, knowledge and expertise as a resource for others.
The Justice Leadership Group was set up by HiiL Innovating Justice, with support of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since its establishment as an independent foundation in the summer of 2015, we have taken many important steps forward to further build the organization. We conducted our first Leadership Action in Guatemala, where a challenging transition process is unfolding. Moreover, we have been able to expand the Group by welcoming Judge Sang-Hyun Song, former President of the International Criminal Court, as a new member late 2015. Today, we are proud to introduce our ninth Group member to you: Diego García-Sayán.
Leading transition
García-Sayán was appointed as Minister of Justice of Peru in 2000. He successfully developed reforms to rebuild the Peruvian legal and political institutions after ten years of authoritarian regime. Showing strong leadership skills, he secured the peaceful and democratic transition in the country. When he became Minister of Foreign Affairs only one year later, García-Sayán led Peru’s reinsertion into the democratic multilateral system, which included the ratification of the Rome Statute and the country’s membership to the International Criminal Court.
Taking a leading role in Peru’s transition process, García-Sayán also drafted and promoted the Inter-American Democratic Charter. He achieved its approval as Chair of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States and issued an open-ended invitation to all of the UN Human Rights mandates.
Also, García-Sayán’s judicial, diplomatic and international experience makes a valuable contribution to the Group. Throughout his career he has held numerous leading positions in international governmental bodies and he is frequently consulted as an advisor and expert for the United Nations and the Organization of American States. García-Sayán was the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) for two consecutive terms and is currently serving as a Judge at IACHR and as a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
The Justice Leadership Group feels privileged and looks forward to working with its distinguished new member to promote and support justice leadership worldwide!
Peace, rule of law, good governance and respect for human rights are key pillars for the development of Ukraine. The continuing military activities in the East, constant political turmoil, rampant corruption and distrust in justice are questioning the lessons from the Maidan revolution.
The justice system is at the epicenter of the debates within and outside the country. There is no doubt that an effective, independent and transparent judiciary is essential for Ukraine. It is also clear that the people of Ukraine, its businesses and international partners have little trust in the judiciary. But what can be done to improve the justice system?
In August 2015, we asked 6500 randomly selected citizens from all regions of Ukraine. We interviewed men and women, people from the regions where were not under governmental control, internally displaced people, young and old.
Based on our survey we conclude that slightly more than half the citizens of Ukraine (53%) encountered a serious justice need in the past four years. ‘Serious’, means that the problem had a major impact on their lives with a negative effect on health, income, and relationships. These needs amount to millions of disputes, grievances, and crimes taking place in Ukraine every year.
Consumer disputes, employment problems, disagreements between neighbours and housing grievances are the most prevalent justice needs. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) faced most of their justice problems around securing housing, obtaining identity documents, receiving aid from the government and damage to property caused by military action.
Would you like to learn more about our study? Click here to download our data report (English version), or here (Ukrainian version).
Doe-het-zelfscheiden op internet: Swipe rechts om te scheiden
ARTIKEL Als je online kunt daten, waarom dan niet online scheiden. Het kan met een door de overheid goedgekeurd programma, waarin een batterij aan kennis over conflictbeheersing zit verwerkt. Sneller en veel goedkoper. Maar ook met minder bonje?
Would you like to learn more about Rechtwijzer? Contact Head of Justice Innovation Lab Corry van Zeeland or Director HiiL Rechtwijzer Technology Jin Ho Verdonschot.
The research centre of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice published its 5-yearly paths to justice survey. This happened for the third time now, so it is interesting to spot the trends. The overall picture is that the productivity of the Dutch legal system is decreasing. The same amount of money is spent on less problems, of which a lower proportion gets an adequate solution. So what is going on here?
Less problems with goods and services
But let us start with the good news. Less people experienced justiciable problems over the past 5 years 67% reported 1 or more of them in 2003, 61% in 2009, and only 57% in 2014. Is this a triumph of the legal systems capabilities to prevent conflict in the first place?
We are not so sure. The decrease in justiciable problems is mostly concentrated at the consumer end of our existence. A possible cause of this is that product quality and complaint handling at companies has improved. Perhaps deterrence by legal sanctions contributed to this. Or was it the threat of a spoilt image in the media and a genuine desire to give customers a great experience?
Advice and help highly appreciated
Are lawyers having a difficult time? The survey reports an increased proportion of problems in which lawyers are consulted (9% to 11%, in particular for family justice). As the number of disputes is shrinking, the number of cases handled by lawyers stays more or less the same. Legal expenses insurance is also doing relatively well (10% to 11%).
Stories that the social fabric for coping with disputes is collapsing find some corroboration in the data. There is a clear decrease of use of unions, police, social work and consumer organizations for resolving disputes.
Legal professionals are all more or less similarly and highly appreciated as advisers and helpers. Advice and help by lawyers (4.4 on 1 to 5 scale) is only slightly more appreciated than assistance by their main competitors, the legal expenses insurers (4.3).
The Dutch legal expenses insurers are special, because they are huge organizations, employing up to 1000 of lawyers and paralegals in house to resolve 100,000s of cases from their insured, and increasingly also from non-insured who pay fixed fees for help with advice, negotiation or litigation.
The Juridisch Loket (citizen advice service; 4.3), the police 4.3 (hey, US readers), and notaries (4.5) are also seen as helpful.
Not so good at resolution anymore?
But do these legal services actually succeed in settling and resolving the problems of their clients? The proportion of problems resolved by agreement dropped from 53% to 42% between 2009 and 2014. This may partly be the effect of a different mix of problems with less consumer issues. But it is a strange outcome, as you would expect professionals to become gradually better at what they do.
That this is not necessarily true in the Dutch legal system, is also confirmed by the number of people who dropped out of the dispute resolution process on the way. The proportion of disputes not resolved increased from 34% to 42%. A considerable share of problems (5%) still exists after 4 or 5 years. There is also an increase in problem owners remaining passive, doing nothing about the problem (from 6% to 8% over the past 5 years).
Interestingly, people seem to accept this. Although many people seem to get stuck, the satisfaction with outcomes is more or less the same as five years earlier. There is one exception: less people are satisfied with the fairness of negotiated outcomes (dropped from 83% from 78%).
Courts, ADR and mediation
What about the third parties? Something wrong there? Courts are clearly losing market share. The number of disputes in which they intervened dropped from 6% in 2003, to 5% in 2009 to 4% in 2014. It is not mediation where these cases go to. The share of problems where a mediator was used fluctuates: 4% in 2003, 3% in 2009 and 5% in 2014.
The non-court third parties (ombudsmen, specialized commissions, government agencies) see an increase in the use of their procedures (from 6%, to 9% to 11% in same period).
Why are people turning away from courts? Third parties achieve scores between 3.5 and 4 on procedural justice variables and judges are doing quite well. Tons of research has shown Dutch judges are seen as remarkably independent and fair. So the quality of the judge cannot be the source of this apparent lack of access to formal justice.
Is the system underfunded? Hardly. For a lower number of problems, the legal aid budget and court budgets stayed flat. Legal aid spending on civil and administrative justice was similar in 2009 and 2014 (€190 million, with a higher proportion paid by user contributions (from 30 to 50 milion).
Do the procedures solve people’s problems?
A hint about what is wrong with Dutch access to justice (and perhaps with access to justice in other countries) can be found in the scores for the problem-solving capabilities of legal professionals. « Going to a lawyer/judge will cause your problem to be resolved » was one of the statements given to the respondents to reflect on. The rating for lawyers as problem solvers was a poor 2.9, with judges doing only slightly better (3.1).
These ratings can be compared with what we found when we asked people in our own 2014 survey about their overall access to justice experience. We survey their path to justice, because people do not go to a lawyer or court as an isolated service. They enter into a process of diagnosis, negotiation and possibly mediation or adjudication. This process should help them to solve their problem. There are many linkages and loop-backs in this process. It is complex, often confusing and rather stressful.
The overall process is rated 2.81 out of 5 for divorce/separation across a number of procedural justice, outcome justice and costs of justice dimensions. For employment problems the overall process is (was) much more straightforward and the rating is still not higher than 3.24. Processes for neighbour problems, consumer problems and landlord/tenant problems have similar ratings, but never as high as 4.
Yes, people like lawyers and judges. These are all very helpful. They manage expectations. But what they provide together is perhaps not so good as an access to justice experience. Their procedures may not be producing fair results effectively, and do not seem to enable lawyers and judges to be good problem-solvers. Perhaps these legal processes for resolving disputes are even deteriorating over time. At least this is what the new Dutch data suggest.
Something to think about. Because that trend should change.
Peace, rule of law, good governance and respect for human rights are key pillars for the development of Ukraine. The continuing military activities in the East, constant political turmoil, rampant corruption and distrust in justice are questioning the lessons from the Maidan revolution.
The justice system is at the epicenter of the debates within and outside the country. There is no doubt that an effective, independent and transparent judiciary is essential for Ukraine. It is also clear that the people of Ukraine, its businesses and international partners have little trust in the judiciary. But what can be done to improve the justice system?
In August 2015, HiiL asked 6500 randomly selected citizens from all regions of Ukraine. We interviewed men and women, people from the regions where were not under governmental control, internally displaced people, young and old.
On 1 March 2016 in Kiev HiiL will present the findings from this study to Ukrainian and international stakeholders. In this blog I will outline the three most important findings. They show challenges but also great opportunities for Ukraine. The bottom line is – the country needs innovative ideas to fill a great void of justice. Building more courts or extending the existing judicial system that is not sustainable. What can work is justice innovation which leads to the accessible and effective procedures with fair processes and outcomes.
This first finding is that many Ukrainian people need protection from the law – more than half (54%) of the respondents encountered serious justice needs in the past 4 years. There are millions of disputes, grievances, and crimes taking place in Ukraine every year. In order to continue with their lives, the Ukrainian citizens need fair and justice procedures that respond to justice needs in an empowering and constructive manner.
Secondly, there is a vast gap in what people can do to resolve their justice needs. Very small proportion of the justice needs ever reach courts. There are few other dispute resolution mechanisms in which a neutral decision maker resolves the problem in an objective and neutral manner. The most frequent pattern for responding to justice needs is self-action – for instance, contacting the other party. This is a considerable challenge because self-action without the shadow of the law can lead to the unfair processes and outcomes. We call this gap – the Justice Innovation space. This void is a challenge but also a great opportunity for the rule of law in Ukraine. On the one hand, this is where many justice needs remain unanswered. But, this is a space where Justice Innovation can deliver fair processes and outcomes. In this space, smart procedures designed with people’s needs in mind can respond to the justice needs of the Ukrainian citizens.
Thirdly, our study explores how people of Ukraine perceive the costs, the quality of the procedures and the quality of the outcomes of their justice journeys. The spiderweb chart below shows (1 means bad, 5 means good) how people rate the available justice journeys on 7 indicators of fairness and 3 indicators of costs. Significant improvements are possible in each dimension. Particularly urgent are the stress and negative emotions that the justice journeys inflict on the Ukrainian people. Every small improvement on these indicators will deliver more justice and fairness to millions of individuals.
Contact us to keep you updated with the final findings of the study Justice Needs in Ukraine: Legal problems in daily life.
HiiL Innovating Justice featured in an article in Het Financieele Dagblad on January 30, 2016.
The article describes Rechtwijzer and its technology that empowers people to resolve disputes online. Moreover, two women tell their stories of how the Rechtwijzer platform helped them with their divorce in the Netherlands.
Would you like to learn more about Rechtwijzer? Contact Head of Justice Innovation Lab Corry van Zeeland or Director HiiL Rechtwijzer Technology Jin Ho Verdonschot.
We are reaching the end of the year. My column is about the practice of law, so why don’t I take you through quick tour of where the end of 2015 brought me?
Much movement on measuring
Once, not all that long ago, the very idea of asking users of the justice system how they experienced its performance was considered daft. I still have workshops every now and then in which judges and ministry officials hint that asking the customers and making their views public could infringe judicial independence or the democratic process. Measuring justice has not been mainstreamed on 20 December 2020, but the idea is catching on. 2015 saw a very interesting evaluation of the Independent Commission on Aid Impact of the UK, which was quite critical of the efforts of security and justice development aid by DFID. It strongly recommended more measuring. Knowing DFID, they will do this. In March of this year, the EU launched its Justice Scoreboard, which measures, amongst other things, the quality of justice systems. Another measuring highlight was the launch of the 2015 Rule of Law Index of the World Justice Project which provides what is probably the world’s most comprehensive insights about how people experience rule of law based on 100.000 household and 2400 experts surveys.
HiiL Innovating Justice added two new justice needs and satisfaction reports in 2015: one on separation and the other on labour disputes in The Netherlands. New surveys were started in Uganda, Ukraine, and the UAE. We also have a lot of measuring pleasure to look forward to. In my August column I asked your attention for the Sustainable Development Goalsadopted in September this year Goal 16 is of particular interest for justice and rule of law people: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”. That goal is further elaborated upon by 10 targets, which include promoting rule of law, access to justice, and representative and accountable institutions. In the President’s Summary on implementation of the SDG’s it is clearly stated that “data collection and analysis would be critical for implementation.”
Increased interest in innovation
Justice and innovation are still seen by most people as two things that don’t go together and that should be walled off. 2015 created some cracks in the wall. In February I spoke at the very inspiring Government Summit in Abu Dhabi (see my column of 15 March). It was amazing that ‘justice innovation’ was a topic (albeit small) at this summit and equally amazing that so much legal infrastructure is simply assumed in relation to innovations in government. Data for better services to citizens, driverless cars, robots for healthcare, artificial intelligence for policy enhancement, are all things that are assumed with little thought about what will need in terms of laws, institutions, and shaping rule of law. In July a conference on legal futures was held in Singapore in which it was also concluded that a number of societal and economic trends make business as usual in the justice sector untenable. Innovation will be needed. Stanford held its CodeX Futurelaw Conference. The American Bar Association had a big conference on the future of legal services. The Global Agenda Council on Justice of the World Economic Forum made innovation in the justice sector a core pillar of its international work programme. In June the Council co-organised the Innovating Justice Summit, bringing together many stakeholders to put justice innovation on the international agenda. One of its outcomes was the Innovating Justice pledge. The Civil Justice Council of the UK, though a commission chaired by Richard Susskind, published an excellent report on online dispute resolution in civil justice, pointing towards where innovation should happen.
HiiL’s Innovating Justice Accelerator ran a justice innovation challenge in Africa on Small Medium Enterprises, together with the Ford Foundation. It led to a fantastic Justice Boost Camp in Lagos where the winning teams from East and West Africa battled it out for a place in the finals at the Innovating Justice Forum in The Hague. There was also a special Latin America Justice Innovation Challenge held by Desarrollando América Latina. Over 200 guests attended this year’s Innovating Justice Forum to meet and interact with justice innovators from all over the world and listen to inspirational justice leaders such as Tharcisse Karugarama, Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Rwanda, H.E. Abdulla A.J. Al-Majid, Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice of the United Arab Emirates, and Eddie Hartman of Legal Zoom. ‘Legal, Simplified’, is the slogan that made DIYLaw from Nigeria the winner of the SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge for East & West Africa, and receiver of a direct investment of $40,000 by the Ford Foundation. Gerald Abila and Michael Kwizera from mSME Garage came in a close second and will receive $20,000. Timothy Mwirabua’s ShopOfficer will receive $10,000. The police reporting app Five-0 receives €20,000 plus further support from HiiL. All innovations will receive further support to accelerate their impact. All this shows that whether institutions join or wait, justice innovation is starting to happen.
Relaxing rule of law
Measuring justice makes justice innovation easier and more effective. By more empirically knowing what justice customers need and by understanding what works and what does not one can work more effective towards the change and innovation that is needed and possible to make justice systems better. Justice innovation is starting to become something one can do. That’s the good news. But there is also less good news. 2015 was also the year of ISIS and a spate of killings in Beirut and Paris. Terrorism continues to demand policies to prevent attacks leading to challenging questions about rule of law. Populism seems to be on the rise in many of the democracies that proclaim rule of law as a foundation. And many technical innovations that are emerging will also ask of us that we have a real conversation in 2016 about shaping rule of law in the changing environment of today. I don’t really see that conversation happening. At best, I see polarization in which rule of law quickly becomes a conversation killer with rule of law fundamentalists who don’t want to change anything on one hand and those that are ready to easily discard some of its key tenets in face of threats or opportunities.
“I arrested the president who appointed me”, is the most poignant rule of law sentence I heard in 2015. It came from Thelma Aldana, the Attorney-General of Guatemala, and Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and I were meeting with her as part of a mission of the Justice Leadership group. “My oath was to the people and the state, not to the president as a person.” We heard rule of law brought down to an essence of two things. Firstly, the principle that the law rules over everyone, and immediately thereafter the lonely moment in which a person must decide whether he or she will allow that law to rule or not. Thelma Aldana had clearly decided when she ordered the arrest of President Otto Perez Molina and Vice-President, Roxana Baldetti after a massive corruption scandal. She shaped rule of law with the order she signed. It can’t have been easy. She inspired me tremendously with what she shared. I will take our conversation with me into 2016 and, with it, try my best to continue to contribute to shaping rule of law and developing effective justice delivery for all. I hope you will join. There is much to be vigilant about. Best wishes for 2016!
Over 200 guests attended the 6th annual Innovating Justice Forum to meet and interact with justice innovators from all over the world.
Throughout the day, participants had the opportunity to hear justice innovator pitches, take part in a series of exciting workshops, attend highly informative panel sessions, and listen to inspirational justice leaders such as Tharcisse Karugarama, Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Rwanda, and H.E. Abdulla A.J. Al-Majid, Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice of the United Arab Emirates. The programme of the Forum was structured around the core themes of two Innovating Justice Challenges that we launched earlier this year: the SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge East & West Africa and the Justice Innovation Challenge.
This year, the Forum welcomed three finalists for each of the two Challenges. The SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge East & West Africa produced DIYLaw, a female-owned one-stop online portal that makes registration and legal processes in Nigeria more accessible, professional and transparent; mSMEGarage, a micro SME support center base in Uganda that provides free legal information, guidance, and support for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises; and ShopOfficer from Kenya, a customer relationship management system for small and medium-sized businesses that have high volume, but low value transactions. The Innovating Justice Challenge produced CrowdDefend, an online crowdfunding platform pioneered toward helping individuals and organizations to raise funds for legal cases that matter in the United States; Five-O, a mobile application that allows citizens in the United States to rate, review, and track their interaction with law enforcement; and Integrity Idol from Nepal, which involves a campaign, competition, and national TV show and aims to acknowledge the hard work of honest and just civil servants.
The innovators themselves took the stage in the Peace Palace during the Innovator Pitches for both the SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge and the Innovating Justice Challenge. Each presentation was done in the so-called ‘pecha kucha’ format, demanding from the entrepreneurs a 4-minute cutting edge speech on why their business is impactful and needs investment. A five-headed jury of experts from all over the world assessed the speeches and justice innovations.
‘Legal, Simplified’ is the slogan that made DIYLaw from Nigeria the winner of the SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge for East & West Africa, and the receiver of a direct investment of $40,000 by the Ford Foundation. Gerald Abila and Michael Kwizera from SME Garage came in a close second and will receive $20,000. Timothy Mwirabua’s ShopOfficer will receive $10,000. Asha Christian was announced the winner of the Innovating Justice Challenge. The police reporting app Five-0 receives €20,000 plus further support from HiiL. All innovations will receive further support from HiiL Innovating Justice and Next2Company to accelerate their impact.
This year’s Innovating Justice Forum once again proved to be an extraordinary opportunity for those interested in justice innovation to interact with a crowd of outstanding professionals from different parts of the world, and to share innovative ideas on diverse topics – from the building of Justice Cities to justice entrepreneurship.
The enthusiasm and drive of all the up-and-coming justice innovators who presented their justice innovations throughout the day, as well as the highly positive reactions of the present crowd, have only reassured us of the remarkable value and impact that the Forum has. We will impatiently look forward to its next edition.
Eager to shape new justice innovations that help the lives of people and businesses? Join us on the 3rd and 4th of December 2015 at the Peace Palace in The Hague!
The Innovating Justice Forum is an international event in The Hague catering to more than 150 participants. It is held annually by HiiL Innovating Justice to discuss and support innovative ways of approaching justice worldwide. This year, six highly promising justice entrepreneurs from all over the world will pitch their innovation to compete for the Innovating Justice Awards 2015!
Confirmed speakers include Legal Zoom Co-Founder Edward Hartman, Rwandan Former Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama, Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Business John Morrison, Executive Director of Justice Rapid Response Andras Vamos-Goldman, and many more!
Date: Friday 4 December 2015 Time: 09:00 – 20:00 Location: Peace Palace, Carnegieplein 2, The Hague Admission: 90EUR // Third ticket for free // students 20EUR
If you want to apply for a third free ticket, you can email us in order to receive the promotional code: innovatingjusticeforum@hiil.org
This year, we are proud to announce that the Innovating Justice Forum will showcase the winners of two of our special challenges: The SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge East & West Africa and the Innovating Justice Challenge 2015.
The winners of these challenges receive the Innovating Justice Awards 2015. They will have access to an international network, to build international partnerships and learn from other attendants at the Forum. The innovators present their innovation to an international audience, gain international recognition, and have the opportunity to win seed investments. In 2015, over €80,000 is available in cash prizes. Winners of the Innovating Justice Awards also receive acceleration support with access to funding, networks and expert advice.
“The people of Mali need to know that innovation is possible!” said H.E. Sanogo Aminata Malle, Minister of Justice of Mali, during her visit to HiiL Innovating Justice.
We were sitting in a circle joined by experts of the Mali working group of the Knowledge Platform on Security and Rule of Law. We were having an informal conversation about how to unleash more of the innovation capacity in Mali. She asked questions, the members of the group responded. Her manner was open, concentrated, and deliberate. Understandably so: the recently appointed minister is in charge of a tremendously challenging justice reform agenda. Deeper insight into the justice problems of Mali emerged from the nationwide Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey that HiiL and its strategic partner in Mali, Deme So, conducted last year.
This study – to which Lilianne Ploumen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, referred to in a speech to the Security Council, and which was also the topic of an Op-Ed in the Guardian – highlights the rocky journeys to justice that the citizens of Mali face.
H.E. Sanogo Aminata Malle recognised many of the justice problems highlighted in the JNS survey. As a judge she had to deal with many of the issues highlighted in the dashboard demo.
Some issues include family issues and problems related to obtaining birth certificates for children. Also, many Malians do not actively resolve their justice problems, and many do not know where to obtain information and advice. Improving the effectiveness of the implementation of court decisions is also an area where innovation is needed. Such justice problems can be tackled with innovations.
During the Minister’s visit Wilfried De Wever, HiiL’s Head of the Innovating Justice Accelerator, presented a strategy that has worked in other contexts. For instance, executing Innovating Justice Challenges around the most pressing issues, and accelerating top innovations through active support. This can bring a coalition together and unlock local solutions for local problems.
« We want to avoid pushing foreign solutions. It is important to build capacity for justice entrepreneurship and to build lasting change. »
Participants of the meeting agreed that the Ministry’s call for justice innovations would have a likelihood of success.
We concluded our meeting with an agreement to deepen our cooperation on data collection, and to work together to bring innovation into the core of the ministry of justice of Mali.
The Dutch Legal Aid Board launches an online dispute resolution platform Rechtwijzer « »Uit Elkaar” with HiiL Innovating Justice and Modria.
Press Release from the Dutch Legal Aid Board:
Increasing divorces
In 2014, over 35,000 marriages ended in divorce – 5 percent more than in 2013. With the recovering housing market, the number of divorces may increase due to housing issues no longer being an obstacle in separations. The social costs of the legal process are substantial, especially for children who are increasingly confronted with the consequences of a divorce. Rechtwijzer ensures a smooth divorce process by facilitating the proper arrangements and keeping the costs of a divorce manageable and transparent – especially if divorcing partners have children.
Proper arrangements for the children
Rechtwijzer is developed to help children and parents manage the profound effect of a divorce. The approach is research-based and focuses on the best ways to go through the divorce process. The platform supports the process of a divorce by structuring all important issues and providing preliminary choices. On Rechtwijzer, partners can work from model agreement texts, where they can jointly or individually work on their parenting plan in their own time. The agreements contain all the issues related to the children, and step-by-step the partners can choose the best possible solutions. This leads to fair and sustainable results in a calm and focused way.
20% high-conflict divorces
Personal contact can cause irritation and hostility whereas communicating through a conflict resolution platform at your own pace may help to make a balanced agreement and avoid escalation. This has a positive influence on the mutual relationship during and after the divorce. This is crucial for the welfare of the children. The effects of a high-conflict divorce are big: they affect a child’s performance at school, and negatively impact their general well-being and future relationships. Divorce lawyers and mediators estimate that approximately 20% of the divorces are high-conflict divorces.
Cost control
A traditional divorce can be a long-running and expensive process. The Consumers’ Association estimates the legal cost per divorce ranges from € 2,500 to € 3,000. Society also pays for the cost, currently the Dutch government pays approximately over € 100 million per year for legal aid and other legal services. Since the divorce process itself is often unclear, the growing costs are also unclear. As a result, it is an extra source of frustration added upon the difficult process. However, Rechtwijzer makes costs transparent and manageable. A basic divorce plan at Rechtwijzer costs € 390. The deployment of additional legal advisors are determined and costs are fixed as well. Depending on the personal financial situation the Legal Aid Board will reimburse a portion of these costs.
How does Rechtwijzer work?
Rechtwijzer leads to a legally valid divorce with corresponding agreements, for example, division of property, alimentation and visiting arrangements. The platform guides divorcing couples through a new way of separation process by enabling them to draft a joint separation plan online. Partners log in to the platform from their own computers, describe their situation and make proposals for agreements. It is only possible to proceed to the next step if both partners agree with each other. If the partners cannot agree on any one term, there is an option to use a mediator or arbitrator. The divorcing parties can also ask at any time for the help from the contact center. Ultimately, if both parties can agree on the plan, a lawyer will review it to ensure that the agreements are enforceable and fair. It will be submitted to the court. To date, there are more than one hundred couples divorced in this way. Rechtwijzer “Uit Elkaar” is a renewal of the previous version of Rechtwijzer from 2010 when information and referrals were the focus and people received a document to fill in, using it only when in preparation for a meeting with a mediator or lawyer.
The parties behind Rechtwijzer
Rechtwijzer is an initiative of the Council for Legal Aid, HiiL Innovating Justice and Modria, and is subsidized by the Ministry of Security and Justice. The advisory board consists of the Ministry of Security and Justice, the LBIO, Nibud, VFAS, the Bar Association, the Judiciary, the Consumers’ Association, the Legal Counter, the MO group and scientists. Rechtwijzer received an honorable mention from the Council of Europe for the Crystal Scale of Justice in 2015 for innovative legal projects that improve legal services.
We are proud to be a part of the UAE Innovation Week – one of the largest innovative initiatives in the world. From Sunday, 22 November to Saturday, 28 November 2015, over 100 activities in each emirate will take place across the UAE. Each Federal Ministry was invited to organize events and activities to showcase and present future planned innovative projects. Among the attendees is the UAE Minister of Justice and around 150 jurists, judges and lawyers.
Our Senior Justice Sector Advisor and Representative in the Arab region, Roger El Khoury, presented on “Leading Innovation Practice in Justice” entitled by the UAE Minister of Justice. Roger’s presentation included a discussion about our work across the globe, partners, network and methods: Measuring Justice, Innovating Justice Accelerator and Innovative Procedures. He also discussed the prospects of justice innovation in the UAE, including an Innovating Justice Forum.
By the end of 2015, we will conduct a Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey in the UAE jointly with a local workshop. In early 2016, the results will be presented and used to improve access to justice across the country.
Over the past year our JNS method has provided justice-related data to governments and civil society organizations in Indonesia and the Netherlands.
Would you like to learn more about justice innovation in the UAE? Register for our Annual Innovating Justice Forum to meet guest speaker Abdulla A.J. Al-Majid, H.E. Assistant Undersecretary Ministry of Justice, United Arab Emirates.
H.E Al Majid is responsible for formulating strategies and driving the Ministry Of Justice of the UAE in its modernization efforts to become the first in smart e-Justice governance in the world. Prior to his current appointment Mr. Al-Majid was the Federal eGovernment Director, where he spearheaded several major eGovernment projects. In the Commercial Sector, as Programme Manager of Microsoft MENA he was instrumental in several new developments and white papers for products for the ME market.
Two recent situations have led to calls for international accountability mechanisms. The responses to these calls differ widely. Why is this interesting? They show the potential of a more open justice innovation approach. And the costs of not doing so.
The first situation is the tragic downing of flight Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine on 17 July 2014, which led to 298 deaths. Politicians from the counties that suffered most losses – The Netherlands, Australia, and Malaysia – where quick to capture the public sentiment and announced: those responsible will be held to account. This was given international force in Security Council resolution 2166 (2014) in which the Council demanded “that those responsible for this incident be held to account and that all States cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability”. The Dutch Safety Board led an international investigation into the loss of the plane that led to a final report. A key conclusion is that the plan was in fact shot down, and that the weapon was a “9N314M-model warhead carried on a 9M38-series of missiles, as installed on the Buk surface-to-air missile system”. The Safety Board investigation did not deeply investigate the exact place from which the missile was fired; it did say that the area from which the flight path of the missile could have commenced measures around 320 square kilometres in the East of Ukraine. This is where Russian backed rebels were active.
The second situation concerns wildlife crime. From 2007 to 2014 rhino poaching in South Africa alone increased by almost 12.000%. The first third of 2015 has already shown an increase of 18% compared to 2014. The numbers regarding elephants are not much better: the results from a recent survey showed that in Tanzania alone as much as 85,000 elephants are likely to have been killed between 2009 and 2014, a decline of 60%. In Mozambique, poachers killed half of the elephant population in five years. At the moment, trafficking in rhino horn and ivory is more lucrative than trafficking in cocaine. It is not limited to rhino horn and ivory: lizards, snakes, tigers, birds, pangolins, fish stocks are also part of this global trade. Trafficking wildlife is part of the business model of violent groups like the Lord Resistance Army, which commit atrocities at a large scale. It fuels corruption, money laundering, exploitation of vulnerable groups and tax evasion, and destroys the essential trust that is a foundation for prosperous and sustainable communities. National accountability mechanisms are failing spectacularly.
In the first situation the Dutch prosecution service – with the participation of international partners – is conducting a criminal investigation. However, it is felt that a purely national procedure will not suffice. So efforts are under way to set up an international accountability mechanism. But it is hard, even for a relative insider like me, to know what is going on in that process. It is closed, political, and led by ministries and diplomats. There are no real communications to the outside world. From what can be picked up, existing tribunal models are the point of departure. Using the Yugoslav Tribunal precedent, an attempt was made to pay the legal basis for the tribunal in a Security Council resolution. That, at least for now, failed because of a Russian veto. The thinking about the procedure for the new accountability mechanism appears to be based on precedents like the Special Court for Lebanon or the Lockerbie tribunal. Over the year after the crash, we don’t have the accountability mechanism yet.
In the second situation, a broad international stakeholder group, led by World Wildlife Fund The Netherlands and HiiL Innovating Justice, set up the accountability mechanism. The process took a set of requirements as its basis, which included a clear theory of change based on a deep understanding of the criminality involved and how disrupting that criminality can best disrupt the trade (the ultimate goal) and a good understanding of the surrounding landscape of other efforts to make sure the new initiative leveraged those where possible. Contrary to the MH17 process, a deliberate, open innovation process was initiated, which included many different disciplines and expertise. Ultimately, this process led to the setting up of the Wildlife Justice Commission, launched two weeks ago in the Peace Palace.
Of course, we must guard against comparing the two situations too easily. One thing stands out: the entirely different ways in which the process to get to the best accountability model is organised. The MH17 process is closed, without the involvement of real outsiders and other disciplines. It seems to be leaning on existing models while there is every reason to ask whether existing models are the best way to deal with accountability in this case. To name one point: flight MH17 does not seem to have been shot down deliberately as part of a deliberate plan to wipe out a certain ethnic group or to commit acts of terrorism, but the models developed for such cases are being used as a mould. In addition, the process of setting up the new mechanism is slow: more than a year has passed since the downing and no start date seems in sight.
Innovation is possible, even in the justice sector. Everything we know about innovation tells us that opening up, knowing your market, and looking for odd coalitions, are key components for success. What will it take to break open governments and ministries so that they innovate in accordance with what is now known about making innovation work?
“I have been in business all my life. I started selling chickens by the roadside when I was ten. When I was at school I started a training initiative and later a media company. The media company did not succeed, but it taught me a lot and got me to where I am now. Then I went to law school and now I run mSMEGarage.”
This is Gerald Abila from Uganda, one of the three finalists in the SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge that we are running with the Ford Foundation in East and West Africa and the Global Agenda Council of Justice of the World Economic Forum. Gerald is a rare breed: an example of a true justice entrepreneur. He embodies what is possible when justice innovation is given room.
We were at the Innovation Justice Boost Camp held in Lagos on 29 October. Seven very inspiring finalists competed for three places to go to the 6th Annual Innovating Justice Forum in The Hague on 3 and 4 December. Our man in Lagos, Olufunbi Falayi worked tirelessly to gather a tremendously inspiring crowd in the Co-Creation Hub, an accelerator in the heart of Lagos. Speakers included Isaac Aggrey, Executive Director of the West African Social Entrepreneurs Network in Ghana, Bunmi Okunowo, National Coordinator at the Office for ICT Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the Nigerian Government and Akingbolahan Adeniran, former ICC Lawyer and Senior Special Assistant to the Lagos State Governor on Legal Matters.
Small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) are the backbone of the African economy. Estimates are that SME’s account for around 80% of employment in Africa and 90% of all business. It is, and will continue to be the backbone of the African economy. International organisations like the World Bank are devoting a lot of energy to increasing access to finance for SME’s. For the Ford Foundation it is one of the cornerstones of its new strategy that is directed at combatting in equality. As The Foundation’s President, Darren Walker says: Inequality, in all its forms, represents the greatest impediment to just, fair, and peaceful societies that offer opportunity for all. He is right.
What we focus on in the SME Empowerment Challenge is the legal infrastructure (to borrow a term from Gillian Hadfield) that such small and medium sized businesses need to flourish. Being able to register easily, having access to good credit and investment agreements, contracts for the delivery of goods and services, access to effective means should disputes arise, effective rules on employment, arrangements for insurance, and we could go on. These are all things that are taken for granted in the Netherlands, Denmark and New Zealand. In large parts of Africa it is different.
“In Rwanda it takes two hours to register a new company. You do it online.”, says Noel Ntabanganyimana, one of the innovators who represents Atikus based in Rwanda. Few places in Europe can do it that fast. In Kenya, the count was two days. In Nigeria, it can take months.
All of the seven finalists were winners. All of them had developed great initiatives designed to make the lives of SME’s better. In the end the jury, consisting of Segun Olukoya (Lagos Angel Network), Emmy Rono (Strathmore University, Kenya), Ore Sofekun (Investment One), Yemi Adamolekun (Enough is Enough), and Gbenga Ogundeji (SME Development Agency Nigeria) decided that three of them stood out.
The three winners of the day were DIYLaw, mSMEGarage and ShopOfficer. Whereas DIYLaw aims to ease and speed up business registration in Nigeria, mSMEGarage aims to reach as many businesses as possible in Uganda by providing free legal information and advice to entrepreneurs, while ShopOfficer provides small Kenyan businesses with a smart accounting-tool that makes payments transparent and easy.
The three winners will come to The Hague to attend the global final event in the Peace Palace. There they will receive more coaching and will be linked to potential partners for the scale-up process that will follow. Our ambition is to deliver justice initiatives that contribute to a better SME climate and that can be scaled up throughout Africa and elsewhere – making entrepreneurship in Africa easier and providing employment and economic development. These seven justice entrepreneurs, and in particular the three winners, have all the potential to make the difference. To be continued in December.
On Friday, 23 October, Executive Director of the Dutch Legal Aid Board, Peter van den Biggelaar, and HiiL Innovating Justice’s Product Manager Tsvetelina Mihaylova visited Banja Luka, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to attend the 2015 ‘Crystal Scales of Justice’ Prize ceremony organised by the Council of Europe’s CEPEJ. Rechtwijzer was nominated for the Prize alongside other innovative initiatives from Scotland, Latvia and Serbia. These initiatives have developed information and communication technologies (ICT) that significantly improve the administration of justice and the functioning of courts.
The court system of Bosnia and Herzegovina to a large extent reflect the complexity of its constitutional setup and is shaped to accommodate the interests of the ethnic division that characterises the country. The present Ministers of Justice of the respective authorities, as well as representatives of the Prosecutorial Council and the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, make it clear that opposing political interests sways the functioning of the judiciary in the country. While Republika Srpska advocates for more judicial autonomy, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina aspires to centralise the judiciary at the state-level. The search for an effective solution which works both for the country’s citizens and the judicial institutions in place is still ongoing and is subjected to national debate.
The international stakeholders’ view on the topic was represented by the President of CEPEJ, Georg Stawa and the Director of Statistics at the Italian Ministry of Justice and CEPEJ member, Fabio Bartolomeo. Both stressed the positive effects that the introduction of ICTs have on judicial systems and their efficiency, and welcomed the exchange of best practices across borders. The Prize ceremony itself aimed to promote such exchanges by allowing the four selected contenders to present their projects, and provide information about the impact in their respective local settings.
The ‘Judicial Hub’ project of the Judicial Institute of Scotland – an online platform for e-learning and exchange of information designed specifically for judges – won the Prize and the recognition of CEPEJ as an initiative worth replicating across Europe. While many were astonished by the implementation and achievements of Rechtwijzer in the Netherlands, it was noted that the Rechtwijzer platform required a specific environment to thrive in, an environment which has transitioned from the stage of using ICTs for communication purposes to the stage in which services are offered to citizens online. An environment which many of the 47 Council of Europe Member States has yet to develop.
I woke up several times during my night at the Europa hotel in Belfast. Perhaps their marketing as « the most bombed hotel in the world » hit me subconsciously. Most likely it was the avalanche of experiences around the innovation workshop hosted by the Committee for Justice of the Northern Ireland Parliamentary Assembly.
An innovation workshop taking place in this rather conservative justice corner of politics? Yes it happened. The committee wanted to hear more about the Rechtwijzer solution for online dispute resolution, as well as other innovations in the justice sector. My presentation of the Rechtwijzer prototype was part of a series of events launched by committee chairman Alastair Ross, a smart 34 year old politician from the Democratic Unionist Party. Inspired by his previous responsibilities for economic development, Alastair wants to bring innovative thinking to the world of judges, barristers, lawmakers and law enforcement .
Talking with leaders from the Northern Ireland justice sector made me feel modest. Trained as an adversarial lawyer during the era of « the Troubles » who turned academic studying dispute systems, and now research director at an institute co-creating innovative systems for online dispute resolution, I listened for hours to what the masters of dispute system design have implemented here. I was overwhelmed by the many innovations in a country that more or less had to be redesigned as a dispute resolution system.
Here at Stormont, an outsized parliament building in a park near Belfast, citizens can organize events that contribute to the common good. Seats in the cabinet are divided in the Swiss way – each party represented in proportion to votes. The Ministry of Justice is supposed to stay in neutral hands, not in those of Sinn Fein or the Democratic Unionist Party. The city allows the parties of the conflict in the 70s to keep their symbols: flags in streets, marches in the early summer and even pretty aggressive murals with masked men holding stenguns. Identity is allowed, rituals may proceed, but actual violence is out of the question. The country also heavily invested in a new, neutral part of the city, where young Catholics and Protestants are just living life rather than picking up stones. The city still has dozens of walls separating neighbourhoods, but you have to look for them carefully; and now some have doors that are open during the day, linking parks at both sides.
Paths to peace and justice are always rocky. Two weeks ago the cabinet fell apart, over wounds from the time the Troubles were very close to an all-out civil war. The parties are now negotiating a new deal and the going is tough. But today, nobody is afraid of being bombed. Not even the police are armed with heavy machine guns. In this country, having good dispute resolution systems is a top priority. Legal aid spending per capita is huge, and the judiciary is very neutral and held in high esteem.
Leaders from the legal profession, the judiciary and political parties know exactly what to ask during the Q and A session: How does Rechtwijzer guarantee a balanced, fair outcome, if one party is weaker? What about informed consent? If one party does not cooperate, how do you incentivize him to come back to the platform? Is the information exchanged allowed to be used in public court hearings?With this new channel, what types of disputes will have the most value?
We also talked openly about the risks and benefits for the legal profession. Will innovation take away their jobs? Will it allow them to move up in the value chain, delivering more value to people who need fair solutions and new ways to bring order in ever more complicated relationships? At Stormont, everyone knows there are groups that make their living from day to day conflict, preventing it and keeping it manageable. These groups have to see new opportunities. Otherwise they will not help to make innovation happen.
One question struck me as special: Can Rechtwijzer guarantee that people tell the truth? We tend to think of Rechtwijzer as a platform for mediated agreements, with the option for an adjudicator to give a fair decision. Mediators tend to allow people to have different perspectives on what happened. Truth is relative, not absolute. Fact-finding may be useful, but it can easily generate new munition for conflicts. Here in Northern Ireland, people clearly still want to know more about the past. They value truth and are also very keen on preventing conflicts. Overcoming this tension is one of the big remaining challenges for designing dispute systems.
At the end of the session, I asked this knowledgeable group for their advice to us. They had to think about this for a moment, but it was quite straightforward: keep going. Yes, of course we need justice innovation – in workshops, through prototypes – challenging and ever improving them. Thank you, Northern Ireland, for sharing your knowledge and experience, and for teaching us modesty.
“In three months, my ex partner and I developed a divorce and separation plan that we both felt comfortable with. We really cooperated when drafting it, and got help from the tailored model solutions and self-help tools. It may sound weird, but we felt proud of this accomplishment. When we submitted it to the lawyer for review, she said that the plan was well-balanced and fair. Then she told us that she would have to rewrite everything again, translating it into difficult legal language because otherwise the judge would not understand it.” These are the words of one of the users of the Rechtwijzer Divorce Platform, whom we will call “Rachel”.
Rachel’s experience shows that our platform contributes to empowering people when they have to cope with a tough situation in their lives. It also shows how full innovation in the justice sector requires joint effort, from various angles. Making this work is not just about great justice technology, but also about innovative legal professionals with lean minds and a sense that they can bring more value to clients.
When we ask our users about their experiences during our ongoing user satisfaction surveys, they consistently rate the platform 8 out of 10. Two months is the average time it takes to come to a first draft that is ready for review. By then, they have spent less than 400 euro on average to complete their divorce and separation plan.
Currently, the Rechtwijzer Divorce Platform only is available to people like Rachel who live in The Netherlands. Next month, a trial in England starts and in a few months people in British Columbia can use it as well. Development of new modules for debts and landlord-tenant problems are also lined up. In the meantime, the interface and process flows get better every day, the number of support tools continues to increase, and our service providers develop more effective online interventions, almost on a daily basis.
The Rechtwijzer team is growing, so we can keep up this high pace of innovation. Talented new colleagues continue to join our team. They work with some of the best software engineers and user experience designers. We recently built the organisational structure behind Rechtwijzer that helps us with bringing additional resources and staff, which I am honoured to lead.
HiiL Innovating Justice thus fully commits to developments like Rechtwijzer that can make the difference between a good and a bad justice process. Between having the experience of a fair procedure that services your situation, and having the experience of completely losing control and maybe even feeling excluded. Elon Musk, one of the great innovators of our time and founder of PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, famously said that “any product that needs a manual is broken.” This is true for justice processes as well. Our team continues its work to empower people, so they can work their way to justice, also without thorough understanding of legal codes, rules of procedure, large bodies of case law and the other many manuals of the justice system.
Vechtscheidingen, in extreme gevallen eindigend in familiedrama’s, krijgen veel aandacht in de media. Maar de impact van iedere scheiding is groot. Een scheiding betekent het beëindigen van de belangrijkste economische en emotionele relatie waarin mensen plegen te investeren. Hoe ervaren mensen een scheidingsprocedure? Hoe rechtvaardig vinden zij de gang van zaken en de uitkomsten? En slaagt de samenleving erin om de negatieve gevolgen van scheiding te beperken?
Nederlanders ondervinden veel stress en negatieve emoties tijdens hun scheidingsprocedure. Ze ervaren de uitkomsten en de juridische gang van zaken als weinig rechtvaardig. Dit blijkt uit bevolkingsonderzoek van HiiL Innovating Justice naar de wijze waarop Nederlanders de rechtspleging beleven. In de week van de rechtspraak, rond de dag van de echtscheiding en op het moment dat ook de Katholieke Kerk haar procedures rond scheiding herziet, is dit een belangrijke aansporing aan de juridische sector om scheidingsprocedures te reorganiseren.
HiiL Innovating Justice heeft onderzoek gedaan naar de rechtvaardigheid die Nederlanders ervaren als zij in het juridische circuit terecht komen. De gemiddelde waardering op alle gemeten rechtvaardigheidsaspecten van het scheidingstraject is laag (2,81 op een schaal van 1 (negatief) tot en met 5 (positief)). Mensen voelen zich wel met respect behandeld, maar niet goed genoeg gehoord in hun emoties en behoeften. Zij willen zelf meer invloed op het proces en op de uitkomsten. Voor scheidende partners is vaak niet duidelijk waar resultaten (zoals de hoogte van alimentatie) op gebaseerd zijn.
De resultaten bevestigen de kritiek van experts, waaronder de Kinderombudsman, op de scheidingsprocedure. Deze is gejuridiseerd en zet geschillen verder op scherp door een structuur van verzoek tegen verweer; argument tegen argument. Dat versterkt de bekende risico’s voor het welzijn van kinderen (gebrekkige communicatie, conflicten, verminderd contact tussen ouder en kind). Rechters en advocaten zijn zich steeds meer van deze risico’s bewust en doen individueel het mogelijke, maar de kern van hun werkwijze is daar niet op aangepast. Het financieringssysteem voor rechterlijke macht en advocaten beloont nog steeds extra procedures, in plaats van het bereiken van duurzame oplossingen waardoor er te weinig prikkels tot innovatie zijn.
« De mogelijkheden voor verbetering zijn groot, » stelt Prof. Maurits Barendrecht, research directeur van HiiL Innovating Justice. « Er is veel kennis over manieren om een scheidingsproces beter in te richten, maar die komt nooit verder dan kleine pilots. De centrale procedures voor rechtspleging zijn in oude wetten vastgelegd. Daar klampen juristen zich aan vast. »
Barendrecht: « De sector zou steeds weer nieuwe werkwijzen moeten ontwikkelen, testen en dan breed invoeren. In de gezondheidszorg is dat veel beter georganiseerd. Is het niet onverantwoord dat de rechtspleging nog zo wordt aangestuurd? Slecht verlopende echtscheidingen richten grote schade aan; bij vechtscheidingen vallen jaarlijks doden. »
On 11 August, the co-facilitators of the process that had to produce the successors to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sent a letter to the President of the UN General Assembly that their mission had been accomplished. In diplomatic speak: an outcome documentcontaining a draft of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) had been adopted by consensus. In the diplomatic universe this means that the Heads of State and Government and High Representatives will rubberstamp the document when they meet at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 25-27 September 2015 for the UN’s 70th birthday.
In a world where significant parts of the Arab world are involved in violent conflict, where two large Security Council members actively curb freedoms, where the causes of global warming generally seem to be tolerated, and where there’s a lot of other stuff to be depressed about, this is a hopeful document. At least on paper.
Key words are: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. An excerpt from the lofty preamble:
This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognise that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.
It’s all about peace, ending poverty, dealing with environmental degradation, larger freedom (a way to say human rights and democracy without saying it), and doing it together. The document has 17 Goals and 169 targets. For a good quick tour of all the SDGs, see the Guardian. Here I want to focus on the Goal on justice. Goal 16 is to Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. Under it lie 10 ambitious and quite diverse targets:
16.1 Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
16.2 End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children
16.3 Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all
16.4 By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets and combat all forms of organized crime
16.5 Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms
16.6 Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
16.7 Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels
16.8 Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance
16.9 By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration
16.10 Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements
16.a Strengthen relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels, in particular in developing countries, to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime
16.b Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development
We see commitment to a number of concepts: rule of law at the national and international levels, accountable and transparent institutions, responsive and participatory decision making at all levels (it does not say of what), participation in global governance, access to information, fundamental freedoms, non-discrimination, and sustainable development. Mixed through this we see commitment to dealing with a number of problems: access to justice, violence, exploitation, trafficking and torture of children, illicit financial and arms flows, the recovery and return of stolen assets, organized crime, corruption and bribery in all their forms, legal identity for all, and, of course, terrorism.
After many years of working in international diplomacy and justice change, lofty goals like this always make me a bit cynical. Within Goal 16, let alone in the SDG document as a whole, I see many goals. This while I was so fond of the simplicity of the 8 MDGs. I also see so many goals for which I find it incredibly difficult to envisage clear indicators for success (the one exception being the legal identity goal). This while the MDGs and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have taught us: clear indicators work.
At the same time, Goal 16 is incredibly hopeful. The most critical justice issues I’d want to see on a global agenda are covered in some way or another. I can picture countless civil society organisations interpreting Goal 16 and its 10 targets and invoking them left, right and center for the next 15 years. I can see state donors, philanthropic foundations, academics and civil society organisations getting together to work very hard on indicators, which will result in a multitude of them. I can see budgets of governments adjusting to many of these goals. I can see Goal 16 seeping into the agenda of other international and regional organisations. It will turn up in the media every now and then. I can even see the Heads of State and Government and High Representatives meeting in 5 years to look at progress.
A key paragraph in the document is the “Follow-up and Review” paragraph. It has a commitment to “engage in systematic follow-up and review of implementation of this Agenda over the next fifteen years. A robust, voluntary, effective, participatory, transparent and integrated follow-up and review framework will make a vital contribution to implementation and will help countries to maximize and track progress in implementing this Agenda.” Sounds good. But this is followed by a worrying paragraph. The follow-up and review processes “will be voluntary and country-led, will take into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and will respect policy space and priorities. As national ownership is key to achieving sustainable development, the outcome from national level processes will be the foundation for reviews at regional and global levels, given that the global review will be primarily based on national official data sources.” While national ownership and national realities are hugely important, the fact that regional and global review processes can only be based on official national data sources and that there a huge amount of wriggle room in producing those data sources, does not bode well. I can see a group of governments who are quite content with this. At the same time, I am buoyed by reality: I try to fathom how these governments, in this day and age and in the next 15 years, will be able to control data production about their progress or lack of it on Goal 16. My organization is, for instance, already working on a tool to get justice data from social media.
All in all, we should be pleased with Goal 16. It represents progress and tremendous opportunity. We should thank the many people who worked tirelessly to negotiate it.
This blog first appeared on slaw.ca, Canada’s online legal magazine.
Guest blog by Brooks Marmon, Accountability Architect for Accountability Lab in Monrovia, Liberia.
On August 5, nearly 20 community mediators supported by the Accountability Lab joined representatives from civil society, Liberia’s Ministry of Justice, and the United Nations Mission in Liberia to discuss “Informal Justice Interventions in the Time of Ebola”. The event, convened in partnership with the Hague Institute for Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) with additional support from the Friends of Liberia, served as a dual training and reflection session to chart ways forward on how to meld the best aspects of Liberia’s formal justice system with informal legal procedures to ensure that all Liberians are able to access justice.
The tone of the daylong event was set by Mark Marvey, legal counsel at Heritage Partners Associates and an advocate with a long history of civil society activism. Speaking on ‘Formal and Informal Law in Liberia’, Marvey underscored the critical need for alternative dispute resolution in Liberia, noting that “the formal system is expensive, slow, and complex.” However, he also observed that traditional justice systems also have issues, particularly in regards to gender equality.
Community Justice Mediators, in collaboration with the government and formal legal agents can play a critical role in harmonizing the two systems. As Marvey observed, resident mediators, will undoubtedly be less susceptible to corrupt influences as they are deeply embedded in the communities in which they work. He challenged those present to reconcile the varying traditions and emerge with a blend that will ensure that Liberians begin to trust the legal structures available to them.
The meeting then broke into two working groups, where mediators- with their colleagues in civil society and government- led a discussion on the challenges they face in conducting their work. A key thread was that in the heat of a conflict, aggrieved parties are reluctant to pursue traditional methods of justice as there is not a feeling that it will result in the levy of an appropriate penalty. The mediators noted that a key challenge in their work was to convey the understanding that in high density communities (the Lab supports mediators in West Point and Logan Town, two high populated communities; and expects to shortly expand to a third community), it is critical for individuals to be able to peacefully resolve conflicts and continue to live together in harmony.
Representatives from HiiL then spoke on their work with innovative justice agents across the world. In India, where it is not uncommon for the resolution of a case to take decades, groups like National Lok Adalat, can play a significant role in reducing the caseload of the formal systems and quickly identify solutions. In Mali, organizations like DemeSo and Wildaf use survey tools to better understand the needs of citizens and to develop programs accordingly. Kenya, known for its high rate of technological penetration, is also leading the way in terms of legal innovation with a SMS platform that answers legal questions.
A working lunch was directed by Reverend Emmanuel Bowier and Ali Sylla of the Center for Counseling and Restorative Dialogue, who have collaborated to provide historical and legal training sessions to encourage religious co-existence amongst Liberian youth. Sylla, a Muslim who has previous experience with the Ministry of Justice, provides legal instruction for young people, while Rev. Bowier, a Christian, offers a historical argument that despite contemporary calls to declare Liberia a Christian state, Islam had a foothold in the country long before Christianity.
The final session of the day examined ways that high impact, low cost community mediation strategies can be sustained. An overarching theme herein was the importance of building relationships with existing local leaders. As a representative from the Ministry of Justice noted, the Ministry has trained young people in the art of mediation, but community members continue to consult the same traditional elders that they always have to resolve their grievances.
The Accountability Lab and the CJTs have been nominated for a range of innovative justice awards (from both HiiL and other organizations). The mediation networks have been the embodiment of a low cost, high impact approach. Operating in an environment of limited infrastructure and against the challenge of the Ebola crisis, the CJTs have made a different in their communities and are poised for continued and greater success.
Stay tuned for the launch of the CJT website in the coming days.
Two weeks ago a new initiative was launched: the Wildlife Justice Commission. It’s a private initiative (with which I mean non-state) that seeks to disrupt criminal networks engaged in wildlife crime. It does so by gathering evidence, having that validated by experts, and bringing the validated evidence to the attention of national law enforcement authorities for action, if need be with a pinch of targeted pressure. In short: it does what looks a lot like law enforcement.
This fits into a wider trend I see: the emergence of citizens’ criminal justice. Let me share a few more examples.
First, two preludes. The first comes from 9/11 and the so-called ‘war on terror’. In June 2006 and 2007, a report was released by Dick Marty, member of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, in which he showed that there was enough reason to believe that the government of the US and some governments in Europe had been involved in so-called ‘rendition flights’ and maintaining prisons that were off all official radar screens. Things seemed to be happening that run counter to states’ obligations under the Council of Europe human rights regime. The second prelude comes from the world of sports. In 2012, the US Anti-Doping Agency (not a law enforcement body) issued a meticulously researched report on the activities of an international criminal network that was engaging in illegal doping activities, involving the cyclist Lance Armstrong. What did both reports do? They made it impossible for national law enforcement agencies not to take action. They broke a cycle of inaction in the face of highly probable violations of the law.
The war in Syria and inaction by states to do much in the face of serious human rights abuse as this war is being fought, produced two other interesting examples. Firstly, a report issued by a group that involved key prosecutors from the Yugoslav and Sierra Leone tribunals that validated evidence smuggled out of Syria of torture and murder of prisoners by the Syrian government. It concluded that that evidence was credible and should be acted upon. The report received wide media attention. That same war also led to the setting up the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, an innovative and elaborate network of investigators led by a former investigator from the Yugoslav Tribunal who are building what looks to be promising evidence on atrocities crime committed in Syria that can be used in courtrooms, once the time for justice has come.
Justice Rapid Response takes a slightly different approach: it offers well-trained atrocities crime investigators who can be used by governments and international organisations at short notice. The excuse of not having expertise to investigate is becoming more difficult to convincingly use. Recently the International Bar Association took another step: it is directly seeking to empower citizens by launching the eyeWitness to Atrocities App, a tool with which ordinary citizens can gather evidence, which, according to the App’s makers, can be used in court. More apps like that are likely to come.
Except for the Marty reports, all of these initiatives are decidedly non-state. They are not treaty or law based. They are often funded by foundations and not by taxpayers’ money. The people that work for them are not public officials. They have in common that they do not want to replace public law enforcement bodies, but want to kick them into action if that is needed. They don’t create new law but work on the basis that states should implement the laws they enacted and the treaties they signed up to. In many ways, it’s a completely new layer of governance.
The Wildlife Justice Commission has even taken things beyond investigating. It includes in its rules a very explicit validation process at the international level if no action is taken nationally: a public hearing before a panel of independent experts in which the evidence collected by the Commission is validated and provided with recommendations. This validated report with its recommendations is then used to lobby and pressure governments to act.
This trend is, on the whole, good news. It seems to be only just gathering steam. If it continues, States and international organisations will find inaction more difficult in the face of citizens’ increased capacity to investigate in a highly professional manner and to have such evidence convincingly validated. Public opinion can then do the rest.
Sometimes, terrible things can produce useful by-products.
Disclosure: the organisation I lead, HiiL Innovating Justice, was closely involved in developing the Wildlife Justice Commission.
This blog first appeared on slaw.ca, Canada’s online legal magazine.
“I go where the puck will be.” Richard Susskind was quoting Wayne Gretski, who responded to the question on whether he was the best ice hockey player ever. Contrary to Gretski, legal systems are going where the puck once was. As Richard put it: they are based on 19th and 20th century models and are no longer fit for purpose.
We were speaking at a conference that was about the longer-term challenges for the laws, legal system and legal profession of Singapore. And this was not a conference of wacky Internet rebels, but one involving the core of the establishment of the legal profession: the responsible ministers, the chief justice, and leaders from the legal profession and academia. I was there to present key findings of a legal futures study we did last year for the Ministry of Law of Singapopre. Much of the discussion, however, was of relevance beyond Singapore.
Singapore, as far as I know, is the only country in the world that is taking a very deliberate effort to understand the legal landscape and the forces that are shaping it into the future. The usual government strategy on the future of the legal system is not to have one. Don’t move unless you really have to. Just ping-pong from acute problem to immediate law or a judgement to fix it, and then move on to the next acute problem. Don’t think too far ahead.The world ends after this year’s budget. Keep it conceptual. Emphasize tradition and concepts and talk as little as possible about results for justice customers and opportunities for legal services providers.
The driving forces that were presented at the conference centred on governance issues, economic factors, and the all-pervasive forces of technology. Some of the governance trends discussed included a move towards more multi-stakeholder governance; people increasingly sharing views on issues they care about and communicating them to governments often using language framed in value-laden terms; and citizens demanding more than just efficient service delivery and also asking governance to provide things like transparency, responsiveness, and serious participation.
Economic trends that came up included accelerating economic integration with the promise of economic gain in Asia; changing labour markets causing loss of work in some areas and even fiercer competition for talent in others; increasing speed and complexity, and the changing nature of crime, in which the national and the international, and the licit and illicit worlds are becoming more intertwined.
In the field of technology we see the growth of all manner of IT platforms that enable people to share, co-design, match demand & supply, and fund. Other driving forces are the rise of autonomous systems (with IBM’s Watson as a key example); the merging of the real and virtual worlds, and the tremendous growth in knowledge about how individuals and groups behave and make choices.
All of the driving forces discussed significantly impact the landscape of conflict resolution. The status quo seems hard to maintain. New rules, more rules, new types of rules, technical possibilities, knowledge about human behaviour, economic realities: they all point to a need for more effective neutrals and a greater diversity of resolution methods. That is a threat for some, but can be a tremendous opportunity as well. All of the driving forces point to a need for innovation in the area of rulemaking and standard setting. Involving the right people at the right time, working across borders, adapting rules in the face of technological change, making rules and standards in networks, understanding and managing compliance – I name but a few challenges. Again, there are great opportunities here for the legal services industry.
There was a general shared view that social, economic and technological developments put the legal profession on the cusp of momentous changes that simply had to happen. A bit like the 1930, when the car had to move from a clunky, rich man’s toy to an easy-to-use, mass market product for every family. Henry Ford saw this first. Fast forward to now: if people can instantly buy a book on an easy-to-use website that even helps them with their preferences, why then do they have to go to expensive, clunky, formal, hard to understand, complicated procedures to get justice?
In regards to the legal profession, Ashish Nanda, Director of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad – Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, shared fascinating findings from his research into the larger, internationally operating law firms. He saw change along 4 axes: clients, competition, technology and people.
The first axis is clients. The bulk of them now come from the North and West (Europe, North America); that will change to the East and South (Asia, Africa). Clients are more critical over pricing and what they want from a law firm. The second axis is competition, which will be even more acute. The growth rate of the legal profession after 2008 has generally gone down. Other players, like accounting firms, are also moving into legal practice. In addition to that, new law firms like Axiom, which breaks away from the ‘big building full of partners’ concept, are disrupting things.
The third axis, technology, is breaking down geographical barriers, levelling the playing field around legal education, and creating more shared knowledge about legal concepts. And finally, the last axis is people. Demographics are changing and law firm structures with mandatory retirement of around age 55 are not keeping up. Also, Western dominance is over. Great lawyers are now being trained in Beijing, Bangalore, Lagos, Johannesburg, and Seoul. In addition to that, women in the workforce are on the rise.
Richard Susskind made a passionate plea for change and innovation in the justice sector, building on the groundbreaking report he helped put together in his role as Chair of the Online Dispute Resolution Working group of the UK Civil Justice Council. Pictures can say more than a thousand words, so I reproduce two pictures from that report below:
His key message, in short: we can, and we should, focus more on dispute containment and dispute avoidance. There is tremendous space for innovation here.
We need more such conferences. More exchanges on how we can strengthen this urgent need for change.
The Greeks do not seem to be very disciplined in paying their bills. Small wonder, when you look at their civil justice system, which is due for reform. Today the Greek parliament will vote to change the laws of civil procedure. Getting the civil procedure on track was one of the conditions to the agreement reached with the EU early Monday morning on July 12. This seems to be an odd condition for a bailout. Macroeconomic reforms are okay, but should Europe’s prime ministers interfere with the laws telling Greek citizens how to interact with their judges?
In a well-functioning economy, people pay their bills because they know a court will check the bill summarily and put a stamp on it within a few weeks. With this judgment, a creditor can ask your employer to withhold your salary or ask a bailiff to sell your house. The amount due will be taken from the proceeds. So you better pay, or ask to be relieved from your debts through a bankruptcy.
High appeal rates
Greek courts have a similar system; however, more than 50% of the judgments are appealed, so it goes to a second court on appeal. How can this high appeal rate be explained? Appeals are meant to correct judgments of the first court. They provide quality control in the justice system. Appeal courts can remedy corruption, errors in the application of laws and take into account new evidence. In theory, they are responsive to the needs of their customers. If one of the parties feels “aggrieved” by the first judgment, there is a review in appeal. So high appeal rates suggest a high level of voice from citizens.
But there are other reasons to appeal. Perhaps you want to improve your bargaining position in order to get a discount on your bill. Delay can also be desirable in itself. If the judgment cannot be enforced during the two years that an appeal court is reviewing your case, then you buy time and the creditor is still yearning for her money.
Best practices, simple solutions
The solution is simple: the judgment should be enforceable during the appeal process. If you paid on the basis of an unfair or corrupt judgment, you can recover the money from your creditor after your appeal is successful. Most modern justice systems have this rule now. They even tend to apply it to the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of criminal offences serve their sentence during an appeal, unless they can show that an appeal is likely to be successful. This discourages tactical appeals.
Why do the Greeks not adopt this very sensible system and have to be pressured by the very Angela Merkel to do so? Following the money usually gives a first indication of an answer to such questions. Lawyers gain from a system where every bill can be litigated in court, again in appeal and yet again at the Greek Supreme Court, the Areios Pagos, which is aptly named after a steep hill in Athens near the Acropolis.
Follow the career path
Greek lawyers went on a strike against the reforms in November 2014, which also included a change to written proceedings. Currently all evidence is presented in an oral hearing. This type of resistance is not a typical Greek problem. Lawyers who are paid by the hour to litigate cases do not benefit from more effective proceedings. When they see their livelihood threatened, they know how to raise their voice on parliament square.
Please also do not underestimate the humanity of judges. For judges, promotion to an appeal court is usually the major career step they can make. Cutting the number of appeals decreases their access to a better future.
This is not a typical Greek issue as well. Recent statistics from the Council of Europe reveal that almost 30% of European judges serve in appeal courts and supreme courts. Because these judges are better paid, the corresponding slice of the budget is even bigger. Can you imagine a company spending 30 or 50% of its budget on quality control, second guessing the output of the production line? Greece is Olympic in this “nice judicial career league” with 41% of the judges at the higher court levels. Only Romania (52%) and tiny Monaco (57%) provide an even better stairway to judicial heaven.
Legal reforms need a Merkel to succeed
The Greek parliament did not dare to confront the lawyers and judges. The reform bill was not accepted. Typical Greek problem? No, of course not. In a state adhering to the rule of law, the legal profession consisting of lawyers and judges is uniquely positioned to protect their own vested interests. Leading lawyers and judges write the rules as professors, parliamentarians or as civil servants at the Ministry of Justice. They are very genuine in their belief in fair procedures for bringing law and order to society, but have a blind spot for the inefficiencies from which their colleagues benefit.
Now let us compare legal services to banking. Everybody understands that the rulemakers for banking should be isolated from the bankers who are working under the rules. Why is that not a principle for the regulation affecting lawyers and courts? Judges will not take a case when they have a conflict of interest or might be perceived to have one. Could that idea, guaranteeing their independence and impartiality, be applied to the laws of procedure and the regulation of the legal profession?
In the meantime, politicians who want to stay out of trouble, dislike and fear the organized legal profession everywhere. It is exceptional for Ministers of Justice to succeed in building a regulatory framework for legal services and court procedures that benefits the legal profession and the general public alike. A real crisis, such as the current Greek one, with a lot of outside pressure can provide a breakthrough.
A better way forward
Is there an alternative to picking up a fight with the legal profession? At HiiL Innovating Justice, we think there is. It is much better to take judges and lawyers seriously and go back to the values they support. Most leaders in the legal sector see as their mission as bringing order to society so that people can prosper and economies can grow. Many modern law firms and legal services companies add value by solving problems with their clients rather than escalating them. Ask those companies what type of regulation and procedures they need to achieve this, and how they want to get paid for the value they add.
Judges can be made responsible for designing procedures under which they solve conflicts. This is better than submitting them to rules that were designed centuries ago. The courts most successful in delivering fair and fast procedures should be applauded rather than subjected to endless appeals. Career opportunities for judges can be open for those who provide innovative and high quality services. Courts, we found out, need a sustainable business model like any other organization. Allow them to bring in more money if they provide more value to society.
True reform requires clear values and complicated deals to bring everyone on board. The Greek crisis can teach us a lot about reforming governance, and also about how reforming the legal system.
Dismissal procedures are the cause of stress and emotional problems. This is just one of the outcomes from HiiL’s Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey conducted by our Measuring Justice team in the Netherlands.
As part of the survey, over 4000 respondents were asked about their experiences with dismissal procedures. Our report on this research was released on 1 July – the same day as the implementation of the revised Work and Security Act (‘Wet Werk en Zekerheid’).
The data collected shows that dismissal has a greater impact than the loss of income. For instance, 42% of people surveyed had experienced reduced self-esteem as a result of their dismissal; 55% said they suffered from psychological problems and stress as a result of termination and another 29% reported physical complaints. Therefore, there is little surprise that 43% of respondents stated that their dismissal had a profound negative impact on their lives.
To find out more about the impact of dismissal procedures in the Netherlands, and to download the full report (in Dutch), click here.
In this unique report, 24 leaders from the Dutch justice sector express a joint vision on the future of the legal infrastructure.
Now also in English version!
How can the justice sector take advantage of the opportunities for innovation? What can be done about the negative image of endless procedures (e.g., financial services, investigation and trials of Srebrenica, high conflict divorce, injury from medical services, etc.)? Dialogue about the justice system and access to justice always returns to an argument about necessary cost savings versus minimal protection of rights.
To change this, the 24 participants advise an ’IKEA-test’ to make rules more practical. Why not introduce incentives to solve problems instead of negotiating and litigating issues via the tournament model? A right to challenge should facilitate new entrants with innovative procedures. The statement also addresses the morality of the legal professions, transparency of the market and the need to set inspiring goals for the sector. The 24 participants are leaders from the bar, judiciary, universities, public sector and companies who supply new forms of legal services.
Click here to read the report (in Dutch) and here for the English version.
Regardless of their differing views, the rights and security of the people of Ukraine need to be protected by the rule of law. Today the country is in dire need of peace and justice. A study in 2010 showed that the most frequent justice needs were related to consumption of goods and services. Many people reported that these problems had significant impact on their lives.
From June to November 2015 HiiL is conducting a justice study in Ukraine. The goal of the study is to understand people’s justice needs. We will specifically study the individual perceptions of the quality of justice procedures and outcomes as well as the costs of their justice journeys.
We expect that for millions of Ukrainians the interaction with the law revolves around fair resolution of disputes with providers of services, public authorities, employers, neighbors and family members. These issues, however, dwarf in comparison with the justice problems of the hundreds of thousands of people who are directly affected by the recent ongoing war. According to UNHCR there are around 1.3 million internally displaced people in the Ukraine. Many others sought temporary or permanent shelter in other countries such as Russia, Belarus, Georgia and various EU countries. These people need identity documents, access to state aid, housing, protection of the abandoned property, etc.
HiiL
According to humanitarian worker Alexandra Dvoretskaya, “…all reasons to move during a war come down to one thing: the craving for a peaceful life in which your kids are not endangered by stray bullets, your husband is not facing captivity or forced labor because a neighbor betrayed you.”
People in Ukraine now face a host of other problems due to the war: housing, jobs, education, access to health care and public services. The story of the twenty-year old Svetlana illustrates these problems. She left the city of Gorlovka with her twelve-year old sister after they witnessed heavy shelling. Their parents stayed behind, although their hopes for peace are quickly evaporating. Svetlana receives some benefits but urgently needs a job. Her other worry is the administrative limbo in which she and her sister have been caught – she’s not a parent and cannot enroll her sister in the local school.
Perhaps worst of all, since Svetlana and her sister fled, they can no longer rely on their social network to cope with their problems. Our studies constantly show that social support is incredibly important when people encounter justice issues.
In order to find out more about the problems of Svetlana and the many others affected by the war in Ukraine, HiiL will conduct a nationwide study by applying its Justice Needs and Satisfaction methodology. The results will be published on https://www.hiil.org.
There is a great opportunity waiting to be seized in Africa. The large number of young professionals in the continent have a huge potential that is waiting to be unlocked. Unfortunately, young entrepreneurs in East and West Africa are often faced with little to no employment opportunities. You can feel the entrepreneurial energy in the air, but starting and growing a business is very difficult in many African countries. That is why, together with the Ford Foundation and the World Economic Forum, HiiL has launched the SME Challenge for East and West Africa.
The SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) Empowerment Innovation Challenge is a new initiative aimed at finding and strengthening innovations that will empower startups and SMEs throughout East and West Africa. More specifically, we are looking for the most promising innovations that address the barriers, regulatory hurdles and bureaucratic red tape faced by youth-led startups in those regions. Many of the obstacles that African ventures face, are related to justice issues. The SME Challenge will therefore not only focus on improving entrepreneurial conditions but also on increasing access to justice.
When we support innovations and ideas that make it easier for businesses to flourish, we structurally improve the business climate in East and West Africa. These initiatives can act as multipliers and make the region more attractive for investors who are waiting for a more stable business environment. Moreover, facilitating the creation of startups will increase the opportunities for meaningful employment for African youth.
In the first week of June, I visited Ghana and Nigeria to officially kick off the SME Challenge. I met with numerous entrepreneurs, incubators and investors throughout the week to build partnerships and lay the foundation of a local Innovating Justice Hub in Lagos. I was truly inspired and humbled by the enormous amount of interest and support and I look forward to working with them during the Challenge.
The winners of the SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge will gain exposure at the regional event in Lagos in October and at the global event in The Hague on 3 and 4 December. Up to $70,000 in seed funding and scale up support can be obtained.
If the results from this Challenge prove to be successful, this model will be extended in the years to come and replicated in other countries around the world. By creating similar Innovating Justice Hubs, we can structurally improve conditions in many growth regions. For more information on how to get involved or how to submit your innovation, click here.
Together we can propel fairness, growth and development!
HiiL’s ambition to provide access to justice to at least 40 million people across the world by 2020 received support at the Innovating Justice Summit held in The Hague on Tuesday, 9 June 2015.
HiiL’s Innovating Justice Accelerator was recognised as a crucial intermediary for developing more legal startups around the globe. In its efforts to improve access to justice, HiiL announced its building local Innovating Justice Hubs and establish an investment fund dedicated to justice innovations.
“That we can create an innovation wave that is similar to the one that has been engulfing the greentech and health sectors. Millions of people have profited from fantastic innovations in those fields,” said HiiL’s Director Sam Muller.
Op 29 Juni 2015 gaven 24 leiders uit de juridische sector op persoonlijke titel in een uniek advies een gemeenschappelijke visie op de toekomst van de juridische infrastructuur.
Hoe kunnen de kansen voor innovatie beter worden benut? Hoe kan de juridische sector afkomen van het beeld van eindeloos voortslepende procedures (woekerpolissen, Srebrenica, vechtscheidingen, medisch letsel)? De discussie over de werking en toegankelijkheid van het rechtssysteem schiet voortdurend in dezelfde groef van bezuiniging tegenover minimale rechtstatelijke waarborgen.
Om hier uit te komen, doet het korte maar krachtige advies suggesties als een IKEA-test die helpt om regels praktischer te maken. Waarom geen prikkels om oplossingen te stimuleren in plaats van om te onderhandelen en te procederen via het tournooimodel? Een right to challenge moet nieuwe toetreders met innovatieve procedures een kans geven. Maar het gaat ook over de moraliteit van de juridische dienstverlening, over grotere transparantie van de markt en over het stellen van aansprekende doelen. De deelnemers zijn leiders uit de advocatuur, de rechtspraak, de universiteiten, het openbaar bestuur en uit bedrijven die nieuwe vormen van juridische dienstverlening aanbieden.
‘Responsiveness’ is not the first word that comes to mind when thinking of civil justice systems. In civil law countries like the Netherlands, we follow a lengthy legislative process if we want new rules governing our procedures. Starting with a working group of experts, a lengthy report with proposals, a slimmed down list after consultation with stakeholders, we gradually improve or procedures. There may be good reasons for such, but it does not make the justice sector responsive to justice needs.
I recently spent some time working in Chennai, India. Modria, our software partner for Rechtwijzer 2.0 has a local branch there. A large part of Modria’s energetic team of software developers gained experience at eBay and PayPal and now work on Online Dispute Resolution.
Rechtwijzer is built on the same software that powers the online dispute resolution for eBay and PayPal. It robustly processes over 60 million disputes per year and runs in the cloud. An important feature is its configurability. During my trip, I learned more about the amazing potential and configuration power of the technology powering Rechtwijzer 2.0.
The Rechtwijzer platform can very quickly respond to the specific justice needs of its users. Its design does not depart from the regulatory limitations. Instead, it follows the dispute behaviour of people. What steps do they take, what information are they looking for, what support may help them? We designed Rechtwijzer 2.0 so people find legal information when they need it. It allows people work in their own words, in their own pace and from their own homes. And professionals support is available with a click of a button.
Finding out to what extent this meets justice needs can only be done in practice. What is ‘just-in-time’ delivery of legal information and when is it ‘too early’ or ‘too late’? We can only learn through an ongoing dialogue with users.
Learning and improving is thus more a matter of tinkering. Trying new things and bring it back to the users to learn from them whether it works. With Rechtwijzer 2.0, it is more a matter of configuring the software powering our procedures in small steps. Rather than pursuing wholesale change of the rules of procedure.
At HiiL, we are currently building such capacity. How long before our courts and Ministries of Justice hire their first justice technology engineers?
In early August, my community, West Point- the largest and poorest township in Monrovia- was wracked by violence and instability of a kind not seen since the end of our long-running civil war in 2003. In fact, many citizens noted that the War was not nearly as bad as the rebels never showed any interest in West Point- there was never anything to steal.
My organization, the West Point Health and Sanitation Organization (WPHSO), has been in operation for more than a decade. The community is located on a sandy peninsula prone to flooding and with no sewerage, so sanitation was the issue we focused on initially. But it quickly became evident that poverty is a breeding ground for crime and injustice. So for the past year, with the assistance of our friends at the Accountability Lab, we have turned towards alternative dispute resolution as a means of strengthening our community cohesion.
Like many Liberians, we underestimated the threat of Ebola. Although the entertainment spots and bars in West Point often blasted a popular Ebola awareness song from April to July last year, most of us thought that the virus was a ploy by the government to steal aid money.
To the best of my knowledge, we did not see our first cases of the virus until the end of the July. This was the same time the government and international community began to take the disease much more seriously. In August, an Ebola treatment center was established in West Point to help us be better prepare to deal with the virus- but many of the patients were from outside the community and many of us were scared of becoming infected. Anger grew quickly.
The center was looted, patients fled, and the situation turned into a crisis. The very next day a meeting of community leaders and organizations was convened and I was named the Secretary General of the newly constituted West Point Ebola Task Force.
A few days later, the government, in a panic, placed a quarantine on West Point. Initially, this contributed to further tensions as protestors clashed with security officials and a young boy was shot in the leg and slowly bled to death. During this time of extreme tension, our task force was the community’s only link with the outside world. Members of the Task Force were able to travel to meetings with the government and international partners under a security escort.
Due to our geography, there is only one access point in and out of the community. A narrow and windy paved road (the only tarred road in a community of 100,000) is normally lined with hundreds of vendors hawking their goods. Motorcycle taxis buzz along, constantly swerving to avoid the pedestrians as there are no sidewalks. During the quarantine the economy collapsed. Our local court and police station were closed.
Justice became a central issue for citizens. Our mediators were at the forefront of addressing citizen grievances around families that had been neglected in the distribution of rations. We also collaborated with efforts to map the community and develop a system to track and identify households that needed help. People did not have enough to eat and there were significant attempts to manipulate the system to obtain extra quantities of the free rice, beans, and oil. We led efforts to resolve disputes, ensure the integrity of the system and show international donors that a complex distribution chain could be managed in West Point.
The quarantine was lifted but a disastrous national curfew remained in place which prevented fisherman from taking to sea early in the morning at optimal fishing times. It also led to many of the fish spoiling as our market women could not sell their goods on time. Many tried to flout the quarantine and were arrested and we worked to mediate those disputes too.
Overall, we resolved over 40 disputes during the months of August and September when Ebola related confusion was at its peak (we even resolved a dispute featuring the town crier we use to promote our work). Who knows what might have happened if these problems had been allowed to grow, and we are very proud of the progress we were able to make.
The situation has now greatly improved, but is still very hard. Many of us cannot afford school fees for our children; and often barely have enough to eat. Trust in the government is slowly returning but remains significantly lower than pre-Ebola levels. The recovery process will be slow- going forwards, and we will need to come together and work to heal the community over time. This will not be easy, but it is all we can do.
Ebola has been a brutal wake-up call for all of us and we’ve found that justice is at the heart of the challenges we face. We will continue to provide mediation services to citizens- free of charge and 24 hours a day- to build our community back better than before. With trust, we will find ways to deal with the next crisis.
Thomas Tweh is Executive Director of the West Point Health and Sanitation Organization and the Secretary-General of the West Point Ebola Task Force. This blog was supported by Brooks Marmon of the Accountability Lab.
This report was written by Esmée A. Bickel, Marian A. J. van Dijk, and Dr. Ellen Giebels from Twente University
In this report we present the first results of a research project on online interventions in legal conflicts. First of all, this report provides an evaluation of the Dutch website Rechtwijzer.nl. Rechtwijzer.nl offers legal aid and assists parties in solving legal conflicts. We also looked at the conflicts and conflict processes of both conflict parties who did and those who did not use Rechtwijzer.
We took a longitudinal approach, which enabled us to examine the developments of legal conflicts as well as short and long-term effects of Rechtwijzer.nl. We looked at divorce conflicts and consumer conflicts. By answering digital questionnaires, 1553 respondents (467 respondents going through a divorce and 1086 respondents dealing with a consumer conflict) participated in the research.
Rechtwijzer visitors gave an overall positive evaluation of the website. They gave the website a very positive grade (7.51 for divorces and 7.29 for consumer conflicts) and were inclined to recommend the website to others. We also analysed who the visitors of Rechtwijzer were, and aimed to give an overview of their conflicts.
Rechtwijzer visitors were relatively in the beginning of their process, indicating that Rechtwijzer might be especially useful for orienting on, and gaining information about, the conflict process. The reported increase in the amount of communication between conflict parties in a divorce after the Rechtwijzer visit could possibly point to a role for Rechtwijzer as a starting point for engaging in negotiations towards a divorce agreement with the other party.
Our results also showed that Rechtwijzer visitors dealt with very complex conflicts, involving relatively high stakes, which were characterized by high levels of conflict stress and escalation.
Divorce conflicts for which advice was sought on Rechtwijzer.nl, were characterized by high levels of dependence asymmetry. Respondents, especially women, felt more dependent on their (ex-)partner than vice versa. Many respondents going through a divorce had additional concerns, such as financial concerns about serious debts or an impending decline in income.
Consumer conflicts for which advice was sought on Rechtwijzer.nl generally involved large amounts of money. Moreover, the majority of these respondents did not have legal expenses insurance. This underlines the importance of costless or relatively low-prized information resources and aid bodies, such as Rechtwijzer.
We found no clear evidence for an effect of Rechtwijzer on escalation or stress in the short term. Although we did not see a difference in self-efficacy scores before and after the use of Rechtwijzer, Rechtwijzer users did report that they felt more able to solve issues related to their divorce after using Rechtwijzer. These results suggest a short term effect of Rechtwijzer on self-efficacy.
In late July last year, my organization, the Citizens Bureau for Development and Productivity (Citizens Bureau) formally launched a community mediation program in Logan Town, Monrovia. With technical support from the Accountability Lab (a local NGO) and seed-funding from Trust Africa (a pan-African grantmaker) we had very high hopes. Packed in a hot, unlighted church for the launch event were civil society representatives, government officials, and personnel of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
At the time, we could scarcely have imagined that just days later Patrick Sawyer, a government consultant, would die from Ebola in Nigeria, igniting global fears of a disease that had been percolating in Liberia for months. While our challenges in establishing operations during Ebola were formidable, they are emblematic of the historical trials we have endured and which continue to manifest themselves in a variety of ways – from physical conflict to outbreaks of disease.
Times have been difficult since the launch- we’ve been afflicted by a pervasive fear and mistrust, similar to that which emerged during the 14 year civil war in our country. While many cultural practices have changed overnight to combat Ebola, the challenging circumstances that make life hard for Liberians have not. A lack of accountability, access to justice, and equal opportunities for all have led to immense tensions. In West Point, a low-income community in Monrovia (and home to our sister mediation organization), an Ebola treatment center was ransacked and a child was shot during a protest calling for the removal of a barricade quarantining the community. Most of these cases directly or indirectly involve children, who are of course the future of our country and those who will be responsible for sustaining our development efforts.
While sensational reporting grabs international headlines, it is the unreported everyday challenges that define life in Liberia and which our citizens struggle with every day. During my service as a member of the Liberian National Police, I experienced firsthand the importance of building community trust in the institutions of the state. Now with the Citizens Bureau, we seek to supplement the capacity of the state, saving affected parties time and money while using local mediators to hear civil complaints and offer non-binding solutions.
The disputes we mediate come in a variety of forms. Recently, a young girl called Deborah* came to us in tears, explaining that she was forced to sell cassava on the street. Our team stepped in and worked with her guardian to see if there was a better way to supplement their income and keep the girl in school. Since then we’ve provided her with a scholarship and we are working within the community to monitor her progress in school as it reopens, following a prolonged closure due to Ebola.
In another instance, our mediators prevented an angry crowd from lynching a teenage thief. We identified the primary culprit responsible for beating the thief and impressed upon him that mob justice was not the way to solve the problem. We also worked with the thief and the community to rebuild trust. We sat the thief down with the victims several times to talk through the issues- he admitted wrongdoing, the property was returned, he was forgiven for his actions, and those he had violated have played a leading role in helping him become a more productive member of the community.
In another case, a woman called Bethany came to us distraught at the fact that her niece was being accused by the community of being a witch. Our team stepped in and persuaded the community that witchcraft does not exist and that they should work to integrate her into society. It took time (it was one of our longest running mediations to date), but now Bethany’s niece is living harmoniously in Logan Town.
Despite the suffering, the attention Liberia is currently receiving as a result of Ebola presents an opportunity for our country. Civil society organizations like the Citizens Bureau are striving to ensure that this moment is seized and that our society is transformed for the better through efforts to build trust and work collaboratively within communities. We are taking the lead, but like the Ebola response, this is a global effort. We as Liberians need to find the solutions to our challenges, and we are doing so. Let’s forge a silver-lining from this latest catastrophe to empower ourselves, protect our children, and embrace a better future.
John Kamma is Executive Director of the Citizens Bureau. The Accountability Lab Liberia supported him in writing this blog.
On 26 November 2014, five winners of the Innovating Justice Awards went home with a total of €160.000 in seed-investments to kickstart their projects. In this blog, we look at the progress of JUST, WageIndicator Foundation and Accountability Lab, and learn more about their next steps.
Winners of the Innovating Justice Awards 2014
Made in Africa won the Living Wage Innovation Challenge and received €50,000 from the C&A Foundation. JUST received €30,000 and the WageIndicator Foundation received €20,000 to continue their mission. Kanan Dhru’s LawForMe won the Innovating Justice Awards and received a total of €40,000 from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and HiiL. Blair Glencorse got a special investment of €20,000 from the Dutch Ministry to scale the Community Justice Teams that his organisation trains in Liberia.
JUST
Natalie Grillon and Shahd ElShehail are working on their first iterations as we speak. They are currently visiting a supplier factory in India. JUST tells the stories behind clothing, Natalie and Shahd explain, with easy-to-access data. The investment of the C&A Foundation allows Natalie and Shahd to pilot their survey with factory workers. They have also started work on the IT development design of their application. Over the next few months, they are running a new pilot and will continue developing their data aggregation methods and consumer facing material.
WageIndicator Foundation
Paulien Osse and her team could choose from a list of many countries to implement their programme. The WageIndicator Foundation runs its Wages in Context programme in over 60 countries. They have an extensive database of up-to-date monthly living wages and other statistics for many industries and countries. Their database provides a fact-based tool that makes realistic negotiations on wages possible. This data is needed during wage negotiations, for example between factory owners and workers or workers’ associations, when they need to determine how high a living wage actually is in a specific local context.
Last year, the WageIndicator Foundation went to Mozambique, as winners of the 2013 Awards. This year, they decided to use the funds to deploy their living wage measuring tool in Indonesia. In fact, they go beyond the numbers and also train trade union negotiators and employers on how to use the available data to set up fair living wages for their workers.
Community Justice Teams
Blair Glencorse has been travelling the world since November, even making his way to Davos for the World Economic Forum. Blair and his team at the Accountability Lab train local Community Justice Teams on mediating disputes in Liberia. They have continued to do so amidst the Ebola crisis, which has created a wide range of legal problems. This indeed underlines the need of such programmes during early post-crisis recovery. Though there are hopeful signs of recovery, Ebola continues to take its toll on the societies in West Africa. Blair and his colleagues remain positive about ‘The Ebola Opportunity’. Over the next few months, the Community Justice Teams will expand to two new communities in Monrovia, West Point and Logal Town. They also continue to look for international partnerships with the goal of scaling Community Justice Teams with other communities and countries.
Over the past couple of months, a number of early adopters have started to organise their divorce plan on the renewed Rechtwijzer. This yields extremely useful feedback to improve this minimum viable product.
‘Rechtwijzer Uit Elkaar’ – as the Dutch version of the online platform is called – allows citizens to draft their divorce plan while staying in control of the process, outcome and costs.
Throughout the development, we have tested Rechtwijzer within a series of focus groups. The drawback to these focus groups, however, was that those who were testing the platform were not actually going through a divorce. That is why it was an exciting moment when, in November of last year, Rechtwijzer quietly went live. Here are the statistics so far:
24 persons have completed the intake and are waiting for their partner to do the same
23 couples are currently working on their divorce plan
11 couples have sent their divorce plan to an expert for review
4 couples have passed the review and have finalised their divorce
We have spoken to a number of these early testers to gather feedback. Their experiences will serve as primary input for the improvement process of the Rechtwijzer platform. So far, we have heard that they highly appreciate the freedom to work on their divorce plan whenever and wherever they choose. Moreover, the structure of the platform helps them go through all the necessary arrangements to end up with a sustainable divorce plan. The users have also made suggestions for further improvements: providing more information on issues like child alimony, having access to more detailed model agreements and an automated notification system to notify users when experts have commented on their plan, to name a few.
The experts – the lawyers who review the divorce plan or act as a mediator or arbitrator when necessary – are true pioneers in the legal field. Sometimes, they need to address issues that the platform itself has not fixed yet. For example, we discovered that not all people are optimally using the chat function of Rechtwijzer. The chat function is designed as an instrument for experts to track the dialogue that leads up to the final agreement; however, some users chose to communicate through other means (email, phone, in-person, etc.) before they write-up their solution. This sometimes leaves the experts with scarce material to use in their decision-making. Fortunately, this problem can be rectified and will be taken into account during the evaluation and upgrading phase.
We will continuously work with our partners, the Dutch Legal Aid Board and Modria, to release new and improved versions of the platform. That way, this minimum viable product – the version of the product that is ready to be presented but is by no means complete yet- will evolve over time, based on the experiences of the testers.
The next step for Rechtwijzer will be connecting an informational website to the platform, which will make the service easy to find when searching for it online. This is another exciting step in the journey towards bringing self-help to people for solving their justice problems of everyday life.
Yemen has been in the news a lot recently: Shiite (Houthi) rebels assumed power over the country, demonstrations against them are suppressed, car bombs explode regularly in Sana’a, the former President is virtually under house arrest, and there is a clear connection between the Charlie Hebdo attacks and Yemen.
We have a different view on Yemen. Radicalization is a complex phenomenon for which there are no easy explanations; however, there can be no denying that ingrained feelings of injustice are in the mix of ingredients that make it happen. A Houthi representative explains the growth of his own movement: “The experience of suffering and injustice has made many people sympathetic to Ansar Allah (military wing of the Shiite Houthi Movement). » There is evidence to back this up.
A large justice needs survey conducted by HiiL in 2014 tells us that the people of Yemen have a lot of justice needs but obtain very little fairness. Ninety four percent of the respondents report a significant problem that required a justice process in the past four years. That is enormously high by all standards. Interestingly, the Yemeni women, despite the general perception of their lower social status, report as many problems as men. Most Yemenis report relatively common problems – quarrels with neighbours, petty crimes, disputes over land, housing, and consumer problems. Prevalence of all these problems is, however, very high.
What stands out from the data is that effective justice processes are difficult to find. Very few Yemenis go to courts – the slow, expensive and unpredictable processes force the people to look for justice elsewhere. Sheikhs are present in every community and are regarded as alternative authorities in many situations that require a decision based on fairness and neutrality; however, some sheikhs are more trusted than others. Some are seen as fair while others are perceived as mainly self-interested. In this environment many Yemenis seek resolution to their legal problems within family and other close community structures. Still, many reportedly abandon their justice problems altogether and accept that there is no fairness and justice.
The face-to-face interviews with a small sample of the Yemeni people from our survey confirm this overall picture. Raw power is hardly mitigated through justice processes, and it seems that for Yemen, ‘might is right’ rings true. This means that a lot of people simply have to put up with an absence of justice. These feelings accumulate and spread like cancerous cells across the social tissue. It is not difficult to see how young people (60% of the population is under 25 years old), especially many of the young men, who face daily unfairness, scanty work opportunities and general lack of meaning in life, embrace radical causes.
When drones and military operations come to deal with radicals, a vicious cycle of unfairness and injustice repeats itself that ultimately results in more violence. What Yemen clearly needs – perhaps even more so than a perfect democracy – is more justice and less people who feel oppressed and marginalized. Enough data has been collected to know where the problems are. The international community, however, must realise by now that it is difficult to achieve justice with the old and tried approaches. What is needed are smart justice innovation processes: processes that help Yemenis develop justice procedures that are perceived as neutral, affordable, and produce a fair outcome. Yemen is just like any other country in that respect.
Despite the abundance of sectarian violence, radical terrorism, dysfunctional politics and deepening humanitarian crises – life in Yemen goes on. Electricity and water is off for most of the time but the people have learnt to adapt to this. The fortunate, the one that can afford it, use power generators and install water tank on their roofs. Despite the sometime desperate local situation, children still go to school. The traffic in Sana’a and the other big cities is as jammed and smelly as ever and the markets are thriving ad bustling with buyers and sellers. Although the people are afraid and concerned about their security and about the future of the country, life carries on.
Our latest report Family, justice and fairness in Yemen: the impact of family problems on Yemeni women discusses the family justice needs of women in Yemen. In 2014 we interviewed 3000 randomly selected women and men from 3 governorates – Sana’s, Taiz and Aden. A stunning 94% of the respondents in the survey reported that in the last 4 years they had to deal with one more serious and impactful justice needs [check out our full report ]. One out of 7 of these problems (14%) were related to the family domain. As everywhere else the people of Yemen need protection and certainty for their family relationships.
Almost half of the family problems are about divorce and separation. Before the study different legal experts were arguing that Yemeni women barely encounter justice problems. To the opposite the data shows that women experience justice needs around divorce and separation almost 3 times more often than men. We heard many stories about the challenges that divorce or separation imposes on women.“Our neighbor had a problem with her husband. He was working abroad and whenever he came back tensions arose. For a long time she considered herself a slave in her husband’s paternal house, left without money and treated badly.
After many years of struggling the woman decided to go to her father’s house and then she went to court and asked for divorce but the judge did not see this as justification for divorce. The divorce petition was rejected. Then she decided to pursue a khul’, which is a woman’s right to abandon her husband, where she can demand from the judge to give her divorce. But she will lose the dowry. So at the end she had to choose between continuing the same life or going for a khul’ and losing her only capital. At the end she chose to stay at her father’s house.”
In these and millions of other cases Yemeni women need protection from the law for their family relationships. The access to such mechanisms, however, is difficult. Only 15% of the women who report serious family problems have ever consulted a lawyer. Most Yemeni women have to rely in such situations on family, friends and sheikhs. It is not difficult to imagine how these sources of advice and dispute resolution apply and reinforce existing patterns of inequality and exclusion. As a result we see that many women say that the family problems left very severe or severe effect on their lives; many experienced violence.
Our index of the costs and quality of the paths to justice shows that the interviewed women see the existing processes as rather dysfunctional in terms of their process and outcome fairness. These and many other findings can be found out in HiiL’s report Family, justice and fairness in Yemen: the impact of family problems on Yemeni women.
2015 has been declared the International Year of Evaluation. This is good news for us. In this post I will try to quantify the work from HiiL’s Measuring & Evaluation team from over the past year. We measured justice in many different places around the world. From The Netherlands to Indonesia, we believe these figures are a great headway towards 2015, the International Year of Evaluation.
We started 2014 with asking more than 4000 people in The Netherlands about their justice needs and experiences. We found that the people in the lowlands most frequently experience consumer problems, disputes with neighbours and disagreements around employment. Our tool for measuring the costs and quality of access to justice shows that the users of justice in The Netherlands expect major improvements on most paths to justice.
Then we proceeded with studying people’s perspective on justice in Yemen. 2014 was not an easy year for the people of this impoverished yet proud and beautiful country. We interviewed many men and women to learn that almost every person had to deal with a serious and impactful justice problem. Land, crime and family matters are amongst the most frequent categories of problems. Our study also shows how the women of Yemen have to cope with numerous justice problems in an environment which provides little access to justice.
Despite the on-going violence in Mali we managed to interview more than 8000 people from all but one province. In this country, people mostly rely on their social and communal networks to seek and achieve justice. Not surprisingly, formal justice institutions and mechanisms play a limited role in the complex justice environment in Mali.
Indonesia was the fourth country where we conducted a major study. Our sample there was limited – only 2400 people from 5 provinces. Therefore, we only draw preliminary findings and seek ways to collect more data. One specific thing about the justice needs in Indonesia is that relatively few people report a legal problem. It is an interesting example of how the social culture, which is based on conflict-avoidance norms and values, is interfering with people’s perceptions about conflict and disputes.
These and a couple of other projects kept us very busy in 2014. For 2015 we want to study justice needs in more societies. This will help us build a global database with data about justice as it has been perceived by end users. Such a database will be a powerful tool for identifying challenges but also for pinpointing paths to justice which deliver justice according to people’s needs and expectations. Because there is no doubt that in 2015 billions of people will still need more justice and fairness in their lives, our work in measuring justice needs will be just as important as ever.
The 2014 Innovating Justice Forum set out to map opportunities, connect new partners strengthen innovations and learn from innovators.
In the months leading up to the Forum, 9 finalists – 6 focused on justice delivery and 3 on living wages – had been carefully selected based on their impact, uniqueness, scalability and financial sustainability. They went through a process of initial scouting and selection, online voting, wildcard selection, and a jury evaluation to decide who would win the 2014 Innovating Justice Awards and Living Wage Innovation Challenge.
Supporting Ideas
The Forum showed that innovators and entrepreneurs often face similar questions: How do I convince others of my passion? How do I approach the many, many stakeholders in my field? How do we unite them and overcome reluctance towards a new approach? And from a business perspective: How do I create a sustainable business model and revenue stream? And on a more personal level: How do I deal with the loneliness of being the first to try something new?
The amount of ideas – sometimes daydreamingly ambitious – that came their way during the Forum may have been overwhelming. But it was also a sign that people are convinced of the impact that innovations can have and that any questions of doubt can be answered.
Getting It Done
From enhancing access to justice to establishing fair rights for factory workers, from the development of the rule of law to creating living wages in the supply chain of the Ready Made Garment-industry, innovation and entrepreneurship are about getting it done.
However, innovators also face many challenges. While having different solutions to different problems, they typically encounter many different stakeholders, each with widely diverging interests. In line with such challenges, it was argued that innovations should not be seen as a silver bullet for large societal problems. And there is truth in this. Social, political and economic institutions that sustain inequality or block access to justice are not easily changed.
In similar fashion, journalist Michael Hobbes warned in a recent article about such thinking. Yet at the same time, Hobbes upholds the argument that development and innovations do have an impact. And the Forum saw many who wish to strengthen the rule of law and improve access to justice – cross-industry and cross-society – to tackle problems and tackle them in a way that others have not done before.
Getting More Done
Innovation and entrepreneurship are also about getting more done. Whether it means resolving disputes online, assuring property rights for the poor, or establishing fair living wages and working rights in complicated industries. So, rather than questioning whether innovations can solve all problems at once, the question should focus on what each innovation can achieve and what can be done to overcome their impediments, to get more of these innovations done.
In this spirit, the 2014 Innovating Justice Forum set out to map, connect, strengthen and learn, by bringing together entrepreneurs, governments, politicians, academic institutions, NGOs and private businesses in a global community of justice innovation. Join us again for next year’s Innovating Justice Forum on 3 and 4 December 2015, to get more done.
By law, all people of Nepal are equal. In 1963, the caste system was declared obsolete and was abolished. The reality, however, is somewhat different. Inequalities, social practices and sheer poverty reinforce the rigid caste system which assigns the people to categories by the virtue of birth, and largely predefines their development and possibilities.
My friend Hast Banadur Sunar is national project coordinator at the Dalit NGO Federation. He and his colleagues work hard to protect the rights of the Dalit people. According to various estimations, there are between 3-4 million Dalits in Nepal. Dalit is a group (with many sub-groups) that make up the lowest caste. They are considered impure and « untouchable. » As such they are discriminated in cultural, religious, education and work practices. Traditionally they receive much less. They are underrepresented in the civil service and overrepresented in the low-paid occupations.
How is Hast helping the Dalit people? He and his colleagues use the law to empower them. Many people in Nepal live outside the law due to the sheer lack of identity documents. Again, Dalits are overrepresented in this ill-fated group. In the last 3 years, Hast and his colleagues established a program that has helped more than 62 000 Nepalese women and men to obtain citizenship certificates, birth certificates or marriage certificates.
Hast is a Dalit himself. But he and his colleagues do not differentiate among the people who need assistance. They have also helped thousands of upper-class people (Brahmins and Kshetri), as well as indigenous Janajati to obtain identity documents. I find this a great example of how discrimination can be countered with equal application of the law.
Thanks to Hast and his colleagues, 62 000 people have obtained identity documents. HiiL Innovating Justice is working together with the Dalit NGO Federation, Open Society Justice Initiative and several other partners to measure and evaluate the impact of the program. We will work to understand how access to the law is changing the lives of the Nepalese men and women who have received their documents. Our focus will be to understand how having a legal document affects people’s abilities to solve their needs for justice and prosperity. Together we want to provide evidence of the impact that Hast and his colleagues make in the lives of the people who need justice the most.
Roger Smith published a new report in which he provides an initial review of the Rechtwijzer 2.0 application that we developed for the Dutch Legal Aid Board, and currently configuring for the Legal Services Society in British Columbia. It is encouraging to have such a distinguished access to justice researcher qualify it as “the cutting edge in delivery of legal services on the internet”.
He also raises some questions:
“Will people pay for it?” People have to pay a modest fee to get access to the problem-solving support, tools, dialogue-interface, model solutions and online delivery of professional neutral interventions. The fee is needed to ensure that the application can be constantly tested, updated and improved.
“How will the professionals in the supply chain respond to the repackaging and unbundling?” Innovation of dispute resolution services tends to trigger some resistance by some (and let us not forget that there is typically a substantial number of early adopters as well, also in the legal profession).
“How can courts and tribunals accommodate and connect to it?” An application like the Rechtwijzer 2.0 has the potential to create value throughout the supply chain.
I feel these questions are spot on. Experiences from users (professional and other) are crucial in answering them.
We need to find out in practice how we can optimise it, make it acceptable and how to make it work for others in the justice supply chain. It is only through the interaction with end users that innovations like the Rechtwijzer can accelerate.
That is why it is so important that we have started our dialogue with the users. Some weeks ago, the Dutch Legal Aid Board accepted the first cases to the Rechtwijzer 2.0 application for divorce and separation in The Netherlands. This allows us to learn from real experiences and user feedback. So we can learn how we can make the Rechtwijzer work in a way that answers the questions of Roger Smith positively. It speaks for itself that we carefully monitor and support these initial users.
From a justice technology architecture perspective, these experiences are also crucially important for testing the front-end and workflow innovations we designed at HiiL. For example:
Problem-solving intake that does not focus on right and positions but on interests and initial ideas
Dialogue interface that empowers users
Joint agreement drafter that facilitates real cooperation through a Google Docs’ type of feature
Model solutions as building block agreement text for people to start from, adapt and customise
Wide availability of added value services and self-help tools
Availability of repackaged, unbundled neutral dispute resolution services
Initial user feedback, research and our experience suggest that these types of justice technology innovations help the field of online dispute resolution move beyond fast, fair and efficient. Let us listen to our users to learn how to really make justice technology work for them.
The legal landscape is shaped by all kinds of societal forces. These trends create opportunities for the government, judiciary, legal profession and justice system users. The Ministry of Law of Singapore is looking ahead and asked HiiL to identify the most important driving forces in the legal field.
The study led to a list of global, regional, and domestic trends that are likely to shape Singapore’s laws, legal system and legal profession in the coming years. The impact of these driving forces on three core functions of a legal system – rulemaking, enforcement and compliance – was described. We also suggested indicators that can enable measuring the extent of each driving force. The Ministry plans to use the driving forces and indicators in their strategy making.
The driving forces were selected based on interviews with twenty-two experts and five Lab Sessions involving thirty-one thought leaders and leaders of change. In addition, the database of international trends in legal systems and legal services collected by HiiL was used, as well as trends found in over fifty major publications in the legal and governance fields, issued by international organisations, think tanks, and consultancies.
Some driving forces have similar impacts on the legal landscape. Others may pull the systems for rulemaking, enforcement and compliance, and conflict resolution in different directions. The report also illustrates developments that result from interactions between different driving forces.
There is a great saying attributed to Lao Tzu: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, and they say we did it ourselves.”
This sentence embodies leadership in the justice sector really well.
At HiiL Innovating Justice we have studied justice leadership and its role in justice change extensively. There is no CEO in the justice sector. It is a system with many silos (some of which have a rule of law purpose) and many stakeholders. Effective justice leaders need to constantly build constituencies, both internal an external, and across silos. Constituencies within government; across sectors like the judiciary, the prosecution, the bar association and civil society organisations; and towards other powerful actors. An effective justice leader is a navigator who is able to find compromises between groups, and who can get to the end result by being pragmatic without sacrificing bottom lines.
He/she works in a power environment but also has to stand for principles. Rule of law itself is about mitigating power. This can be very challenging, particularly in some environments like post-revolutionary states. Justice change can threaten power structures, illegally obtained riches, economic interests. The leader needs to constantly gauge his/her moral compass against the realities that are being faced and decide which compromise is acceptable to get to the desired result.
The Justice Leadership Group that we have launched last week has 7 leaders who have successfully managed to do all this, leading to tangible justice change for the better in their country and beyond. In alphabetical order:
Mr Sallahedin Al Bashir (former minister of justice of Jordan)
Mr Ernst Hirsch Ballin (former minister of justice of The Netherlands)
Mr Tharcisse Karugarama (former minister of justice of Rwanda)
Ms Kalthoum Kannou (member of the cour de cassation of Tunisia, presidential candidate, and leader of the revolution that toppled Ben Ali). She is not here. Judge Kannou just ran for president in Tunisia, as an independent candidate, or a secular, democratic, rule of law platform.
Ms Athaliah Molokomme (Attorney General of Botswana)
Mr Willy Mutunga (Chief Justice of Kenya)
Ms Claudia Paz y Paz (former prosecutor General of Guatemala). Ms. Paz y Paz’s term was brutally shortened following her extremely courage work to fight crime and violence in her country, up to the highest levels.
Their impressive stories and achievements can be read on the website www.justiceleaders.org. In my interactions I am always so struck by their modesty. They will never tell you. It is us who call them leaders – they rarely do that themselves.
The Justice Leadership group supports justice leaders in the challenges they face, responds to their requests as well as takes action of its own volition. Having served justice and the people for a long period, we have come together to support others who have accepted the task and the challenge of serving justice in their societies. The Justice Leadership group was initiated by individuals who have a track record in justice change.
The Justice Leadership Group is strongly supported by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. In that, the ministry takes a leadership role in leadership.
To see the photo album of the Justice Leaders Group Lanch, please click here.
On request of the Dutch Regulatory Body for Notaries (Koninklijke Notariële Beroepsorganisatie, KNB), HiiL explored the possible impact of innovation on the Dutch notary profession. HiiL’s report concludes that that trends such as IT platforms and the forming of hybrids between professions are a given. A range of innovations are under way: certainly from outside the profession.
There is a substantial and rich potential of customer needs that are not fully served by the profession. Moreover, notaries can move towards at least five business models that build on the strengths of the profession and are extensions of current ways of organizing notary practices.
These models are very different, however, in their attitude to the profession and in the way the organization must be run. Every model makes use of different opportunities and faces entirely different challenges.
This requires a complex strategy for the profession as a whole. A good process to arrive at this is essential.
HiiL Innovating Justice and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs are pleased to announce the public launch of the Justice Leadership Foundation on Friday 28 November at Johan de Witthuis in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Justice Leadership Foundation is an initiative that brings together a group of seven carefully selected justice leaders, all of whom are former or current members of the government, and are credited with leading remarkable justice change in the countries they have served. They will work together to assist senior justice leaders lead more effectively based on solid understanding of the special characteristics of transformative leadership in the justice sector, specifically in countries in transition.
Sam Muller, HiiL’s director says: “There is a tendency by some to overestimate leadership. In the justice sector, it is constantly underestimated. The seven Justice Leaders brought together in this group show by their examples what effective justice leadership can change. We need more of it and HiiL is very proud to be part of the setting up this important body. »
“The justice leaders have various backgrounds,” says Christiaan Rebergen, director-general International Cooperation of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “But the challenges they face often are very much comparable. By having these people exchange knowledge and experience, others are supported to work more effectively on improving the justice sector. »
Around the world, legal systems and legal professionals, as well as social entrepreneurs are challenged with delivering more justice, to more people but with fewer resources. Innovations in the ready-made garment industry are helping global supply chains with the growing pressure of providing stable and fair conditions to its workers. We need more innovators who are up to the task. Governments, corporations and NGOs also need to learn how to work with them to strengthen their effectiveness, impact and return on investment.
This year, HiiL Innovating Justice, C&A Foundation, and Next2Company partnered together in organising the 5th Annual Innovating Justice Forum: an Innovation Boostcamp on Justice Delivery and Living Wages. The goal of the event was to put justice and living wage innovators right in the centre. During the first day of the Boostcamp, we began by preparing the 9 finalists from this year’s innovation selection round – 6 innovators focused on justice delivery and 3 on living wages – with delivering great pitches.
In the afternoon, we welcomed external stakeholders who learned about different innovation partnership perspectives from a panel made up of international development experts and the business and investor community. All participants had a chance to work with the finalists in both group and individual work sessions, ask questions about their future plans and give constructive feedback on their business models.
The second day of the forum was held in the Peace Palace – the most iconic building in the city of peace and justice, built with the very purpose of bringing innovation to the rule of law. After an insightful panel discussion on the challenges to justice, we began with the innovator’s pitches, followed by small group sessions to build on strengths, discuss challenges, and discover synergies. The rest of the day was packed with fascinating speakers and great networking opportunities.
The event closed with an announcement and celebration of this year’s award winners. The event closed with an announcement and celebration of this year’s award winners:
Award for Innovative Ideas: LawForMe will receive €20 000 from HiiL and € 20 000 from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs in seed funding
Award for Living Wage Innovation Challenge: Made in Africa will receive € 50 000 in seed funding
All 9 finalists will receive coaching and have the potential for strategic partnership building.
Wilfred de Wever, Head of Innovating Justice Hub at HiiL, said: “This year’s Innovating Justice Forum offered a great platform for exchanging ideas among innovators and with justice and living wage experts.
“Together, we can build iconic projects that will boost the development of reasonably fair and stable business environments.”
This week I met a young woman named works long hours at a garment factory while her ailing mother cares for her daughter. She brings home just over the recently increased monthly minimum wage of 5300 Taka (or $68).
This is what she pays out each month for living expenses:
2000 Taka for a rented room with just enough space for a bed (and is shared across 4 people)
500 Taka for electricity for the room
300 Taka for electricity to cook her food (located outside of her single room)
3000 Taka for private school and tutor
It became clear in our discussion that Shimu has a bit of support. Her brother helps to pay for some of her daughter’s private school fees. She described the poor quality of education of public schools, adding that private schools are not much better, making it necessary to bring in an external tutor to fill the gaps. Clearly, this is not sustainable. Something has to change for Shimu to earn enough to cover her needs. But what kind of change?
The concept of living wage is complex and cannot be solved by any one actor. For employers to materially and sustainably increase wages, new value needs to be created. We’ve seen many different ways to do this in the factories, from increasing productivity to reducing costs. But this is not enough. Such measures need to be accompanied by efforts to give workers a stronger and more confident voice and through better dialogue with management and representation through independent committees or unions.
Even with an increase in take-home pay, garment workers like Shimu still struggle. In Dhaka, I heard that landlords of slum housing have raised the cost of rent to match the recent minimum wage increase.. The slum housing I visited this week had a per square meter cost higher than what you would see in parts of Europe! In fact, according to Iqbal Habib, a leading Bangladeshi architect and environmental activist, the square footage of slum housing is about 36 Taka vs. only 23 Taka for more luxury accommodation in the cities best neighborhoods!
And, even more worryingly, each the four young women I met that day in Dhaka’s Rasulbagh slum had lost the savings they had managed to scrape together by investing with a “local cooperative” who promised high returns. Without proper regulation and consumer protection, these scams persist and take advantage of the most disadvantaged.
In this challenging context, getting to a living wage is a complex journey where multiple actors – government, employers, buyers, workers’ representatives and unions and consumer champions – all have a critical role to play. And as it takes time to step into these roles and strengthen those institutions that work toward living wages – sometimes the smallest innovations can have a “nudging” effect on these actors. That’s why we, in partnership with HiiL have designed the Living Wage Innovation Challenge which aims to identify and scale those enablers that can help create more transparency, a stronger worker voice, more shared value, and ultimately, better livelihoods for the men and women who work in the garment industry.
I am proud to celebrate, on November 26th, the winners of this challenge, each of which offers a meaningful contribution to the efforts to enable a living wage. And I hope that their innovations, and ongoing efforts of the many actors who influence living wage, will result in a situation where people like Shimu are able to support their families, invest in their futures, and live dignified lives.
You will have the opportunity to meet the winners and become active in the field of innovation? Contact us!
The programme is now updated!
Click here to see the new programme and the list of representatives!
The finalists are in!
Check out the nine innovations that will compete for €160,000 in investments!
Student Invitation
6 seats now available for students only!
At HiiL, we believe that the young generation can have a great impact on innovation and we are continuously looking for talents with an international mindset from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds to strengthen our working team. Therefore, we would like to welcome 6 students to join the international innovation leaders in the justice field at the Peace Palace in The Hague. For more information about the application and selection procedures please click here.
Innovating Justice and Living Wages
Around the world, legal systems, legal professionals and social entrepreneurs are challenged to deliver more justice, to more people, with fewer resources. Innovations arising in the ready-made garment industry are helping global supply chains with the increased pressure to provide stable and fair conditions to workers. We need more innovators who are up to the task and we need to learn how to work with them to strengthen our effectiveness, impact and return on investment.
During our 5th Innovating Justice Forum, we will put justice and living wages innovators right in the centre. The first day of our highly interactive Innovating Justice Boostcamp will begin by preparing our 9 finalists of this year’s innovation selection round- 6 focused on justice delivery and 3 on living wages- with delivering great pitches.
In the afternoon, we will welcome external stakeholders who will learn about different innovation partnership perspectives from a panel composed of the international development experts, and the business and investors community. All participants will get a chance to work with the 9 top innovators in group sessions and in individual work sessions.
The second day of the forum will take place in the most iconic building in the city of peace and justice: the Peace Palace. After a discussion on the main challenges to justice, we will begin with the innovator’s pitches at 10:20am, followed by small group sessions to build on strengths, discuss current challenges and discover synergies. The rest of the day will be packed with fascinating speakers, great networking opportunities and even a short fashion show supporting the Living Wage challenge in the ready-made-garment industry.
At the end of the day, we will evaluate the event outcomes and close the forum with an announcement and celebration of this year’s award winners.
Our Innovating Justice Forum offers a great platform for building partnerships with funders and investors as well as exchanging ideas among innovators or with other justice or living wage experts. Together we can build iconic projects that will show the future of the justice sector and boost the development of reasonably fair and stable business environments.
This week I attended the Summit on the Global Agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF). It’s an annual event – my fourth – that brings together over 80 Global Agenda Councils, each built around global challenges ranging from cities, unemployment, finance, and data for development, to the automotive industry, justice and specific regions, like Africa. I was there as vice-chair of the Justice Council and member of the meta-council on New Architecture of Global Governance.
The structure of the Global Agenda Councils is itself a very innovative piece of global governance. Klaus Schwab calls it ‘the world’s largest interconnected brain trust’ and he’s right. Something like this would not have come from the UN system. Eighty times fifteen leading experts on a global challenge are brought together to produce results that push thinking and doing to new levels.
The Councils are given an enormous amount of freedom. It is informal, under Chatham House rules, with room for creativity, the emergence of new synergies, and even failure. Many Council members are people from governments, businesses, and international organisations. They sit with top scientists; think tankers, and civil society representatives.
The structure does not ‘adopt’ anything: no voting on treaties, laws, or resolutions. There are no formal procedures and there is little to no hierarchy. The support structure consists of one physical meeting a year, as many Skypes or telephone meetings as each Council wants, a Council manager to hold things together, and a web-based tool called Toplink – that allows people to find each other, ask questions, and inform each other about results.
And it does produce them. An example: the Council on Africa and the Council on Tourism were able to do something about the challenge that it was easier for Europeans to travel through Africa than for Africans. They mobilised politicians, customs officials, industry leaders and NGO representatives and were able to put in place a Schengen-type visa arrangement for groups of African countries. It is so successful that it is being copied in Asia. The WEF only partially gets credit for this: in the newspaper you would have read: “The governments of X, Y, and Z have agreed to abolish visa requirements, etc.”
Each year, all Council members fill in a questionnaire on the biggest global challenges they see for the coming year. The responses become the Global Agenda Report, which feeds into annual Davos meeting of the WEF. The top 10 trends for the coming year, in order of seriousness, are: deepening income equality, persistent jobless growth, lack of leadership, rising geostrategic competition, weakening representative democracy, rising pollution in the developing world, increasing occurrence of extreme weather events, intensifying nationalism, increasing water stress, and growing importance of health the economy.
The Global Leadership Index – also part of the report – shows that non-profit and charitable organisations and business continue to get more leadership trust than government. Current global governance structures are still seen as effective by around 50% of respondents, but a big majority of respondents also feel they need renewal. Interesting: local, national and regional governance (and not international) are expected to be most successful at dealing with the current challenges.
We seem to be quite effective – this Summit and other initiatives such as the International Panel on climate Change show – at recognising the challenges. In medical terms: diagnosis. What remains extremely hard is what to do next. The gift of seeing that the world now clearly comes with a curse: we don’t have the body parts to be able to handle what we can now see. As one of the Summit participants worded it: “We need systems that can handle quantum mechanical policymaking and management.” Policymaking and management at multiple levels: local, national, regional, international, public, private, thematic and sectoral, all at the same time but also all separate from each other. Systems that can process and act on massive amounts of data and that can standardise but also customise to the needs of each village and citizen.
It is hard to imagine what such a system will look like. Just as it was hard for small bands of human living in clans 3000 years ago to imagine how a huge state like the US would be run. The road from those clans to the US was incremental and filled with potholes. There was no blue print and there won’t be one now. We can only hope that our greatly enhanced capacity for diagnosis will push us to think harder and faster about governance innovation.
And what about justice? Whatever happens, it remains a pivotal foundation for whatever governance systems emerge out of the challenges the world now faces. In fact, it is so pivotal that – as HiiL has been saying for many years – the monopoly of lawyers to deal with it needs to be broken. The WEF structure allows that to happen. Our Justice Council decided to put justice innovation on the global agenda and in particular to focus on developing ways to involve the private sector more in building systems that bring effective justice to citizens and their organisations.
We will support the effort to include a justice and rule of law component in the post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and work with the organisations our members represent to develop financial instruments and incubators that better can support justice innovation. I will share more as we get more concrete.
Around the world, legal systems, legal professionals and social entrepreneurs are challenged to deliver more justice, to more people, with fewer resources. Innovations arising in the ready-made garment industry are helping global supply chains with the increased pressure to provide stable and fair conditions to workers. We need more innovators who are up to the task and we need to learn how to work with them to strengthen our effectiveness, impact and return on investment.
About this year’s forum
During our 5th Innovating Justice Forum, we will put justice and living wages innovators right in the centre. The first day of our highly interactive Innovating Justice Boostcamp will begin by preparing our 9 finalists of this year’s innovation selection round- 6 focused on justice delivery and 3 on living wages- with delivering great pitches.
Want to learn more about this exciting event? Click here
Following a tough selection process, the online voting round and wildcard selections: our finalists for the Living Wage Innovation Challenge and the Innovating Justice Awards have been chosen! Allow us to introduce you to the finalists from each of our three categories, the Living Wage Innovation Challenge, Innovative Ideas and Successful Innovations; and give you a snapshot of their innovations.
Would you like to meet and work with these innovators at the Innovating Justice Forum in the Peace Palace? Contact us!
Made in Africa is the world’s first trade financing vehicle that ties social and environmental impact to the cost of capital. Made in Africa has two key components: Trade Financing and Capacity Building. MIA offers below-market capital rates, highly appealing to factories typically facing 25%+ interest. As factories increase their impact, their interest is lowered. Throughout this process factories are given the tools and coaching they need to improve both operations and impact. Highly-rated and fair trade-certified factories can then become eligible for production matching with top US brands.
The Living Wage calculation developed by WageIndicator is based on its online/offline data collection and data handling system. It is related to current price levels and updated each month. International standards for calculation are used, thus making results acceptable and comparable across borders. WageIndicator Living Wage is a fact-based tool that makes realistic negotiations on wages possible and promises to help avoid labour unrest. WageIndicator Living Wage features a comparison of wages and living wages throughout the supply chain for the first time.
Supply chain transparency affects multiple stakeholders across the fashion supply chain; brands, suppliers, and consumers. Project JUST gathers and communicates real-time data to the brand and consumers. This data gets crowd-sourced from different parties to allow for authentication, and the brand can track the progress of an order, understand on the ground conditions, and be able to interfere when needed. The data is distilled for the consumer in an engaging way, through point of purchase and QR codes. JUST will affect living wages by giving consumers and brands an authentic pulse into the existing conditions of their supply chains.
The Accountability Lab provides collective dispute resolution in densely populated townships in Liberia to ensure sustainable, fair justice for citizens amidst the chaos of the Ebola crisis. Community Justice Teams are operating a first-of-their-kind program in Liberia with the support of the Accountability Lab for almost a year. The system is free and available to citizens 24/7 and each case is carefully documented through written records taken by a notary. They also work with the local police and courts to refer civil cases to community mediators. This helps to reduce the cases in the local court.
When ignorance of law is not an excuse, how do we make sure that we bridge the legal knowledge gap in the society? LawForMe plans to address this by becoming a unique online platform to create simplified understanding of legal processes in India. Through interesting graphics and easily-understandable flowcharts, legal information will be made less intimidating for a common user. The Indian legal system has become complex, inefficient and has become incapable of solving the justice needs of citizens; the delivery method of LawForMe provides the perfect response to these needs.
In the US more than 80% of litigants appear without lawyers in matters as important as evictions, mortgage foreclosures, child custody and child support proceedings, and debt collection cases. This innovation plans to use gaming technology to provide self-represented parties in Connecticut with foundational advocacy experience before going to court, through a highly collaborative design process that contributes to building a community of support around the needs of self-represented parties. After a sufficient amount of play, usage data will be analysed to evaluate results and better understand self-represented parties’ self-advocacy training needs, with the results applied towards further development and expansion into other jurisdictions.
Land measurement is currently monopolised by the government and is a critical service that determines land claims. BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Aid Services Programme has developed and tested a business model and market mechanism for Land Measurement by enabling individuals to become sustainable micro-entrepreneurs. The training provides land entrepreneurs with government certification in Land Measurement enabling them to have parity with government agents providing similar services. They also provide free information on property rights, ensure free birth, death and marriage registration services, and act as first responders on human rights violations.
SDN’s prototype digital mapping and data visualisation software actively promotes transparency and accountability of oil spills, allowing anyone to analyse the data and take action based on the information. The entire 8,000 oil spill records and all core functions are provided in less than 2MB of data to ensure reliable use across the Niger Delta. Communities and Civil Society can use the system to put pressure on the oil companies, oil theft hot-spots can be identified, and human and environmental geographic base-layers such as soil type and population provide useful context for environmental regulatory agencies.
For self-represented litigants in the US even initial steps like determining eligibility and filling out court forms present daunting challenges to those unfamiliar with the process. A2J Author is the first court form automation software designed to be pro se user friendly. By the end of 2014, A2J Author 5.0 will also include a mobile viewer, which is important because many of the poor in the United States only access to the internet via their smartphones. It is the only free tool available to legal aid attorneys and court staff to automate court forms for people without lawyers and A2J Author is completely free for any non-profit organization to use for non-commercial purposes.
Today the Ambassador of The Netherlands, Mr. Maarten Brouwer, and the European Union in Mali, Mr. Bielecki, Chargé d’affaires, presented the Minister of Justice and Human Rights of Mali, Mr. Mohamed Aly Bathily with an overview report of the Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey that HiiL Innovating Justice conducted in Mali earlier this year. Journalists in Mali are invited to come by the Netherlands Embassy in Hippodrome and pick up a free copy of the report.
The survey involved an unprecedented 8400 citizens of Mali, evenly spread out over each region except Kidal. They were asked about frequently experienced justice problems, how they dealt with them (if at all), and how they assessed the process and the outcome.
Sam Muller, HiiL’s director says: “Mali leads the world. This is really unique. We have never had such a large sample and the data presented to the government of Mali today shows only the tip of the iceberg. Mali now knows so much more about different kinds of justice problems people have, where they take them, and to which extent these different paths to justice work. That gives very concrete directions for improvement strategies. What is also unique is how well it all came together through close cooperation with tremendously professional civil society organisations and forward looking government leadership. »
“The report tells us a great deal about justice needs of Malian men and women across the country”, says Maarten Brouwer, the Netherlands’ ambassador in Mali. “With this report we also learn about people’s perspectives on reconciliation. The data gives us all, especially the Malian government and its partners in the donor community and civil society, the information we need to put citizens, their needs and their rights, at the centre of justice reforms.”
« This report gives us, for the first time, a broad and comprehensive view of the justice needs of the citizens of Mali”, says Mr. Bielecki, Chargé d’affaires. Without justice, you cannot have a living democracy. Justice is essential for development. It is for this reason that the sector is a key element of the cooperation between Mali and the European Union. »
The process of doing the survey and completing the first overview analysis only took 4 months to complete. “We worked very hard on developing a process that gets quick and actionable survey outcomes to actors in post conflict and transition settings. I am very pleased with the result,” says Dr. Martin Gramatikov, Head of HiiL’s Measuring Justice team. “Our method is tried and tested and is already being used in other transition and post-conflict settings.”
It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of our dear friend, Patrick Glenn. He participated in HiiL’s research project on the changing role of highest courts and was Henry G. Schermers Fellow at HiiL between 2010 and 2011. In that last capacity, Patrick helped us tremendously with untangling the many threads we had s when developing the Law Scenarios to 2030. His thinking lives on in them. He will be dearly missed.
As a person, we came to know him as warm, funny, wise, humble, generous, and kind. As a thinker he was tremendously inspiring, incessantly curious, able to bridge many worlds, and incredibly sharp. Rather than using a doctrine to look at the complicated world, he used his perspective as his point of departure. He was even ready to challenge the laws of logic.
That the ‘State’ needs to be questioned is the central tenet of Patrick’s last book, The Cosmopolitan State, (Oxford University Press 2013) which he wrote as Henry G. Schermers Fellow. We are very proud to be associated with it.
Let me go back to one of the conversations with Patrick I remember the most . I didn’t (and still don’t) have the intellectual horsepower to follow Patrick in all the details of what he said, but the main thrust of the question he asked, and the framework he sought to develop, has been etched into my thinking and doing.
We were talking about The State, globalisation, the movement of ideas, people, and institutions, and of laws and legal systems becoming more and more intertwined, . Observing this, and with his characteristically witty smile, Patrick took the conversation beyond the law and went to the laws of logic that formed much of their foundation. He challenged me to challenge them and, when I was most confused, pulled out a new form of logic: multivalent logic. As he writes in The Cosmopolitan State: “a turn away from classical and binary logic towards a recognition that the world is a more complex place than that contemplated by Plato’s methodology of divisio.” (at 265). In short: “replacing a binary option with one that tolerates degrees” (at 267). The consequences of this thought are significant: a different, more open form of logic accepts the fact of contradictory norms (which we see quite often in our daily lives). This new logic is less about consistency and more a construction of hierarchy.
His point becomes very clear when looking at the States of the World? today. Some are fairly clear and stable. Others suffer from various degrees of failure. In the binary world of UN law, Somalia is as much a ‘state’ as Denmark. And yet, we all know that in reality that is not the case. In my eyes, the UK was a stable unit, until Scotland’s referendum came along. That will change ‘the State’ of both the UK and of Scotland. Another example he mentions is the art of ‘balancing of rights’, in which more and more judges are engaged, a process which “is inherently cosmopolitan in its ability to bridge multiple and apparently conflicting sources, state or non-state in origin.”
Patrick greatly enriched us with this kind of thinking and we will forever be grateful to him. It helps us deal with the law we seek to build: law that is connected with the real lives of people and their organisations–not law as a construct for its own sake.
“Normalement c’est nous qui jugent. Cette fois les citoyens ont nous juger.”
C’est avec ces mots que le secrétaire général du ministère de la justice du Mali a clôturé une rencontre intensive de deux jours portant sur le projet de rapport de synthèse de l’enquête réalisée par Hill sur les besoins et la satisfaction des Maliens en matière de justice. Presque tous les hauts responsables de la justice du Mali étaient présents : les présidents des juridictions, les directions du ministère, les procureurs, le Médiateur de la République, les leaders de la société civile et le barreau. Le rapport final sera disponible d’ici la fin du mois de septembre.
Un spectacle rare : tant de hauts cadres de la justice à l’écoute de leurs populations et essayant de faire de leur mieux pour traduire les voix de ces populations en stratégies. «La justice ne peut pas être une abstraction », a déclaré Monsieur Mohamed Aly Bathily, ministre de la Justice, des Droits de l’Homme et garde des sceaux quand il a ouvert la réunion, ensemble avec le ministre de la Réconciliation M. Zahabi Ould Sidi Mohamed et le président de la Cour suprême Monsieur Nouhoum Tapily. Ce n’était pas un rassemblement «pour faire acte de présence». Les délibérations étaient intéressantes et souvent chaudes : sur la méthode, sur le fond, sur ce que signifiaient les données, et sur ce qu’il fallait faire avec elles. J’ai essayé d’imaginer un tel rassemblement dans mon propre pays, les Pays-Bas, mais je n’y arrivais pas. Le Mali est non seulement le premier pays d’Afrique à avoir fait une telle étude approfondie de la perception de la justice par ses citoyens, mais aussi, il est probablement le premier pays dans le monde dont les hauts responsables de la justice se sont préoccupés tant de ces perceptions.
L’étude a porté sur 8 400 enquêtés, soit environ 1 000 dans chaque région. Toutes les régions ont été couvertes à l’exception de Kidal, où l’État n’avait encore pas d’autorité effective. Les interviews ont été réalisées par des Maliens : une équipe de jeunes hommes et femmes, courageux et très motivés, qui ont été recrutés et encadrés par nos organisations partenaires au Mali : Deme So et Wildaf. La formation des enquêteurs a été assurée par HIIL. Les enquêtés étaient des hommes (57%) et des femmes (43%) de différents groupes d’âge (plus de 18 ans), venant de différentes localités (villes et villages), et ayant différents niveaux d’instruction. Les questions ont porté sur trois principaux domaines : tout d’abord, l’attitude des populations à l’égard de la réconciliation et de la justice transitionnelle. Deuxièmement, combien et quels sont les types de problèmes de justice auxquels ont fait face les populations ces 4 dernières années. Enfin, les voies que les populations empruntent pour faire face à ces besoins en matière de justice. Dans un blog précédent, Martin Gramatikov a présenté une innovation que nous avons introduite : la collecte des données par le biais des tablettes avec GPS, ce qui permet de lier nos données de la justice à une zone bien particulière.
En 2012, a éclaté dans le Nord du Mali une rébellion menée par des extrémistes islamistes. Cette rébellion a été émaillée de violations graves des droits de l’homme et a provoqué un coup d’État à la suite duquel des civils et des militaires ont été tués. Concernant la réconciliation et la justice transitionnelle autour de ces événements, l’enquête nous dit clairement que la première priorité pour les populations du Mali est de connaître la vérité. En deuxième lieu suit, de très près, le fait que les responsables des atrocités rendent des comptes. Il existe un avis favorable, bien que limité, pour le pardon. Mais cela diffère selon les régions. Les femmes sont légèrement plus favorables au pardon que les hommes. Les personnes âgées sont également plus sensibles au pardon. Une volonté claire pour l’indemnisation des victimes est exprimée. Celle-ci pourrait prendre différentes formes : la compensation directe, la compensation à travers l’aide, l’accès à la scolarisation par les enfants des victimes, etc. Les données montrent également des spécificités régionales qui devraient être prises en compte : par exemple concernant une éventuelle amnistie et la signature d’accords avec les rebelles.
Les populations maliennes sont confrontées à un ou deux problèmes de justice graves tous les deux ans. Parmi les problèmes les plus fréquents on peut citer les litiges fonciers, la criminalité et l’emploi. Les problèmes individuels les plus fréquents sont le vol, l’utilisation des terres, l’accès à l’éducation pour les enfants, les conflits par rapport à l’irrigation, les désaccords sur les droits de passage, l’accès à la propriété et l’accaparement des terres. Les femmes ont plus de problèmes de justice liés à la famille, à la criminalité et à l’argent, tandis que les hommes ont plus de problèmes liés à la terre, au logement, à l’emploi et aux services publics.
La famille et la communauté immédiate sont les plus importantes sources d’information sur les problèmes de justice auxquels sont confrontées les populations. La police et les maires sont d’importants pourvoyeurs de justice. Les avocats et les parajuristes sont rarement disponibles pour donner des informations juridiques et des conseils. Un grand nombre de personnes (17%) ne prennent pas beaucoup d’action pour résoudre leurs problèmes de justice parce qu’elles estiment que la partie adverse est trop puissante.
Par rapport à la résolution des problèmes, les populations maliennes indiquent qu’elles préfèrent généralement éviter le système judiciaire formel. A moins qu’elles n’aient tout simplement peu d’accès aux juges, aux procureurs et aux avocats. Comme le disait l’ancien ministre Monsieur Mamadou Diakité, qui était modérateur de la rencontre, aller vers système formel de justice est généralement considéré comme un ‘échec’. Ce facteur peut être pris comme un atout, nous en sommes tous d’accord : il existe évidemment une formidable capacité à traiter les questions de justice au sein des familles et des communautés. Cette capacité peut être renforcée et développée, par exemple à travers des stratégies d’information juridique légères. Les processus de résolution par les chefs de village, les communicateurs traditionnels, les maires ou les juges ne reçoivent généralement pas une bonne appréciation par rapport à la ‘voix et la neutralité’, ‘le stress et l’émotion’ ainsi que la ‘réparation des dommages’. Cela indique des domaines concrets de stratégies d’amélioration.
Il y a beaucoup de défis et de besoins pour plus de justice. Mais le constat le plus important que nous avons fait lors de cette rencontre est que les hauts responsables de la justice malienne écoutent la population. Le Mali vient de faire un pas de géant.
A few weeks ago I attended a fascinating meeting with this provocative title at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London. It implies that most justice programming is politically dumb, top-down, internationally-led and that it is not a good thing.
Having experienced rule of law programming closely in Yemen and Mali over the past year, I would be inclined to say that there is much truth to that. Let’s start with the politically dumb. Rule of law development is often positioned as merely technical: ‘generally accepted rules we all agree on – it’s only a matter of implementing them.’ That’s never the case: rule of law is about mitigating power and justice change is an inherently political process. We should admit that. Somebody will lose and somebody will gain power. Losing generally hurts. What about the top-down bit? Despite all the talk of involving locals and adapting to local circumstances, I have mostly seen that in the end, the donor’s agenda and politics dominate . International donors are rarely capable of listening, and if they do, they are rarely able to act on what they’ve heard. None of the women I interviewed for our Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey in Mali this year said they believe the formal justice system should be strengthened to help them deal with the heart breaking separation and child custody challenges. They all thought and acted in relation to the informal justice system they knew and trusted and wanted that improved. But which donor would be willing and able to support imams, griots, and elders to deal more effectively with such cases, knowing that they support mechanisms that have a slightly different view towards gender equality than the one in the West? Which Western Parliamentarian would vote for that budget or resist the temptation to criticize his/her minister on having spent money supporting this?
So, much seems to be aligned towards continuing down the politically dumb and top-down road.
Matt Andrews – one of the participants at the meeting – has written one of the best and useful books I have read in many years for people working on programming justice change (The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development – 2012). Based on thorough empirical research, he concludes that ‘grand design’ programming does not really work. Sounds familiar? That detailed five-year plan worth 50 million dollars with an awesome list of objectives and results caught in an impressive logframe? His thorough empirical work confirms what HiiL’s research on justice innovation also shows: programming and strategy making that starts from problems that begin small with developing prototypes, and then tests them, and use iterative learning to slowly scale-up based on success, is much more effective. Matt Andrews calls it ‘purposeful muddling’ (or, more chique: PDIA – Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation).
At ODI we all saw the failure of grand design and the value of purposeful muddling. But then what? How do you do it? My main take-aways include many contradictions:.
Donors want Big Programmes. It is said to save administrative costs. In addition: at the international level there is a tendency to lock into Big Targets (the MDG’s. Legal Empowerment for the Poor, etc.). Perspectives are not aligned;
Locally- led is the opposite of donor- driven. The challenge is how to support locally embedded actors to find solutions without being driven to solutions by the way money is being organised;
We don’t really have the budget rules, tender processes, logframes, and evaluation mechanisms to work in this way.
Justice is a risky sector to engage in. There is always the potential of doing harm. There are many actors. There are formal and informal ecosystems. All this limits the room for experimentation, which – at the same time – we need to muddle effectively and purposefully.
A key word in this approach is learning. This means: assure you can learn and communicate the learning;
Data is highly important for learning and taking action. This includes, but is not limited to, surveys. Radio shows and social media activity are also important sources of information-these are not really used;
‘Locally-led’ is often an empty phrase. In fact, one participant stated: “There is no such thing as country owned. The country does not exist as a thing.” In his words: “You have to be in there all the time to find out who is allied with who and who wants what.” ‘Locally-led’ means more than building ‘buy in’ or teaching CSOs to ‘hold government institutions to account’. Good local leaders are brokers who are also able to bring in government institutions. They connect and organise and drive multi-stakeholder conversations. They build constituencies for change;
And, paramount to everything: always be guided by problems, not institutions. Focus on problems on which there is some consensus. Build a clever business case for your problem. But be careful. You can lose the original focus as you build the business case. So keep in touch with the problem.
Fascinating. Fresh, new thinking that can help get better outcomes in justice development. One thing kept nagging me, however. Why are we all so eager to ‘programme’? Behind that word lays a whole paradigm: rich countries that ‘programme’ to help other, poorer countries. I would not argue against that or against helping. But perhaps another seminar could be on politically smart, locally-led justice business models, without the programming bit.
Video material on some of presentations and panels can be found here.
In hindsight, the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are considered a success. Governments, civil society and international organisations worked hard to achieve 8 vital targets – from eradicating extreme poverty and hunger to combating diseases such as HIV and malaria. An ongoing diplomatic process is in place, as well as a broad civil discussion to formulate the goals and targets for the post-2015 MDGs.
There is one critical omission in the current MDGs – they do not put justice and rule of law (RoL) in the development equation. Various initiatives are on the way to bridge that gap. On 4 and 5 September I attended a meeting convened by the Open Society Justice Initiative in Istanbul which brought together justice sector leaders from Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia. People from national planning agencies and civil society organisations were discussing rule of law indicators and targets. What I found fascinating about this meeting was the level of concreteness. The participants were not talking about abstract goals. They were thinking about the rule of law in their countries. A vivid example is the ambition of the Indonesian justice sector leaders to provide legal identity documents to the people of Indonesia.
I took several take-aways from the deep discussions dedicated to developing Rule of law:
Development of good indicators is just the first step. Realistic and time-bond targets are what needed lead to real change, i.e. by year XX reduce by YY% (year ZZ as a baseline) the number of children who do not possess a birth certificate.
Indicators and targets can be refined and pursued only if there are solid baseline data. Such data should indicate the current state of the indicator but most importantly – it should provide deep understanding about the scope of the problem and its impact on vulnerable populations. It should also address the cause-and-effect questions. For instance, if we look at the legal identity issue – what are the factors that impede legal identity papers? Is it that marriages are not officially registered; children born out of the wedlock are not eligible to receive birth certificates; high cost of obtaining papers; low awareness; children born abroad on false documents?
Targets should be realistic, given the time-frame and the change required to achieve them. Governments are very sensible about committing to something they might not be able to achieve. Also eradicating a problem completely is often impossible. Some contributing factors may be easier to tackle than others. Again, for targets to be realistic it is important to have solid baseline data and knowledge.
Triangulation is key. Government statistics (of varying degrees of rigor and coverage) are available but must be taken with a pinch of salt. We often see data about number of courts, judges, docket clearance and disposition times. What we do not know, however, is whether and how such statistics respond to the existing needs for justice. Therefore it is important to triangulate with the needs and views of the people. Our experiences in studying the costa and quality of paths to justice demonstrate that people can tell good justice from bad justice.
Indicators and targets should be manageable. The governments and suppliers of justice services should be able to see how the target can be impacted. If the target is contemplated as outside of governments’ reach they are unlikely to commit and take action. Yet again, the importance of good baseline data cannot be overstated.
Not only should indicators and targets be manageable but they must also be linked to specific actors. Just saying that rights and entitlements are important is not enough. There must be concrete problem owners. For instance, “By year X, Y% of people will have secure land and tenure rights. Responsible is agency Y.” Only when specific people, organisations and institutions are tasked with achieving a goal will there be a shear commitment and leadership towards achieving results. High performers should be acknowledged and praised.
There is a tension between the need for global RoL targets and national measures. The discussions in Istanbul showed how important the latter dimension is. Realistic and achievable targets should take into consideration the national specifics and strengths.
The last point leads to the difficult choice between global and national rule of law targets. Nevertheless, I believe the two are not dichotomous. As the Istanbul meeting demonstrated, the national indicators and targets can be powerful tools to respond to specific problems.These should be linked to broader and less context specific MDGs that press for more justice and rule of law. At HiiL Innovating Justice we are convinced that both national and supranational indicators and targets should start from the justice needs of the people and strive to provide basic justice care for all.
Last week, my colleague Henk Jan Scholten and I visited the Legal Services Society (LSS) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This place has been described to me as the ‘Silicon Valley for the justice sector’, especially when it comes to public legal information applications.
It was incredibly fascinating to learn more about their upcoming innovation from the LSS team of passionate experts. MyLawBC (expected to launch in spring 2015) aims to become an online resource where people will find guided pathways for their legal problems. These guided pathways are “built around your needs, where you can work through your legal issue, ending with an individualised action plan, information, and the services you need”. A site that also provides a hotline, live chat, and automated attendant service. A site that anyone can go to and say “Here’s MY solution to MY legal problem.”
MyLawBC will be a great innovation in legal information strategies. The guided pathways approach links to the state of the art in legal information strategies and builds on what we know works as it:
Improves knowledge of rights and provides actionable and practical information on how to practice rights rather than merely what people’s rights are
Delivers information in a timely manner (objective criteria/model solutions when needed)
Builds confidence, empowers users to pursue a justice journey
Promotes early action and prevent dispute escalation
MyLawBC shows similarities to HiiL’s Rechtwijzer platform as Sherry MacLennan, the LSS director of Public Legal Information and Publications, explains. LSS gave us the opportunity to present Rechtwijzer to some judges, people form the Ministry of Justice, Mediate BC and their own staff, which got some coverage by Ian Mulgrew of the Vancouver Sun.
Sharing the experiences we developed since we started Rechtwijzer in 2006 shows how cross-jurisdictional cooperation can be established. We just need to shift perspective and think of justice processes and procedures from the perspective of users and their justice needs rather than from the perspective of substantive and procedural rules and rights.
Legal needs studies show that people across the world, more or less, do the same things when they experience a legal problem or have similar justice needs. They can benefit from similar support. This implies that real economies of scale could be reached. In researching about what works, in designing user-centered, problem-solving (online) procedures, in developing self-help tools that empower people.
It would be very interesting to see how we could work towards the development of international standards, practices and maybe even platforms in the future.
One of the most valuable experiences during my internship at HiiL was the exposure to innovations and desire to pioneer solutions for improving access to justice. This made me realise the significance of what is happening in Latin America in terms of justice innovation.
Latin America is constantly changing. In the last two decades advanced judicial reforms were implemented, transforming national constitutions and reinforcing the role of judiciaries. At the same time, the last decades have been characterized by a significant development of jurisprudence and common efforts in the promotion and protection of human rights. More recently, the region engaged in the implementation and promotion of the 100 Brasilia Regulations regarding Access to Justice for Vulnerable People, defining a common framework for national governments and donors.
The region has shown important progress concerning access to justice and the rule of law. As presented in the last report of the World Justice Project Index, Latin America has experienced positive results in the protection of human rights and government transparency. Uruguay and Chile are ranked among the top 20 countries within the overall ranking, with a better performance than Poland, Czech Republic, Spain and Portugal. Even though many problems remain, such as violence and corruption, the region has also presented creative solutions for major justice problems ranging from the Community Advocates in Peru and the Houses for Indigenous Women in Mexico, to jurisprudential databases and electronic petitions in Brazil. The diversity of solutions also speaks to the variety of cultural identities, hybrid character of the judiciaries and multitude of challenges, making innovation imperative for policy makers and justice actors.
What is even more interesting is that many of these innovative strategies have been supported by national governments and judiciaries, giving justice innovation a relevant place in the public agenda. A notable and recent example of this is the 2014 Strategic Agenda for Justice Innovation in Colombia, a pioneering initiative led by the government with the participation of academia, private sector and civil society. This aims to promote the use of information and communication technologies for addressing justice problems.
In this context, it is not striking that international and regional cooperation, rather than being diminished, are becoming central tools for Latin American countries. This, in my opinion, is a great opportunity for Justice Innovators. For example, initiatives such as HiiL’s Justice Innovation Lab can constitute a great space for transforming ideas into real policies. Moreover, these can serve as platforms for disseminating Latin American experiences and lessons learned to other countries that have similar problems with accessing justice. In other words, this is the perfect time to step in and seek strategic partnerships with a continent in bloom.
Taxis don’t speak but they can tell us a lot about a country and its spirit. In Bamako, the capital of Mali, your usual taxi is a 1980s Mercedes. Their shabby looks, grungy radios, funny engine sounds and uncanny odours are revealing about the creativity of Malian taxi drivers and mechanics. One particular feature of driving in Mali is that very few drivers, if any, wear seat belts. Although it is compulsory by law, traffic police officers do not seem to be particularly bothered.
As experts in the business of the measurement of justice we immediately thought: is this an indication of poor capacity to enforce the law? Put differently: is the mere fact of not wearing seat belts a proxy of the rule of law in a particular country? Or even some of its facets?
To test the hypothesised link between wearing seat belts and the rule of law we searched for a simple correlation between the two. Relevant data was found in two respected datasets.1 Our rudimentary theory is that the ability of public authorities to enforce traffic regulations regarding something as voluminous as seat belts is indicative of the general capacity to implement legal rules. Hence, our hypothesis is that the percentage of drivers wearing seat belts is associated with the rule of law. If the hypothesised link exists, and is not caused by something else (we will test this in a future blog), we can claim that observing seat belts tells us something about the rule of law.
As the scatter plot below demonstrates, there is a strong and significant positive correlation2 between the rate of wearing seat belts and the index of effective regulation. An increase in the percentage of compliance is associated with an increase in the rule of law indicator. Of course, there are notable exceptions. Ethiopia, for example, reports a high compliance rate of 96% but has the lowest score on effective regulation. The reasons for the existence of such outliers should be analysed carefully. Nevertheless, the association between the two is very strong.
Correlation does not mean causation: it is possible that there are measurement errors and confounding variables. Seat belt-wearing rates are self-reported by the countries so therefore, it is possible that the estimates differ from reality. The relationship could also be largely defined by the level of economic development so when controlling for GDP the link disappears. For instance, there are more new cars in wealthier societies and many newer models have automatic and hugely effective, if not annoying, means for urging the drivers to buckle up.
Despite the inherent measurement challenges, we are convinced that many observable phenomena are good proxies of the rule of law. Implementation of food and safety regulations, traffic laws and zoning and planning rules are just a few of the promising areas for further exploration. The benefit of such proxies is that they can improve our understanding about the rule of law at relatively low costs and effort, and probably with greater speed than conducting a survey. Such proxies can give us a sense of whether things are improving or deteriorating in different parts of the rule of law. They can also tell us something about what really happens. We challenge you: what proxies can you think of?
1One is the World Health Organization Seat Belt Wearing index (http://www.who.int/) which has country-level data for 2011. To improve the comparability across countries we use the percentage of drivers wearing seat belts. As a measure of the rule of law we use the Effective regulation dimension of the World Justice Project Rule of Law index for 2011 (http://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index).
“Normally it is us who judge. This time the citizens judged us.”
With those words the secretary-general of the ministry of justice of Mali closed an intensive two-day meeting about the draft overview report of HiiL’s latest Justice Needs and Satisfaction Survey. Almost the entire justice leadership of Mali was there: presidents of jurisdictions, ministry directorates, prosecutors, the médiateur du république, civil society leaders, and the bar association. The final report will be available by the end of September.
A rare sight: so many justice leaders listening to their people and trying their best to translate their voices into strategies. “Justice cannot be an abstraction”, said Minister Mohamed Aly Bathily of Justice and Human Rights, as he opened the meeting with Minister for Reconciliation M. Zahabi Ould Sidi Mohamed and President Nouhoum Tapily of the Supreme Court. This was not a ‘tick the box’ gathering. Discussions were engaging and frequently heated: on method, on substance, on what data meant, and on what to do with it. I tried picturing such a gathering in my own country – The Netherlands – but couldn’t. Mali is not only the first country in Africa to have done such an extensive justice perception survey amongst its citizens, it is probably the first country in the world whose justice leadership engages with those perceptions so widely.
The study had 8 400 respondents; around 1 000 in each region. All regions were covered except Kidal, where the state still lacks effective authority. The actual interviews were conducted by Malians: a team of courageous and highly committed young people recruited and managed by our highly impressive partner organisations in Mali – Deme So and Wildaf – and trained by us. They interviewed both men (57%) and women (43%) of various age groups (above 18), coming from different towns and villages, and with different educational backgrounds. The questions focused around three main issues: Firstly, people’s attitudes to reconciliation and transitional justice. Secondly, how many and what kind of justice problems people faced in the past 4 years. Lastly, the paths these people took to deal with those justice needs. In a previous blog, Martin Gramatikov set out an innovation we introduced: collecting the data through tablets with GPS, allowing us to connect our justice data to a particular area.
The year 2012 saw a rebellion in the North of Mali led by Islamic extremists, accompanied by serious human rights violations and a coup d’état during which civilians and soldiers were killed. On reconciliation and transitional justice around these events, the survey tells us clearly that the first priority for the people of Mali is to know the truth. Runner up, very close, is to hold those responsible to account. There is limited support for a pardon, but this differs by region. Women are slightly more supportive of pardons as compared to men. Older people are also more receptive of forgiveness. A clear wish for victims’ compensation is expressed, which can take different forms: direct compensation, compensation through aid, access to schooling for children of victims, etc. The data also shows regional particularities that should be taken into account: on possible amnesty and signing agreements with the rebels, for example.
The people of Mali are confronted with between 1 and 2 serious justice problems every two years. Among the most frequent include land disputes, crime, and employment. The most frequent individual problems include theft, land use, access to education for children, disputes around irrigation, disagreements over the rights of passage and access to property, and land grabbing. Women have more justice problems related to family, crime, and money, whereas men have more problems related to land, housing, employment, and public services.
The family and immediate community is the most important source for information around the justice problems that the people of Mali face. The police and mayors are very important justice providers. Lawyers and paralegals are hardly ever available to provide legal information and advice. A sizeable portion of people (17%) did not do much about their justice problem because they felt that the other party was too powerful.
On resolution, the citizens of Mali indicate that they generally prefer to avoid the formal justice system. Or they simply have little access to judges, prosecutors and lawyers. In the words of former minister Mamadou Diakité, who moderated the meeting, going to the formal system is widely viewed as an ‘echec’. This can be considered an asset, we all agreed: there is obvious formidable capacity to deal with justice issues within families and communities. That capacity can be enhanced and developed, for example through smart legal information strategies. Resolution processes – village chiefs, griots, mayors, or judges – generally do not score well on ‘voice and neutrality’, ‘stress and emotion’, and ‘reparation of damages’. This points to concrete areas for strategies of improvement.
There are many challenges and needs for more justice. But the most important take away from our meeting was that Mali’s justice leaders listen to their people. Mali has taken an impressive step.
1“Normally it is us who judge. This time the citizens judged us.”
On the first Sunday of August I stepped out of the Eurobubble. From March to July I worked for the European Commission as a Blue Book Trainee. Life inside the European institutions, inside the Eurobubble, is like a small village, a university campus inside the bigger city of Brussels, where you run into people you know, wherever you go. Especially as a trainee, where you are part of a very close-knit group of more than 600 people.
The trainee-life is incredibly rich and intense and it became even more demanding when I joined the Comité des Stagiaires, which represents the trainees of the Commission. As such, I became part of one of the largest, most active and most integrated groups you will find inside any organisation. It is highly diverse, but everyone speaks a common language called ‘Commission’.
While people at the Commission work hard, at the same time it is undeniably a bureaucracy. I felt that the work is very procedural and hierarchical, and at some stages it is out-of-date. In a legal unit, such as the one where I worked, this is probably most evident. To my delight, however, I ended up in a department of the Commission where they were trying to simplify and modernise their bureaucracy.
This is where my experience from HiiL came in. My role in the team at the Commission was to bridge the gap between law and technology. We brainstormed how to redesign the intranet and how to simplify legal procedures for both beneficiaries and staff. We started work on digitising application procedures, doing away with paper entirely. A long-time dream of many, but one that had always proven impossible to implement.
Reform happens outside the Commission’s office walls as well. This is where those with social and entrepreneurial minds could potentially step in. Indeed, innovation and entrepreneurship are hot in Brussels, especially young entrepreneurship. I joined the European Young Entrepreneurs and was happy to discover the entrepreneurial spirit inside public institutions. Social innovation in particular appears popular among ambitious young Europeans, which gives high hopes also for innovation in the justice sector.
I now realise how much I have learned at HiiL over the past year. Very generously, I was allowed to go to Brussels for five months, develop myself, learn about the innovation environment there, and come back to The Hague afterwards. Now that I am back, I join the team for the Innovating Justice Hub. I will continue some of my research into legal aid, but my main responsibilities in my new function as Innovating Justice Agent will be to scout innovations worldwide, connect them with investors and other useful projects and help to accelerate them in getting projects of the ground.
Our first big goal is to make the Innovating Justice Awards in November a success. As we are currently evaluating this year’s set of innovations, I am looking forward to learn more about all the worldwide innovations and meet the people behind the ideas.
London’s Family Drug and Alcohol Court has pioneered a new way of supporting substance-misusing parents and keeping families together. Its success tells us some important things about how we improve our social services. This successful justice innovation offers lessons to others who are trying to introduce new ways of working.
Growing up with a parent who misuses drugs or alcohol can be harrowing. But it is tragically common. As many as 1 in 10 children in the UK live with a parent with a substance misuse problem. These children are at risk of a huge range of harms, including poverty, physical and emotional abuse or neglect and dangerously inadequate supervision. All too often, these families end up in family court, at risk of having their children removed.
A new report by the New Economics Foundation, looks at the Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) – a London court that is working to transform the way such cases are dealt with in order to improve outcomes for children.
Tackling the root causes of family break down
FDAC helps to keep families together where possible, and places children in permanent new homes quickly where necessary. It’s one of England and Wales’ most successful problem solving courts and an example of successful innovation which offers lessons for others trying to introduce new ways of working.
FDAC is different from normal care proceedings in two key ways. First, FDAC families are supported by a multi-disciplinary specialist support team. As well as organising addiction treatment, the team coordinate a programme of more personalised support, such as help with parenting skills or counselling to help parents come to terms with their own traumatic childhoods. Second, the FDAC court process is designed to motivate and support families to address their substance misuse. FDAC cases are managed via fortnightly hearings where families and the treatment team meet with the judge without their lawyers in order to frankly and openly discuss their progress.
A recent Nuffield Institute-funded evaluation by Brunel University concluded that FDAC families are more likely to stay together, that parents are more likely to reduce their drug use, and are less likely to demonstrate further neglect and abuse compared to similar families passing through mainstream family courts. Former clients cite the importance of the support and encouragement of the judge and the co-ordinated care overseen by the treatment team as helping them succeed. There are now a number of sites elsewhere in the country replicating the London approach.
What can court innovators learn from FDAC’s success?
Our research sets out to identify which key decisions made early on by FDAC set the court up for long-term success – and how these might be relevant to other court innovations. Here are four of the most important:
1. The FDAC team had a clear picture of the problem they were trying to solve. The high incidence of parental substance misuse in care proceedings in inner London (64% of cases), and the poor outcomes for children were already well-documented, making the project an easier sell to colleagues, local authorities and funders.
2. They made intelligent use of the evidence that already existed about what works.FDAC’s founder and advocate, Judge Nicholas Crichton, borrowed the initial idea from California’s drug treatment courts. But the team carried out detailed research to understand how to tailor that model to fit the very different context of Inner London.
3. The project had an independent evaluation built in from the start. The project launched with an independent evaluation team from Brunel University, supported by the Nuffield Institute, already in place.
4. FDAC minimised the investment required by making creative use of existing resources.While funding was sought for the specialist treatment team, the additional review hearings were supported by reallocating existing courts staff, which significantly reduced the headline cost of the project.
Parental substance misuse is just one of a range of complex and entrenched social problems we must find effective tools to deal with. To find those tools, we need to get better at implementing, evaluating and sustaining innovation. In other words we need to learn from successful projects like FDAC – not only about what works, but also about how we put ideas into practice.
Stephen Whitehead leads the Better Courts Programme, a UK-based partnership between the New Economics Foundation and the Centre for Justice Innovation which supports and advocates for court innovation. The new report Building Better Courts: Lessons from London’s Family Drug and Alcohol Court, is available to download free of charge.
At HiiL Innovating Justice, we come across hundreds of practical justice solutions every year that can really make a difference: justice change makers who are busy building much faster and cheaper contract negotiation or conflict resolution procedures, more effective protection mechanisms of citizen’s rights or more participative, accountable and transparent governments. And that’s the kind of innovation we encourage with our annual Innovating Justice Awards.
The Innovating Justice Awards 2014 are part of the Innovating Justice Hub – a global network that maps, connects, teaches and strengthens justice innovation. Out of the 112 applications we received, 65 were selected as nominees. We received applications ranging from mobile and software apps to community-based training, mediation and legal support. Each nominee was chosen based on its uniqueness and its potential for positive impact.
The nominees are divided into three categories: the Living Wage Innovation Challenge in association with The C&A Foundation, Innovative Ideas and Successful Innovations. The Living Wage Innovation Challenge aims to support the top submissions in furthering their impact, targeting them to challenges in the garment industry, and making them more financially sustainable. The Innovative Ideas category aims to help the winners internationalise and improve their product, gain new valuable partnerships and unlock new funding. Participants in this category are new ventures with a strong potential of delivering concrete justice results. Finally, the winners in the Successful Innovation category will receive recognition as top innovators and, through the network, access to scale-up and funding opportunities. Participants in this category have created innovative justice initiatives that are already making a difference.
Three finalists from each category will be chosen from the online voting round, which will be announced on 22 September. A further three wildcards will be selected, which will be announced on 29 September. After these six innovators are chosen they will be presented to a jury. The jury will select the three overall finalists for every category who will be invited to attend the Innovating Justice Forum on the 25 and 26 November at the Peace Palace, The Hague.
Individuals and organisations can win global recognition and support to further develop and scale-up their innovation. We have a 100.000 EUR investment budget to support the top submissions in the Living Wage Innovation Challenge in furthering their impact, targeting them to challenges in the garment industry, and making them more financially sustainable. The winner in the Innovative Ideas category will benefit from a cash investment of EUR 20.000 to take their innovative idea to the next level.
The first day of voting was a success with over 1,100 votes registered! Each day this number increases as well as competition for the top spots. It’s wonderful to see how many great innovations succeed. But we also see many of them fail. Justice innovators are often isolated in rigid systems and often lack the necessary skills, connections and support. Effective innovations need to be integrated in existing systems much faster and successful practices need much more exposure around the world so that they can really make a difference.
I am Scottish. Although born in England, from the ages of 7 to 26 I lived in Scotland, and I identify myself as Scottish (as well as British and European). It will be no surprise then that the referendum being held on Scottish Independence on the 18th of September is of huge importance to me.
I should be clear at this point: despite an intention to move back to Scotland in the near future, I have no vote. Having been resident in the Netherlands for the last five years, I am not eligible. Although this is frustrating, given the impact this vote will have on my life, it is a practical and understandable decision. Here, I would like to talk briefly about the reasons for my hypothetical voting intentions, and also the challenges a Yes vote would bring.
I am pro-independence, and given the chance would vote Yes in the referendum. This is not blind nationalism. Although proud of being Scottish, I do not think that there is a priori need for Scotland to be self-governing. The union has brought much of value, including the NHS, the welfare state, world-leading standards of education, and a fantastic legal system (although this varies in some respects between Scotland and the rest of the UK). My hypothetical vote for independence would be precisely because of, rather than despite, these institutions and qualities. I believe that these institutions are being taken in a direction that is both to their detriment, and contrary to the will of Scottish people. Without these two factors, I would likely be pro-union. The Scottish people, as many will know, regularly return 40 Labour MPs, to less than 2 or 3 Conservative MPs, and many (by no means all) wish for policies which are systemically different from those that are on offer from the main, England-based, parties. This is reflected in the different voting patterns in Holyrood, where there have been three hung parliaments and one Scottish National Party (SNP) majority (the current government), compared to Westminster where recent history has given outright majorities to the two major English parties, up to the 2010 election which resulted in a hung parliament.
A vote for independence is not a vote for the SNP. Far from it. I am no fan of Alec Salmond, or many of the policies of the SNP. This referendum goes far beyond individuals or parties, to the core ideals of how we want our country to operate, how we want our state to interact with people, and the broader ‘direction of travel’ of our government and society. I hope, and it can only be a hope, there are no guarantees in this referendum, that a vote for independence will enable the election of a series of governments who realize the promise of Scotland to be a country that places the benefit of society above that of individuals, addresses in a meaningful way the challenge of renewable energy, and looks to cooperatively work with Europe and the rest of the world. These are issues on which Scotland can, and I believe should, dramatically differ from the current course of the UK, and the options that the main parties are offering.
Of course, it is not as simple as a Yes vote on Thursday, and the country starting on a fresh course on Friday morning. Even in the best-case scenario of negotiations with the remainder of the UK, Scotland will become a small country with significant national debt, to which will be added the costs associated with setting up independent systems. There will be tough choices from the very start, and if we are to make the potential a reality we will need to work within tight financial constraints, for at least the immediate future, and likely in the longer term. To meet the challenges of providing health, education, legal assistance and social insurance to all of Scottish society, we will need to embrace innovation in a manner which has not yet been seen.
Scotland, like the UK as a whole, has an aging population. Providing healthcare and pensions to this population is a challenge that most western countries are being forced to face up to. Education is just as expensive to provide north of Hadrian’s Wall as it is in the south, and finding funding models that provide equality of access to education to all sectors of society is another not insignificant challenge.
What would that mean for justice innovation? One challenge is of direct relevance to HiiL: how we can create innovation in the legal system to serve the needs of the Scottish people? Scotland has a rural population spread across a huge area. Providing legal assistance to such a physically and socially disparate population is a challenge that will need to be addressed, and only through innovation is it likely that the challenge will be met. Can increased online legal services, perhaps modeled on the Rechtwijzer, reduce the costs of legal proceedings? Perhaps mobile courts are a more effective way of providing dispute resolution in far-flung communities? How can we help individuals solve their problems fairly between themselves, without recourse to expensive courts, or even lawyers? Can we increase the legal empowerment of those living in Glasgow, as much as those living in Wick, or Shetland?
There are no certain answers to these challenges, but I believe that an independent Scotland will be better equipped to provide answers that meet the needs of Scottish society, and reflect the views and attitudes of Scottish people, in a way that is not done presently, and that will not (and perhaps cannot) be done as a part of the UK. I’d vote Yes to independence, because I believe that this is a chance for Scotland to build a country that reflects the values of its people in a way that is not currently possible. However, to make the most of this historic opportunity we will need to be flexible and adopt an innovative approach in relation to many issues, not least how we operate and deliver legal services.
The legal services market is highly inefficient, if not dysfunctional. Existing rules are keeping it that way. New insights into how this market works and the innovation potential that comes with the IT revolution are poised to change this. The first movers are taking their positions. It is difficult to imagine that things will stay as they are much longer.
These were some of the points that were discussed during HiiL’s Open Lab Session on Monday, July 7 with Gillian Hadfield. The audience included most of the key decision makers on legal innovation in The Netherlands.
In all so-called developed economies the demand for legal help is tremendous. We witness failure of access to justice. In the US, the amount of unrepresented people appearing in court keeps growing, courts face shrinking budgets and caseloads keep growing. The traditional answer has been legal aid and pro bono work, in various forms. This problem, however, can never be solved by legal aid and pro bono alone.
Gillian Hadfield does the math, based on US numbers (without there being a reason to assume that her general argument would change if European numbers were used). Assuming that the average hourly rate for legal services in the US is $200, the annual revenue of an average law firm (working full-time) would then be about $140,000. Out of that amount, around $25,000 goes for payrolls and nearly twice as much (say $45,000) goes for overhead, insurances and other administrative costs. Evidently, only half of the revenue is spent on actual legal work.
Where does the money go? The largest portion of legal fees are spent on finding and keeping clients; managing client complaints; investing in legal knowledge, technology and processes; running a business and perhaps more. Not on legal work. Roughly speaking, lawyers receive about 20% of the hourly rate they charge. If you are working to increase basic justice care for people, that is a highly dysfunctional market.
Why is this so? Gillian Hadfield is clear in her diagnosis: excessive regulation of the legal services market. Using the US as an example, she lists some of the restrictions imposed on legal practitioners: all legal work must be done by licensed lawyers; lawyers serving public can only work in firms entirely owned, managed and financed by lawyers; lawyers cannot enter profit- or revenue-sharing contracts that give non-law experts incentives to reduce cost and increase quality of non-law elements of legal services; legal innovators cannot access venture capital- just to name a few.
How can this be changed? Change the rules so lawyers can do law and others can do the non-law elements of legal services. This is where a gaping innovation space lies. There are already very interesting examples of first overs in this area:
UpCounsel– an online attorney marketplace connecting start-ups and small businesses with legal help from independent attorneys which eliminates the extra time and extra costs law firms require. UpCounsel manages the brand, guarantees payment, etc. and the lawyers do the legal work.
LegalZoom– an online legal service that helps people create their own legal documents related to forming and naming a business; legal forms and agreements; taxes, licenses and permits; trademarks; business compliances and many others.
Which? – a charity funded platform for providing free legal advice. Members, as well as their families, are given individual jargon-free advice and step-by-step guidance to winning cases.
Rechtwijzer 2.0 – a justice platform developed by HiiL, offering legal information and advice. It enables people to work on solving their legal problems in their own words, at their own pace, from their own homes with the support of professionals readily available to help them.
Where does the Netherlands stand? Participants in our open lab session agreed that the Dutch legal system has a competitive advantage over the US and UK at least in two major aspects:
Much cheaper access to law
No need for a license to practice law.
But is this enough to say that the Dutch legal system is ahead of the curve? Hardly. Moreover, if the current legal market model is so evidently broken, then why are RoL development providers selling it to countries in transition? These and many other questions are yet to be answered. Guided by Gillian Hadfield’s groundbreaking research, however, we have made the first step in addressing these issues- putting them on the map.
Yemenis face many justice problems. More than 90% experienced one or more justice problems in the previous 4 years. Crime (mainly theft and violence), neighbourhood disputes, and land disputes rank amongst the most frequently occurring ones. The paths to justice in Yemen are long, windy, and have many dead ends. A little over 20% do nothing to solve their justice needs; they feel it is not worth it to try and that the other, more powerful party will win anyway. At the same time: the capacity to deal with justice problems within one’s own community is impressive and can be built on. Sheiks are seen as cost effective neutrals, but courts provide fairer and more effective outcomes.
These are only some of the outcomes of a justice and fairness survey that HiiL – Innovating Justice has done amongst 3000 randomly selected men and women from the three provinces of Sana’a, Taiz and Aden. The study was done at the request of the Netherlands’ embassy in Sana’a.
Read more about the Justice Needs & Satisfation Survey in Yemen here.
The legal landscape is changing. And we need to adapt. But do we know exactly where change is happening and how to adapt? Somebody who has studied this field extensively is professor Gillian Hadfield, Richard L. and Antoinette Kirtland professor of law and professor of economics at the University of Southern California. We are very proud to have her as a member of our Programmatic Steering Board.
On Monday 7 July Professor Hadfield will give an Open Lab Session on « Disruption of the legal services market and justice delivery ». As a key member of our innovation community and given the things you are working on, I would very much like you to join us.
The unbundling of legal services, the rise of IT platforms, and more innovations are changing the legal landscape, justice delivery models, and business models of law firms. In an interactive session, Professor Hadfield will help us understand these developments and the innovation directions they point to.
Time and venue: between 15:30 and 18:00 in our Justice Innovation Lab. Drinks afterwards.
The field of ODR has matured. That much became clear during the ODR 2014 conference in San Francisco and Palo Alto last week. The line up included names like Mitch Kapor, Charley Moore (founder and CEO of Rocket Lawyer), Kent Walker (General Counsel of Google), Jim Silkenat (President of the ABA), Geoff Brigham (General Counsel of Wikimedia) and many more. Topics they covered ranged from reputation and trust issues for businesses to IP and privacy issues and the use of IT in government. Indeed, the term ODR is linked to a broad range of topics.
During my fourth ODR conference (hosted by UC Hastings and Stanford Law School), I got the opportunity to share the podium with Peter Salem of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. We discussed online dispute resolution for family and divorce issues. An issue I have been working on for the past ten months with the Rechtwijzer platform, which goes live this fall.
I was happy to see how the Rechtwijzer platform seemed to show the potential for ODR in their field to judges, lawyers, ADR and ODR experts in the audience. ODR for family and divorce issues often runs into scepticism. Most people do not see how ODR can work for such a complicated and emotional dispute as divorce. Even ODR experts seem to think there are very limited opportunities for moving in that direction. Maybe it is because of its value proposition and subsequent design principles.
The notion of ODR emerges from the field of e-commerce and was first put to practice by Ethan Katsh. Its potential really became visible when Colin Rule made it work at eBay and PayPal, where the resolution center processes about 60 million disputes between buyers and sellers per year. Indeed ODR is often seen as appropriate for low value, high volume cases. As the presentations during the ODR 2014 conference also showed, the value proposition of ODR has always been that it helps people to get fast, fair and efficient dispute resolution. Automation and extreme simplification of processes This is especially appealing for people with a small claim for whom the legal system is not an attractive option.
An ODR platform for family and divorce issues needs a different value proposition and design principles.
Fast, fair and efficient seems an appropriate value proposition for transactional disputes. But it does not connect with the daily realities of divorce professionals working in mediation, in our courts or otherwise to help people at this difficult moment in their lives. The people who experience how emotions play an important role in coping with divorce. See the full complexity of getting to a divorce agreement that is built to last. That achieves the best for the children, the separating spouses and others involved. Or who see the pro se litigants file for a divorce in their court who go unrepresented because they either cannot afford a lawyer or want to stay in control of their process. Fast, fair and efficient seems inappropriate for relational disputes.
Let us acknowledge it: divorce is tough and the divorce process is complex and difficult. Technology in no way will be able to make it fast and efficient nor should it aspire to do such. But it can help people by providing structure for reflection, communication and solution-building. And by providing information, model solutions and support tools. The value proposition of ODR for relational disputes should rather be about an interest-based, empowering, fair and sustainable process and result: Divorce is tough. We will empower and support you throughout the process.
From the responses I got to my presentation I take we seemed to have been able to translate this to a design of a platform that can make this work. For divorcing people and the professionals that help them. Following a process of co-creation with judges, lawyers and mediators. And of continuous user-testing. Gradually working towards ODR that works for relational disputes.
Incubators are in. Google the word and you will see. An incubator helps starting entrepreneurs further develop and scale-up innovative ideas. Incubators started in the for-profit world, but with social entrepreneurship on the rise, they are also moving into that area.
The 2014 Impact Forum, convened by the inspiring Durreen Shahnaz, did not have the theme From Niche to Market for nothing. Global social entrepreneurship is growing, and with that, so is impact investment.
But this development is whizzing past the justice sector. Not much work is being done to stimulate entrepreneurship in that area. Why?
Over the past three years HiiL has mapped more than 150 justice innovators, globally. Their incredible work is showcased and categorised on www.innovatingjustice.com. Through questionnaires and interviews we have been able to distil things that make justice innovation more likely to succeed and things that make it more difficult. We also have a better sense of what makes a good justice innovation. We published our handbook, Innovating Justice: Developing new ways to bring fairness between people, using these invaluable experiences.
Around these innovators we have built a community of 11.000 justice innovation enthusiasts. We have found ways to connect with innovators and those in need of innovations through our website and annual Innovating Justice Forum (the fifth edition to be held on 25-26 November).
We have also gained experience in strengthening innovations. We supported Facilidadores Judiciales to improve the measurement of impact and provided support for scaling up to 5 other Latin American countries. We helped Legal Atlas with further developing their innovation. Mobile Judge (Mozambique) is being helped with taking their innovation to another country.
HiiL is not the only organisation working on justice innovation. The World Justice Project Opportunity Fund is another amazing network of justice innovations. What makes this initiative more special is that it is linked to an Opportunity Fund, giving innovators a push to develop their innovation. Namatibrings together initiatives on legal empowerment. ReinventLaw showcases innovations through energising events in different cities around the world. The Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development was established by the World Bank to bring together best practices in the area of rule of law development.
So something is afoot. Justice innovators and those in need of innovations are being brought together. Experiences are being shared and that is good. But we are impatient. Change is happening too slowly. We don’t really have incubators yet, coupled with an investment ecosystem and effective accelerator programs. If we have learned one thing from our four years of scouting, mapping, and modestly strengthening innovations, it is that there is huge untapped potential of justice innovation in the world.
An incubator fits in an ecosystem that attracts innovative ideas. We seem to have an emerging number of such magnets. That ecosystem should also have ways to assess the best ideas. That is more challenging. How can you pinpoint the strongest aspects of a justice innovation? HiiL has developed assessment criteria for selecting the annual Innovating Justice Award winners. They focus on the uniqueness of the innovation, considering the local context (what is new, what is different and what is the comparative advantage to services are already available). They also look at the scalability and sustainability of the innovation.
As part of its work on impact investment, Shujog has pioneered ‘harder’ criteria. IRIShas developed a catalogue of generally-accepted performance metrics that leading impact investors use to measure social, environmental, and financial success, evaluate deals, and grow the credibility of the impact investing industry.’
So, here too, we are moving in the right direction. We do not see, however, that knowledge is being widely applied by institutions that spend money on justice.
An effective justice innovation ecosystem, with its ability to assess innovations, should have a way to select ‘the best’. Like the sifting for gold in a river basin, and based on the right assessment criteria and benchmarks, the best should drift upwards (with a little help to improve, if needed) and, as they do, they should be connected to better access to expertise, human capital and funding.
Ideally, the different stages of a justice innovation, in in terms of size, impact, business plan and overall quality, should be linked to different sources of funding. Each part of the development process has different types of funding, which are all essential. For example, grants to develop good but more risky ideas with potential. Interest free loans for initiatives that have passed the start-up stage and need to be taken to a next level. And finally, impact investors who can invest millions but who want a return on that investment.
The impact investment world is showing us what is possible if you get such an ecosystem. This year at Davosand the 2014 Impact Forum, we saw tremendous impact in the health and environmental sectors with such a way of working. It’s time to apply that to justice.
HiiL’s 2014 Innovating Justice Awards and Living Wage Innovation Challenge are well underway! Here is a short summary of the nominations we have so far.
Upstream Analytics works with multinational companies to help ensure due diligence and compliance in emerging markets by providing a phone app for supply chain workers to communicate challenges that may not have been voiced otherwise.
Benefits for Business and Workers (BBW) created a program that develops the skills of managers and workers to improve capability and earning capacity. As a result, factories are able to make significant progress in implementing improved production techniques with a more stable, satisfied and motivated workforce.
Made in Africa (MIA) empowers factories to improve operations, implement social impact programs, and adopt sustainable practices. As factories increase their impact, MIA lowers their interest. As a result, employees in MIA-affiliated factories will see a direct wage increase as a result of the fair trade standards and worker ownership/profit sharing profit sharing programs their employer has been incentivize to adopt, potentially transforming Africa’s apparel industry.
Finally, Nudie Jeans is changing the trend in the garment industry by actually paying living wages to their workers. Nudie Jean’s Indian supplier, Armstrong Knitting mills, defined the living wage benchmark by developing a calculation based on the time it takes to make each garment style. This new calculation is helping to stabilize the living wage in the garment industry.
These innovations were nominated for the Living Wage Innovation Challenge 2014, we’ll start updating you on fresh selections for the HiiL Innovating Justice Awards in our next Insight.
HiiL published a report comparing legal aid systems in nine countries: France, Germany, Belgium, England & Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands and Finland. The report has been produced for the research institute of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice (WODC). The report was sent to Dutch parliament on May 20, 2014, in order to inform the debate on legal aid reform. It also investigates the minimum requirements for state-financed legal aid under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and from case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
We found large variations in expenditure, and even higher variability in expenditures for specific problems. Differences in the complexity of procedures may explain this. These, and other data, suggest that there may be huge gains available from zooming in on the supply chain around common and frequent legal problems. It was more difficult to find data which allow comparison between countries as to the quality of legal assistance.
Legal aid is one of several ways to guarantee access to justice. The ECtHR is open to alternatives, such as simplification of procedures. The reports lists the criteria for legal aid in several categories of cases. It also shows that, and how, all countries in this research are working on legal aid reform.
In February we brought together a group of seven justice leaders from different parts of the world for two days; men and women who are leading or who have led impressive justice change in their countries, against many odds (the final report of that meeting is being finalized as I write). Their shared experiences drove home a number of important insights about the specific challenges of leadership in the justice sector.
As we already reported in April (see this blog post), HiiL is conducting perhaps the largest justice research ever undertaken in Mali. Our clients, the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the European Union, are also doing something new: putting more emphasis on using knowledge about justice needs and fairness achieved of citizens as a foundation for rule of law programming.
To recap: using our Justice Needs and Satisfaction Tool more than 8,000 randomly selected individuals were interviewed on justice problems they experience, which processes they use and how they evaluate these processes in terms of process fairness, outcome fairness and costs. We are now analysing the raw data: the final report is expected in early July 2014.
The tool has been also used in Yemen, Indonesia and the Netherlands. What is specific for the study in Mali is that we used GPS enabled mobile devices to conduct the interviews. This method provides the exact coordinates of about 90% of the interviews in our dataset. What can longitude and latitude tell us about justice? There are at least three dimensions that deserve further exploration: methodological rigour, improved ability to understand justice and a leverage for innovative justice products and services.
1. Methodology
Latitude and longitude coordinates can greatly improve the quality control of survey research. This is particularly important for fragile and conflict affected states where reliable data collection organisations are rare or not present at all. GPS data makes it possible to inspect the sampling patterns. In this way the interviewers and their supervisors can receive immediate feedback about their sampling approaches. The feature is particularly interesting for NGOs that have little experience but are willing to conduct field research. NGOs can use the GPS data to monitor the process of randomisation and guide the non-professional enumerators as they are collecting data.
The success of surveys is based on rigorous randomisation. Failing to give each member of the population an equal chance to be selected for an interview leads to various biases which limit the value of the data. The GPS data allow us to assess the rigour of the randomisation. Below is a telling example of two approaches to sampling from our dataset. Both figures show where a couple of interviews were conducted. Each mark represents an interview. In Figure 1, the sample follows a wide step, which assures randomisation. Figure 2 shows a pattern with less spread. It will be further explored to see if this is a systemic error or simply an adaptation of the sampling rules to a complex urban environment.
Figure 1: Good sampling pattern
Figure 2: Suspicious sampling pattern
Furthermore, precise location data improves the comparability potential of before and after studies in which it is not possible to interview the same panel of respondents. Researchers can approximate the characteristics of the two samples through precise targeting of similar locations. In some instances it also makes it possible to select exactly the same household. Numerous evaluative empirical justice research projects can benefit from this feature.
2. Understanding better the geography of justice
How people encounter justice needs and the ways in which they respond are not random. Socio-demographic characteristics, barriers to access to justice, individual and group empowerment and knowledge about resolution of justice problems are only a few of the factors that affect responses to justice problems. Linking justice to location and geography allows us to understand better the relationships between problems, people, communities and institutions. Research in this area is still in its embryonic stage. Below are a few practical representations of the data from our Mali dataset.
The first map shows the experience with justice problems. Red dots represent clusters of respondents who report one or more justice problem. Grey points are clusters of people who did not report a justice problem. Figures 4 and 5 show the geographical distribution of trust in courts and trust in traditional justice. At this level of zooming each marker represents dozens and even hundreds of data points. Zooming in shows much more detail about the particular variable (in Figure 4 – trust in courts).
Figure 3: Prevalence of justice problems.
Figure 4: Trust in courts
Figure 5: Trust in traditional justice
3. Tools for justice innovators
The technology of mobile research with GPS tracking offers new opportunities for justice innovators. First, knowing better where people experience justice needs and where they go to resolve disputes provides greater insight into the supply and demand of justice services. Innovative products can target better areas or populations with specific needs. Second, it makes possible to connect data about justice to other sources with geographical dimensions. Entrepreneurs can be incredibly innovative in creating value from inventive combinations of resources. Here are only a few suggestions of data that can be matched to the data about experiences with justice:
Public services data (i.e. police calls for service, court statistics, proximity to justice institutions, census data, education records, etc.).
Data about extraordinary events – natural disasters, weather, conflicts, etc.
Social media – messages, comments, tweets, posts that are coming from the same or close geographical area.
Locational data about project interventions such as trainings, informational campaigns, etc.
4. The way forward
GPS technology can contribute to improving access to justice in two ways. First, we are able to estimate the geography of the supply and demand for justice. Geographic data expose access to justice gaps, which cannot be detected with other methodological approaches. This empowers practitioners, policy makers, activists and donors to address the existing justice needs in more effective and efficient ways. GPS provides thorough answers to questions such as, ”Where are the people who need justice?” and “Where are the providers of justice services?” Second, the knowledge about the geospatial characteristics of the demand and supply of justice can lead to new services and products. The challenge now is for the justice innovators and investors to unleash their creative potential. I am confident that in the coming months and years we will witness a wave of new justice services being built around the longitude and latitude of justice needs.
Following the success of the study in Mali, HiiL will continue to explore the intersections between justice research and innovations. Stay tuned!
Do people benefit from having a community justice centre nearby? What type of legal aid works best for family and land disputes? What is the effect of public interest litigation on well-being in poor communities? In times of cuts in budgets for public justice sector services and development aid, both practitioners and policymakers are on the lookout for what works. Laura Goodwin and Vivek Maru of Namati made a huge contribution to the evidence base by doing a careful review of 199 evaluation studies.
Enabling people to use the law
In What do we know about legal empowerment? Mapping the evidence, their perspective is the one of legal empowerment. This is the branch of law and development aid aiming to increase the capacity of people to exercise their rights and to participate in processes of governing. Legal empowerment programs tend to focus on developing countries, so most evaluation studies come from India, Bangladesh and a range of Sout-East Asian and African countries. But this is a worldwide mission, as many Western countries are struggling to provide legal assistance and appropriate procedures for ordinary people with the justice problems of everyday life. So studies from the UK (8), the US (8), the Netherlands and Belgium are included in the sample as well.
Ever since I co-edited the Chapter on Access to Justice of the Report of the UN Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, I feel the legal empowerment movement deserves much more attention from access to justice specialists. Legal empowerment is exactly about what we all say we want: enabling and coaching people so they can make use of their rights. It is also a movement full of creativity and diversity. Legal empowerment interventions tend to focus on urgent situations on the ground where there is little access to formal institutions, but (therefore?) also a lack of the vested interests that tend to slow down legal innovation elsewhere. The attitude is one of finding quick, very practical wins. Smart interventions have to create maximum justice impact per dollar/euro invested by donors.
A broad range of interventions help
The following table from the review shows which interventions have been evaluated in the 199 studies reviewed illustrates the broad range of interventions.
It is hard to tell whether this is a representative sample of the interventions that have actually been applied. If there is a bias, it may be that studies about unsuccessful interventions have not been undertaken or published. Only 9 studies reviewed by Goodwin and Maru reported a negative change.
Problems addressed
The next picture taken from the report shows the type of issues the reviewed legal empowerment interventions tend to address. We have to assume that this selection is the result of forces at the demand side (urgent problems for people)and the supply side (donor preferences). Service delivery is most prominent, and it represents the justice needs of poor people related to access to health care, water, sanitation, electricity and social security. A broad cluster of family disputes, domestic issues and women’s/children’s rights is also present. Land and access to resources is perhaps third. In our studies on basic justice care (see below) and justice needs and satisfaction surveys (soon to be published) we find similar patterns, so the donor-bias is perhaps limited.
There may be one exception. Criminal justice is small in these evaluation studies. This contrasts with a finding in a review of nine legal aid systems in Europe we will publish later this month, where most money is invested in criminal legal aid. Perhaps criminal justice is not that attractive to donors who may be more willing to help powerless women and children than men taken to overcrowded, filthy prisons? Gary Haugen, in his recent bestseller The Locust Effect, makes a similar point.
What works on what?
What effects can be established? Many interventions are reported to have a measurable effect on agency. People feel more willing to take action (93 studies out of 199) and actually take more action (also 93). This often leads to concrete results. People obtain more remedies (73), resolve more cases/disputes (37) and more sense of a fair process (32 studies).
The review also includes some evidence that legal empowerment strategies improve health, strengthen educational learning, and increase income. Community monitoring (in particular, community scorecards for public services) and citizen participation in governance appear to be the most promising interventions that have direct impact on the quality of life. These are interesting findings, because they are outside the scope of traditional access to justice thinking.
What is most new and surprising?
Evidence is most useful where it updates or falsifies prior beliefs. So I compared the findings of Goodwin and Maru with our own review of Strategies towards basic justice care for everyone, published 2 years ago. Two of the five strategies our experts prioritized, are clearly confirmed. Interventions aimed at informing people about what they can do and what they can expect (legally and practically), are rather effective. I could not agree more with the authors, however, when they say there is a need for more research into what are the most effective ways to deliver such legal information.
We also defined a promising strategy of employing problemsolvers such as paralegals and judicial facilitators. These are typically hybrid services, integrating mediation skills, knowledge about relevant legal norms and specialized practical, local knowledge for each type of problem, be it poor quality of public services, a land dispute or a divorce. In developed countries, they may be employed by community justice centres, by legal expenses insurers or by law firms specializing in legal aid cases and having adopted a problemsolving approach. Goodwin and Maru confirm that community paralegal programs and programs strengthening ADR/customary justice often have positive impacts on agency, on legal knowledge, on resolution of disputes and on health. There is a clear trend of integration between (mental) health care and justice care that seems to be particularly promising.
Our experts also recommended to invest in simplifying court procedures and developing better (specialized) tribunal procedures for the most frequent and urgent disputes. Goodwin and Maru redirect the attention to what lawyers would call administrative procedure. What seems to matter also is the pursuit of remedies or entitlements at ombudsman offices, regulatory agencies, and service delivery agencies.
Scaling up?
The Namati study does not cover our strategy nr 4. Protocols and best practices can be means to ensure quality and an important tool to deliver low cost services, as they economize on the costs of training. They also ignore the distribution of legal services by online and mobile platforms, which is a major trend in developed economies and promising in the parts of Africa and Asia that are well-connected (strategy 5). Is this a signal that it is way too early for such interventions in developing countries? Or is it an artefact of their approach? Evaluation studies are often done after projects concluded, so they typically represent choices made a number of years ago. Perhaps a next version of their study will also include these interventions, so we can learn more about how realistic they are.
One reason to consider these distribution strategies can be the last finding from this excellent study I want to share here. Until now, most interventions have a limited scale, as can be seen from the graph above. If we assume that legal empowerment efforts aiming at more people are more likely to be evaluated, the small average size of programs is even more striking. If these approaches for providing access to justice are as effective as the data collected by Goodwin and Maru suggest, it is time to think very hard about the ways to scale them up.
The completion of our annual report and financial audit 2013, presents a good time to look back and reflect on the achievements of last year.
I think it’s fair to say that we managed to solidify our position as an influential research and advisory institute for the justice sector. As Jacques Schraven, the Chair of HiiL’s Supervisory Board put it: « 2013 was a key year. I am very pleased to see that HiiL managed to make the strategic shift to an ogranisation that does not receive subsidies anymore. Based on relevant research it now runs pretty much like a commercial ogranisation, and it is meeting its ambitious targets. This also highlights HiiL’s relevance: if clients are willing to pay for HiiL’s justice innovation services then they must be of value. »
Key services, such as the HiiL Justice Innovation Lab and the Innovating Justice Hub, proved to be interesting propositions for client organisations and generated more revenue than expected. From the Justice Innovation Lab came the next version of Rechtwijzer, the online platform for resolving divorce and other disputes. Our research director Maurits Barendrecht: « In addition to divorce, the platform will be configurable to other types of disputes, such as neighbour disputes, consumer issues and landlord/tenant disputes. We are currently in the process of deciding which configuration we will focus on next. The platform will also be configurable to laws in other countries, so a Rechtwijzer for resolving divorce disputes may be moving to the next country soon. »
Two publications that stand out are our handbook Innovating Justice: Developing new ways to bring fairness between people and the trend report on the courts of the future: Trialogue, Releasing the value of courts. HiiL’s Programmatic Steering Board Chair, Anne van Aaken explains, “The trend report is important because it raises awareness. It encourages justice innovators to go on with their very difficult work which is truly inspiring. »
So what does this mean for 2014? It means we have a solid financial and organizational foundation to build further on. We are finalizing justice needs and satisfaction surveys in four countries: Yemen (see article, below), Mali, Indonesia, and The Netherlands, with more coming. The next steps will be to work with stakeholders to move from data to action. After the successful innovations awards in 2013, scouting for new innovations has also started, as you can see in the article below. We want to continue to show that justice innovation is happening everywhere, and to further develop the innovating justice ecosystem.
Thanks for the trust, support and inspiration we received. Onwards and upwards!
As we highlighted in our book on Innovating Justice, our global network of innovators has taught us: to be a successful innovator you must know your market. You must see the needs out there and be able to make an offer you can’t refuse to meet those needs. Getting the innovation off the ground takes hard work and sound management. And leadership is key.
Last month, Sam Muller and Laura Kistemaker met with Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister of Law H.E. Mr. K. Shanmugam to discuss a foresight study HiiL is conducting for the Ministry of Law. During the meeting, Minister Shanmugam shared powerful lessons on how to innovate. Under his leadership, Singapore is developing into Asia’s dispute settlement hub.
Lesson one was about looking ahead. “We cannot know the future. There are many unknown unknowns. For those you cannot prepare. What you can do is make sure you identify broad trends and have well-educated and trained people who can deal adequately with these unknowns when they present themselves.”
Lesson two was about knowing your market. The rise of China and India, as well as the development of closer ASEAN cooperation presented an opportunity that played to a Singapore strength. “I want Singapore to be the New York of ASEAN – to become the legal services and dispute resolution hub of ASEAN and Asia. Businesses who invest in China or India should want to manage all their legal matters in Singapore.”
This was then translated into a very clear value proposition – one that is hard to refuse. “We have a highly developed and very efficient legal system: courts, arbitration, mediation, and law firms. We are a safe haven for your assets and investments.”
Lesson four was about making it practical, and the hard work that comes with that. “The creation of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) is a good case study of our approach. We saw an opportunity for the legal services sector, given the rise of India, China and the rest of Asia. We brought in the best expertise from around the world for the SIAC Board. We then set a number of clear goals in terms of where we wanted to end up. We changed the legal framework to make sure we would be most attractive: full party autonomy, no interference from the courts, tax breaks, etc. Then we conducted a concerted marketing campaign in which we spread the word of the attractiveness of Singapore as an arbitration hub. My senior officials and I visited several countries for this.”
It has paid off: Singapore is now an internationally recognized centre for arbitration. The growth has been tremendous and continues. Some figures: 86% of new cases filed with the Singapore Arbitration Centre in 2013 were international in nature; new case filings increased in 2013 by 10% to 259 new cases, making it one of the fastest growing arbitration centres (SIAC Annual Report 2013).
While the dispute resolution hub is being developed, Minister Shanmugam is already thinking ahead. Two questions on his mind: the measure to which the different types of professional services are being pushed by economic forces to converge: law firms, accountants, banks, and management consultants. Is this a threat or an opportunity? And China: what is the emergence of China going to do to the legal landscape of South East Asia and beyond? How should Singapore prepare for that?
In a fascinating new book that has just been published, What Should We Be Worried About?, John Naughton expresses his big worry: “we are increasingly enmeshed in incompetent systems – that is, systems that exhibit pathological behavior but can’t fix themselves (…) because solving the problem would require coordinated action by significant components of the system, but engaging in such action is not in the short-term interest of any individual component (…). So in the end, pathological system behavior continues until catastrophe ensues.”
Legal systems – or parts thereof – can be a bit like that: incompetent and unable to change. Minister Shanmugam shows that it does not have to be that way. As part of a constant effort to understand the environment around it (a small city-state has little room for complacency) Singapore saw a key trend, related that back to a strength it knew was there, and formulated and sold a very convincing value proposition.
Based on an Interview with H.E. Mr. K. Shanmugam, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister Law on 31 March 2014
Alongside the Innovating Justice Awards, this year HiiL is pleased to present for the first time the Living Wage Innovation Challenge, in partnership with C&A Foundation. This Challenge is looking for committed and inspiring innovators who offer solutions to fostering fair living wages and enabling more fair and stable conditions in the labour markets of the Ready Made Garment sector. Individuals and organisations can win global recognition and support. We have set aside a 100.000 EUR investment budget dedicated to making the top submissions more impactful, more suitable to the garment industry and more financially sustainable.
Submit your solution for this international challenge via our Innovating Justice platform here
The textile and Ready Made Garment sector employs millions of people worldwide and has greatly contributed to the development of many struggling economies. However, in the global international supply chains, innovation is most certainly needed – to bring more justice to those working in the sector and to make it more sustainable. We aim to find promising initiatives and establish empowering relationships with innovators with the potential to bring about positive change.
HiiL will monitor various countries in Asia and South America including Brazil, Mexico, China, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Turkey and could envisage focusing on innovations around the following topics:
Collective bargaining and dialogue mechanism (between buyers, sellers and workers)
Mechanisms to protect and ensure freedom of association rights
At HiiL, we partner with the Dutch Legal Aid Board and Modria (with support of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice) to develop an access to justice platform that builds on www.rechtwijzer.nl. This application offers legal diagnosis and triage, basic information about rights and obligations and concrete tools and other support for solving legal problems.
Rechtwijzer 2.0 takes this a few steps further. It offers a platform for legal information, advice and services, some of which are automated. It enables people to work on solving their legal problems in their own words, at their own pace, from their own homes. Together with the other person. With professional service providers readily available to help them. To mediate, advise, decide or to review the end result. Lawyers and adjudicators working with Rechtwijzer 2.0 offer their services online, unbundled and on a pay as you go basis against fixed fees.
Rechtwijzer 2.0 thus is a justice platform that builds on the actual behaviour of people with a legal problem. As legal needs studies show us, people with a legal problem across the globe show more or less similar behaviour: most people first look for information about their problem, rights, obligations, and options for solving their problems. People often first try to solve their legal problem themselves and seek help if this does not work. They generally want support with contacting the other party, communicating, negotiating. And also have a need for neutral information that help them determine a fair result.
Initially, Rechtwijzer 2.0 focuses on divorce cases in The Netherlands, but the platform can be easily configured to other problems and other problems. When we design justice processes on the basis of what works rather than on the basis of normative rules, international standards, best practices and even standardisation all of a sudden become within reach.
Justice 2.0 for me is much about designing these types of justice platforms. Justice as a platform that starts from the behaviour of people, the support they need and the things that work for this.
We live in a time where surgeons sitting in a room in New York perform the most sophisticated operations on patients lying on a bed in Paris. All thanks to technologies. It is sad to see how lawyers tend to get stuck in discussions about whether or not to allow technologies like videoconferencing, while the rest of the world has a conversation on Skype or Google Hangouts.
A few days ago, I participated in a panel at a conference about the ecology of courts and the use of technology.
A group of London based artist took the Bazaramba proceedings as a case study for how technology can be used in courts:
“Bazaramba is a Rwandan citizen who sought asylum in Finland in 2003, where he was convicted nine years later for his role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In a bizarre geographical inversion, the Finnish trial took place from 2009 to 2010 in improvised courts in Rwanda and Tanzania, with the legal proceedings transmitted to and from Bazaramba’s Helsinki prison cell via Skype and other videoconferencing technologies.”
The artists got access to a large amount of video footage of the trial from which they produced a short film. This film highlights some of the technology-related challenges the trial faced, like power cuts, background noises, unclear pictures as a result from suboptimal lighting and differences in skin colour. The question the artists asked was to what extent modern technologies can help to realise a legal utopia. Much of the debate, however, focused on the question whether or not we should allow more videoconferencing in our court rooms. And on the rules that should govern this technology.
You often see this happening when lawyers try to innovate: the focus quickly is on risks and rules: under what circumstances should we allow videoconferencing, what ought to be the minimum amount of pixels, should the suspect or witness have at least on face-to-face meeting with the judge, etc?
We live in a time where surgeons sitting in a room in New York perform the most sophisticated operations on patients lying on a bed in Paris. All thanks to technologies. It is sad to see how we get stuck in discussions about whether or not to allow videoconferencing, while the rest of the world has a conversation on Skype or Google Hangouts.
(This logo was developed as part of a design assignment I developed about the courts of the future)
The film about the Bazaramba case had two parts that reminded me of some of my experiences in Kenya. One is a scene where a Finnish judge talked Finnish to a Finnish lawyer in courts in Arusha and Kigali, and the other is a scene where the Finnish prosecutor gave directions to people in Finnish while a group of Rwandese people watched. This trial was about bringing someone to justice who brought terror to the families of these bystanders. But the Rwandese people in the film looked as if they did not know what was going on. All they saw a bunch of strangers from a far away country, talking in a language they never heard before, following a procedure they did not understand. I got the impression they felt left out.
Often when I tell someone in Kenya I am from The Hague I have something to explain. Many people think I live in a prison or court, since they know The Hague but do not know it is an actual city. The branding of The Hague as city of Justice and Peace has been slightly less effective in this part of the world. In recent years, people regularly ask me a lot of questions about the proceedings of the International Criminal Court in the Kenya cases. The hearings used to be live-streamed. Many people gathered around in their homes, hotel lobbies or in one of the abundant internet cafes in one of the slums in Nairobi to watch. They hoped to see justice being done on behalf of the victims from the post-election violence. But they saw something else, so they told me. What they saw was not something that has to do with justice. All they saw was a big room filled with many people that they never saw before. People who they could not relate to, not people like them. Talking about things they did not understand. Talking a lot. While at the same time nothing really seemed to happen.
It feels like a missed opportunity. The current state of technology allows us to bring justice procedures in the homes of people. To the people directly affected. Even the procedures that take place at the other end of the world. But courts do not seem able to use the technologies we have to create user-friendly interfaces of courts. So instead of justice being done, these people saw something that disappointed them.
One of the first lessons for justice innovation is: forget about the rules. Focus on finding out how technology can help us to deliver better and more justice rather than on the regulatory framework. So we should not focus on the rules to regulate videoconferencing but on the question how this technology can be used to make justice work. For the people directly and intermediately involved, the legal profession and for society.
We seem to be far removed still from user-friendly interfaces for courts. With videostreamed interfaces that explain to people what’s going on. The technology to do such is readily available. A simple liveblog would do the job and help to really increase transparency and publicity of adjudication. Maybe it is because lawyers find forgetting about the rules one of the most difficult things. It is our core business, in the end. At least, that is what they told me at law school.
But things seem to be changing. Did you know that in recent years almost half a billion dollars was invested in legal tech startups? That is all justice technology R&D money not minding too much about the rules but rather on investors interest.
HiiL’s Corry van Zeeland attended the launch of Roger Smith and Alan Paterson’s research on digital legal services at the Nuffield Foundation in London.
In a digitised world, courts will still be key for delivering justice as they are the only institutions that have an adequate answer to the element of “make me”. An element part of most many disputes: often one person wants to change something in her relationship with someone else while this other might benefit form the status quo and needs to be nudged towards changing the situation. Courts can do that as they are back up by state coercion.
I have been invited to speak at South by Southwest (SXSW), the conference where Twitter got big, Foursquare got launched, and people like Mark Zuckerberg, Malcolm Gladwell and Al Gore tend to deliver keynotes. Together with Colin Rule of Modria and Beth Trent of CPR, I will explore Justice 2.0. I bring the perspective of dispute resolution technology as a solution for the legal problems of everyday life on the stage.
Our recent trend report “Trialogue” indicates how the future of courts actually can be bright again. A big challenge for our courts is to make full use of the opportunities modern technologies offer them.
Together with the Dutch Council for the Judiciary, our team at HiiL co-created a completely online procedure for neighbour disputes, where both parties and judges login to an web-based problem-solving platform. The new Signpost to Justice platform offers a similar environment, initially for people who are breaking up. Difference is that a large group of legal professionals offer their services on this platform. Unbundled, for a fixed fee, on a pay as you go basis. M-Sheria builds on this innovation but adopts SMS technology so slum dwellers in Kenya get access to justice.
For me, these kind of online platforms are a core element of Justice 2.0. They bring together disputants in a problem-solving interface where they find technology-based support tools. And find unbundled, online support of legal professionals. With an online option of a neutral decision by an adjudicator. All just one click away.
Judges, lawyers and mediators need to be service-oriented as the next generation citizens will demand that the justice sector keeps up with the pace of technological developments. Innovating justice thus is not only a matter of innovating procedures, but also of innovating professionals.
I love to explore how this connects to the experiences in ODR that Colin has and the business dispute resolution experiences of Beth. I am looking forward to our session on Justice 2.0, which is facilitated by Joseph Markowitz, scheduled for 10 March this year and part of an extremely rich programme in Austin, Texas.
A recent and exciting justice innovation in Canada is the creation of the Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution. The Winkler Institute has an action-oriented three pillar mandate in the areas of teaching and learning, research and innovation and pilots and projects.
Along with the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and Osgoode Hall Law School, we are involved in a number of exciting Canadian projects, including the:
Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters;
Canadian Bar Association’s Reaching Equal Justice project;
CFCJ’s Costs of Justice project; and
Winkler Institute’s Law Foundation of Ontario-funded process needs assessment.
These are important law development and justice innovation initiatives in Canada – a country entering a new era of collaborative justice innovation and infrastructure reform. These are exciting and challenging times back home!
As we write, we are currently enjoying the good fortune of meeting with Sam Muller and members of the Hiil team, recognised world leaders in justice innovation. We are learning more about some of the exciting projects in which Hiil is currently involved. For example, Hiil’s measurement group is working on a number of important needs assessment and mapping projects in various corners of the globe. Their innovation group is busy sourcing, encouraging and catalyzing leading justice innovation initiatives. And their strategic group is constantly looking for new avenues of justice sector partnerships – all with an ultimate goal of making law more fair, sustainable and accessible. With that in mind, we are also discussing concrete ideas for collaboration between our various organisations around justice innovation in Canada and internationally.
Although there are many forms of justice around the world, what we share – both in terms of challenges as well as opportunities – is becoming increasingly common. How people use systems, the challenges they face, issues around access and sustainability, and the need for more concrete, action-oriented, innovative and sustainable ideas are shared issues and aspirations. To the extent that we can – regionally, nationally and globally – share and collaborate, the better we all will be.
We are currently exploring a number of exciting ideas for innovation, collaboration and support between our organisations. Stay tuned!
The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos has many layers. Business leaders meet and do deals and forge partnerships. High potential start-ups use Davos to pitch. Members of governments come to support the deal making.
The President of Mongolia worked hard to bring business to his country. Another layer is pure politics. “We even met the Iranians.”, said one ambassador to me, very pleased. The do-good layer is the one in which I move. The WEF has built a formidable network of doers and thinkers around big global issues such as the environment, governance, health, and youth unemployment with its Global Agenda Councils. Each Council has around 10-12 leaders in their field and they are expected to provided thought leadership, start initiatives, build projects. Slowly, a remarkable, global, networked think-tank is being created.
As Chair of the Global Agenda Council on the Rule of Law it’s obvious what my focus is. Rule of law and justice do not feature prominently on the Davos agenda. A big push comes from the young generation: the WEF Young Global Shapers community. These are remarkable under 30 year olds that have successfully set up NGOs, businesses and things-in-the-middle, that make a difference. An impressive example is Rodrigo Diamante, a brave young Venezuelan, who already has 10 years under his belt as human rights defender in Venezuela, where human rights and rule of law have been abolished. His organisation continues to deal with disappearances and unlawful arrests, against many odds. He uses his time at Davos to forge networks and to wake people up the plight of his country. There are many more examples like him.
My justice take-ways from Davos 2014 relate to five areas: the rules of globalisation, governance architecture, privacy, IT and big data, and investment.
Globalisation
For business, the main rule of law gripe is the ‘absence of a level playing field’. I rarely hear the word ‘citizens’. Rules are not the same everywhere and that is bad for business: it affects efficiency and creates costs. An interesting observation by a Chinese panellist: “Globalisation is like riding a bike; when you stop, you fall. We must not fall.” I did not hear much about the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. What did become clear is that where there was once a single globalisation scenario – upwards and onwards – there are now more. Globalisation could fragment, become regional, and even get cemented into trade blocks. I heard a gloom scenario in which the Internet would become a national or regional affair, with borders and passports. There are real concerns within business that globalisation has failed to deliver the right long term investment, with too much of an emphasis on short-term profits. Fair and legitimate rules, which govern globalisation might be needed, but: “level playing field!”. A rare, clear voice for citizens is Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Within all the serious human rights concerns she has, she did make an important point: “Why does the whole world grieve when Mandela died? It’s because he stood for universal values. People saw that. These values are in the open now, and can be invoked.”
Privacy
Privacy was another much talked-about justice issue. Brad Smith, the General Council of Microsoft announced that his company was going to give consumers a choice in where they want their data stored. He also stated very publicly that Microsoft does not give data to governments unless forced to do so under rule of law. It is obvious that business feels very uncomfortable about the way in which governments now appear to be acting. “We’ve moved back!”, one person remarked, “We used to be afraid for hackers and terrorists; now we need to guard against governments. And the country that always proclaimed freedom seems to be the biggest abuser!” Salil Shetty, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, remarked: “this will be one of the defining issues of our time.”
Architecture
“We’re heading for a full blown crisis of legitimacy”, said Don Tabscott during one lunch. Much work is being within the Global Agenda Council community on new modes of governance, more fitting to meet the complex challenges of the day and the changing demands of citizens. Interesting work is being done to use complexity theory, design theory, and big data to better understand governance needs and to develop new ways of doing things from there. Don Tabscott is looking at how government can be innovated and sees four aspects of a governance model: (1) Government as a platform; (2) From “you vote, I rule” to ongoing citizen engagement; (3) Radical transparency and (4) Government as a conductor of open, multi-stakeholder networks. All this thinking will also result in new ways of using rule of law as a foundation for that new governance. It has only just begun.
IT and big data
Another trend is the impact that big data (well used, in accordance with rule of law and human rights principles) and technology is starting to have on justice systems. Big data can give remarkable insights into behaviour, spotting trends in human behaviour so you can take anticipatory action. In their ground-breaking book Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler show how what we have learned about human behaviour requires a re-think of whether we always need a ‘law’ and an ‘enforcement mechanism’ to influence human behaviour. We also see the emergence of all kinds of online collaboration tools – some of them quite successful (for example: www.ushahidi.com; winner Innovating Justice Award 2013). This will affect rules we have on rule making. We also see the emergence of online dispute resolution platforms. In the Netherlands, HiiL helped develop an online platform to deal with neighbour disputes. There are many more examples. What will that do to courts, the monopoly of the state on courts (the E-bay online dispute resolution platform that deals with millions of disputes a year can make one wonder why states have consumer courts), rules of procedure, the work of lawyers? There is huge potential to redesign legal systems to make them more agile, more affordable, and more citizen-based. Are we heading for disruptive innovation?
Investment
I worked hard on further building our network of justice innovators and on our plans to set up a mechanism to connect them to funding. This is where the WEF is at its best: providing bridges between worlds, in my case, investors and do-gooders. Justice impact investment is coming and HiiL will lead the charge. Justice delivery does not only have to come from taxpayers money.
It was another amazing Annual Meeting. Much praise to the team that made it happen.
The wait is nearly over. The 2014 Innovating Justice Awards will soon be open for business.
Justice innovation is important. The world over, people’s lives have been made better by concepts which have featured during HiiL’s annual awards. Nearly 200 great ideas have appeared on innovatingjustice.com since 2011 and it’s almost time to fire the starting pistol for this year’s round.
Have you got an innovate idea which might improve fairness? Do you know of an innovation which is already making a difference? Get ready to tell us about it.
Take a look at the fantastic entries which our awards have already featured over the years and get inspired!
With the feedback received from the Innovating Justice Forum participants on the draft version of the trend report, the trend report has become even more focused on the needs of courts and their users.
In Trialogue – Releasing the value of courts you can find the trends in how courts across the world improve their procedures. The report lists the challenges as experienced by court leaders, and a range of strategies and innovations that may help to overcome these challenges. It also contains three wonderful designs of courts of the future developed by architects in close interaction with judges.
One of the key points is that citizens would benefit if courts take their future in their own hands. If courts form new partnerships and negotiate more freedom to operate, they can select a strategy, specialise and innovate in a more systematic way. Courts, and their clients, know best what works, and can co-create procedures for the most frequent problems of businesses and individuals. They are in the best position to develop smart models for financing these procedures.
If the information and ideas in the report appeal to you, please share the report with court leaders in your country who are likely to make a difference during the next few years. We at HiiL Innovating Jusitice look forward to working with you and with them on court innovation during 2014.
Effective governance that leads to more sustainable results has clear rules on transparency, participation and decision-making, and agreement about a way to solve conflicts that can arise.
Four weeks ago I was in Abu Dhabi, at the annual meeting of the Global Agenda Councils of the World Economic Forum. The Council on Rule of Law, which I chair, issued a report on the fast increase of governance outside purely state structures that is aimed at dealing with complex transnational issues such as human rights, labour standards, the environment, cybercrime, health, and corruption. Situations where the state is not enough. There’s a lot of that kind of governance around when you start looking for it and it will increase. Many examples of transnational, multi-stakeholder governance flounder. Why? At the most basic level: because they are not seen as ‘governance’, but as simply problem solving. Getting it done. However, that’s often not enough because it rarely is one thing that must be done. Take the garment industry, which after a few disasters in Bangladesh clearly needs fixing. That fixing is needed at many levels: producers, consumer, retailers, fashion houses, states, international organisations, and civil society organisations. Many small things that will together result in a garment industry that gives Bangladeshi women safe working places and a reasonable income and that provides our daughters with great clothes. It requires governance. Somehow. Effective governance that leads to more sustainable results has clear rules on transparency, participation and decision-making, and agreement about a way to solve conflicts that can arise. Calling this a form of governance and inserting as much ‘rule of law-ness’ in it is not only good, but also creates more effectiveness and sustainability in respect of the problem you are trying to solve.
I am now in Mali. Internet is sparse and slow. I have not used my smart phone for a week and communicate with a local SIM card I bought in a tiny sidewalk shop the size of a box and shoved into my old Nokia. I ride around in taxis with holes in them that spit out blue smoke. It hurts the eyes to drive around. The sidewalks are packed with busy people selling incredibly ‘small’ stuff like plastic bags with water, a banana, and three cigarettes. This place screams out for governance. The sidewalk people will all be sick later because of what they breathe in. There are many children, clearly not at school. Every now and then you see horribly malformed faces and bodies, just sitting there, hoping for pity. None of the thousands of motorbike riders wears a helmet. I could go on. Mali recently fell apart and a UN peacebuilding mission is being rolled out to glue it back together with a recently elected government. Leaving regional issues aside, most would argue that Mali fell apart because government did not govern – it was too busy being compartmentalized and corrupt. The North was not part of the deal, so it started taking care of itself. There were no rules of the game. Impunity ruled. Rules were not rules. I met with civil society leaders, impressive people concerned about citizens, governing where they can with funding from the international community. Here too, it seems unthinkable that the state will do it all. Mali, it seems, is also a place where governance must develop into a somehow coordinated, multi-stakeholder affair. Governance founded on a few basic rules about transparency, participation, and what to do if conflicts arise. And: rules that are rules.
In my battered and bellowing taxi, on the way back to my hotel after a day with two civil society organisations it dawned on me how much the situation in Mali resembled the complexities of the transnational, multi-stakeholder governance discussed in Abu Dhabi.
“The best place for polycentric conversations”, is how Joel Ngugi, the director the Judicial Training Institute and head of the Judicial Transformation Programme of Kenya summarized what good courts were all about when he spoke at the 6th Innovating Justice Forum, held in The Hague on 10 and 11 December.
Courts talk with many at the same time. If they perform well, they manage these conversations fruitfully and organise justice. Courts alone do not bring about peaceful neighbourhoods in a peaceful city, in a peaceful country, where most people have opportunities and can shape the lives they want. It requires a mix of top down directives, and bottom-up self-help, at different levels. I very much like the idea of these conversations. It works as a way to see governance: conversations to reach understandings that solve problems of citizens and their organisations. Conversations must involve all concerned. Conversations do not have to be nice; some things must be said. Conversations must go on. Conversations must remain conversations and not turn into gunfights.
In other words: clear rules on transparency, participation and decision-making, and agreement about a way to solve conflicts that can arise. Whether it is transnational governance, a country like Mali, or a crime-ridden neighbourhood: things break down when conversations break down. Rule of law is one of the best-proven frameworks within which to organize these conversations. As the hotel navette weaves its way through the dark night of Bamako on its way to the airport and as we enter the New Year, I renew my commitment to strengthen this framework. Practically bringing rule-of-law-ness into our whatever we contribute to governance.
Enhancing trust: Towards strategies for improving multilevel rulemaking
The fifth HiiL Innovating Justice Forum held in The Hague on 1 and 2 November prioritised six challenges resulting from multilevel rulemaking , with terms of reference on which improvement strategies can be built. The core issue behind these challenges is the issue of trust – how can citizens trust rulemaking by transnational public and private networks? – and the development of a global rulemaking profession.
Rulejungling
The HiiL Trend Report Rulejungling: When lawmaking goes private, international, and informal, constituted the basis for the debate during the fifth HiiL Innovating Justice Forum in which lawyers, judges, legal counsels, parliamentarians, civil servants of both states and international organisations and academics participated. The Trend Report highlighted a number of challenges resulting from multilevel rulemaking, or rulejungling, involving transnational public and private networks, such as rulemaking by the Financial Stability Board (public) and the European Payments Council (private). The challenges relate to deficiencies in democratic participation, accountability and transparency, the efficacy of rulejungling, as well as the difficulties resulting from conflicts of norms in litigation.
Core challenges
The objective of the Forum was to evaluate the Trend Report, to formulate additional challenges, if any, and to develop terms of reference for improvement strategies in order to address these challenges. While the challenges resulting from rulejungling identified in the Trend Report were underscored by the participants, some were made more specific and some others were added.
1. Rulemaking warning lights
How can rule makers at both the public and private level, and at the national, transnational and international level, know in advance a little better (warning signal) that there is an area out there that urgently needs rulemaking? At present rulemaking on global and transnational issues only happens when there is a crisis or an acute pain. The financial crisis is an example. This means that rulemaking always starts too late. It generally has a responsive rather than a preventive character. As a results damages are already inflicted and victims made. Moreover post-crisis rulemaking always carries with it a large degree of inefficiency. Therefore, a legal warning system and strategy should be developed, including appropriate indicators.
2. Knowing what’s out there
If a rule maker wants to engage in rule making, how can he know what rules exist and what has already been done? Not knowing this often results in duplication, conflict of rules, non-compliance with standards, and inefficiency. This challenge is especially significant when one lacks a system to compile necessary information. Because international organisations can compile information through their member states, they tend to have easier access to information than a group of companies in a particular region of the world. However, both international organisations and companies make rules, often in regard of the same issues. Therefore, an improvement strategy in regard of this challenge needs to result in a system or instrument that provides easy to access information on what’s already out there.
3. Knowing what works
Establishing the effectiveness of rules is a challenge for CEOs of multinationals, legislators, parliamentarians, NGOs and other civil society organisations. How can you know that rule networks who have produced or want to produce rules will or have produced something effective? How can you know that a private regulatory regime is or will be more effective than an alternative public regulatory regime? In addition to measuring compliance, it is necessary to know more about the realisation of the desired, stated objectives of the regulatory regime, the unstated objectives, as well as unforeseen consequences of the regime.
4. Strengthening parliament
The rule making agenda is very often no longer determined in parliaments. This ultimately badly affects citizens: the rule making agenda is focused on the wrong issues, not all stakeholders are part of the rule making process, democratic accountability is low if at all present, and learning after a crisis is limited. The role of parliaments in private, international and informal rulemaking can be strengthened in three areas:(i) agenda setting; (ii) mobilising stakeholders; (iii) inquiry into matters where rulemaking has been ineffective.
5. Involving stakeholders
It is very difficult to assess which stakeholders need to be involved in a rulemaking exercise and how to involve them best. For this, three things are needed:
meta-rules on information-delivery (avoiding overload of information, principles for who should get which information, avoiding incomprehensible information, principles for when to give unprocessed and processed information, and avoiding culturally insensitive information);
meta-rules on identifying stakeholders (criteria on when someone is entitled to qualify as stakeholder); and
meta-rules on the level of participation for different groups of stakeholders (minimum standards on how to engage particular stakeholders).
6. Guidelines for transparency
Many transnational networks are involved in rulemaking. They often suffer from a lack of transparency. This can cause suspicion from citizens and generally all those that are not involved in the rulemaking process, but affected by the rules. Although the recent trend of the establishment of more and more transnational judicial networks warrants special attention, for both – non-judicial and judicial networks – clear transparency guidelines are needed.
Strategy report
The debates during the Innovating Justice Forum led to the formulation of terms of reference for improvement strategies in regard of each of the rulejungling challenges mentioned above. These terms of reference as well as recommendations concerning the role of relevant (legal) professionals in dealing with the challenges resulting from rulejungling, will be elaborated in a strategy report that will be published by the end of November 2012.
For more information on the Trend Report, the Innovating Justice Forum or the upcoming strategy report, please contact David Raič, Deputy Director. Email: david.raic@hiil.org; tel. +31 (0)70 349 44 03.
The Dutch Legal Aid Board has developed a legal advice site known as Rechtwijzer, variously translated as ‘conflict resolution guide’ or ‘signpost to justice’. The project, which initially cost €2.3m, is run by a joint committee with the support of a number of stakeholders, including the Bar. It sets a new standard for what can be delivered.
Rechtwijzer 1.0 was launched in 2007 and comprehensively reworked in 2012. Research on the current version, Rechtwijzer2.0, is being undertaken by the University of Twente. Results will be available in 2014. This will be an important study because it will indicate whether the provision is, in fact, as good as it looks. Thus, a note of caution should be sounded. We do not yet know how the current site will be rated by those using it in practice.
The Rechtwijzer has to be seen in its context. The Dutch have a relatively well-funded legal aid scheme. Expenditure was €440m in 2008. Services are delivered through private practitioners on a certificated basis and a national network of legal advice ‘counters’ staffed by paralegals. This is the Board’s own description of the Rechtwijzer:
There is an interactive online application called Rechtwijzer This is an easy way to obtain legal information. It helps users to find their way towards solving a conflict. The application, developed by the Legal Aid Board in close cooperation with the University of Tilburg, consists of a ‘dispute roadmap’ that, on the basis of a number of choices, guides users step by step along all the legal aspects of the conflict at hand. The software covers the fields of housing, labour, family, consumer and administrative law.
Apart from further development of this Dispute Roadmap, new applications will be added to the website too: the Divorce and Parenthood Plan and Mediation Online. These applications will soon be ready for use and are also meant to encourage users to solve legal conflicts themselves.
The Dispute Roadmap can be seen as a first help towards settling actual conflicts. The website of the Legal Services Counters, on the other hand, contains lots of documentation and is meant first and foremost to inform visitors on all sorts of legal matters. It is of a much more comprehensive nature than the Dispute Roadmap, which focuses on well-defined conflicts. That is why the Dispute Roadmap software sometimes refers visitors to one of the counters.
The current version (April 2013) of the Rechtwijzer covers consumer and relationship breakup in depth with ‘lite’ versions on employment, tenancy and administrative law issues. It is designed to take someone on a ‘journey’, a dynamic and iterative process in which a small number of questions refining the parameters of the problem must be answered on each page before moving on to the next.
To test the site, let us take the example of a 40 year old male in employment with two children in their early teens who wants to separate from, or divorce, his wife. He would be led through the system as follows:
the opening screen offers a choice between saying that things are not going well; or my partner and I have decided to split; or we have already split but a new problem has occurred. Assume the answer that you have decided to split up and register accordingly. The option on screen is carefully phrased. You certify that you have decided to split up and need to arrange your affairs – signalling the process to come.
You are now prompted to give details on marital status; children; marriage contracts; ownership of any company.
The following screen begins to get interesting. You have to rate your level of educational attainment and that of your partner (we are assuming both graduates, both with paid jobs for this example); then you are then asked two questions ‘If you compare yourself with your partner do I have more or less skills to find a good solution?’ You answer ‘more’ – obviously. And ‘If you compare yourself with your partner do you have more or less people in the area on whom you can rely?’ Less – predictably.
The next screen leads you to think about the options. For the first time, we encounter a block of text rather than short questions to elicit answers. The text explains that you have choices – you have to rate on a sliding scale how much you want a messy divorce or a ‘consultation separation’. You, of course, want the latter: you enter your assessment of your unreasonable partner who is all for the messiest divorce possible.
You are now asked if you have a good understanding of the implications of the divorce for your children, your partner, yourself and in relation to finance. You say yes to all but the last. You are led on again.
You are given the option to indicate if you have other worries. If you indicate that there is ‘talk’ of violence just to check what is offered, the system leads you out of the mediation stream: You get to a page which leads you to victim support and lawyer referral
If you stay with it, you will be encouraged to mediate; to draw up an agreed parenting plan; and given access to a financial calculator.
Rechtwijzer was developed by a multi-disciplinary team at Tilburg University. There is an advisory group composed of interested stakeholders such as judges, mediators and lawyers. The key guidelines formulated for its establishment were that:
the site should identify and signpost the best dispute resolution assistance, given both the dispute itself and the parties to it;
the approach is based upon the principles of ‘integrative negotiation’ ie draws users to getting to ‘yes’ and building up common ground rather than identifying difference;
time and opportunity is deliberately given to encourage users to reflect upon their conflict;
no legal advice is offered as such though information is given at strategic times both as to process and likely result.
The site has been established within the context of overall Dutch policy on the resolution of disputes. This is to encourage self-help, early intervention and mediated settlement in preference to recourse to lawyers and the courts. This had previously been reflected in the fact that, between 2003 and 2006, the Dutch Ministry of Justice wound up its Buros voor Rechtshulp, effectively law centres, and replaced them with its nationwide network ofjuridische loketten or ‘law counters’ that offer information and self-help assistance rather than representation. In 2009, the Ministry, in pursuance of the same aim, required parents who were splitting up to produce a divorce and parenting plan. In its turn, this approach exerts pressure on policy. Self-help and the operation of digital forms of resolution work better when judicial decisions are predictable; there are clear rules on such matters as maintenance; and minimal discretion. This can instantly raise the hackles of lawyers and judges with very clear ideas of the different interests of each party. However, the site works to clearly stated principles: to improve communication; to encourage parties to explore and identify their interests if they are not clear about them; to identify creative options; to identify, in the jargon of this area of conflict resolution, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, commonly referred to as BATNA, with the aim of aligning the BATNA as closely as possible to a settlement; and to find objective criteria to assist the parties to make a decision on the way forward.
The Tilburg team behind the Rechtwijzer project have also worked on personal injuries. Their description of the ‘personal injuries claims express’ (PICE) provides another demonstration of the collaborative approach incorporated within the structure of a website:
The first innovation is to enhance collaboration between parties through a communication structure that stimulates dialogue rather than argument. Directing parties’ consultation towards a constructive dialogue probably adds to a problem-solving attitude, and leads to a positive negotiation atmosphere overall. The communication structure encourages parties to share interests while explaining their position to each other. For instance, in case of opposing interests, they are advised to make up a list of possible objective criteria that may help to reach an agreement in line with the a problem-solving or integrative approach to negotiation and conflict resolution … Concretely, PICE enables parties to start a dialogue about an issue in various sections by means of the “Dialogue Button”, which allows them to enter their view and invite the other party to respond … When parties consult on the amount of the damages, PICE provides arithmetic support and overview by means of a “Damages Summary section”. Parties can mark agreement and work arrangements, using the “Arrangement Button”. Differences of opinion are also noted, as well as clear agreements on how to resolve these issues.
This helps to focus on possible solutions instead of points of contention. All communication regarding a particular case is mediated by the PICE system, which in its capacity of electronic file of the process retains all data entered. The parties, including the victim, can use it to monitor progress of the claim handling procedure. A neutral party who may be called upon in case of a dispute can also use it to review the case.’
A graphic illustration of how this works is that both parties to, for example, a car accident can work together to provide a composite statement of facts.
They set out their approach as follows:
Taking a bottom-up approach, TISCO members develop, integrate, and apply insights from negotiation theory, conflict research, dispute system design, (comparative) legal research, network theory, behavioural law, and law and economics in their research in order to connect and extend the body of knowledge on building, maintaining and (constructively) ending horizontal relationships in which people and businesses are involved.
Rechtwijzer’s designers are clear that the site does not offer advice on what professional to contact: it offers an overview of the things that need to be done; who may do this; and at what cost. With this information, users can choose which of the professionals is best suited for their own (personal, financial) situation. This is sophisticated. It facilitates the ‘unbundling’ of legal services in which a user may seek legal assistance with parts of a problem but retain ownership of its entirety. In some matters, such as some consumer disputes, the information elicited by proceeding through the site ends with the suggestion of a letter to the other side setting out the dispute in a structured way and seeking its solution:
The application uses a series of questions to analyze the conflict situation, and then offers advice. The advice consists of a number of interventions that are needed to resolve the situation, linked to the people or organizations that are can provide this service. The advice is organized in such a way that the most simple solutions are most prominent, and also focuses on the things that the user can do by him- or herself to solve the conflict. One specific tool is provided to support people who are dealing with consumer issues. Signpost to Justice helps users to write a letter to the opponent in which they explain their situation. This letter performs several tasks; it notifies the opponent of the issue, it communicates the user’s interests, and it lets the user voice a number of creative solutions.
Any conclusions on the effectiveness of the site have to be tentative until the research is in but the following emerged from discussion with those concerned with it at the Legal Aid Board and Tilburg University. The initial reaction of lawyers showed some hostility but, as time goes on, they are adapting. Some now direct their clients to the site in preparation for – or part of – taking instructions. Research on the first version identified that people liked to use it to organise themselves but tended not to rely on it exclusively. In particular, at that time, the financial coverage was too difficult for many users. The team put some thought into elements such as reading age (now school-leaver level) and to cutting back the text. As a consequence, the content per page has been really pared back.
A small-scale survey of law students at the University of Amsterdam in 2013 produced mixed results. A majority liked the consumer friendliness and relevance of the package but a significant minority felt that the package’s answers were too general or oriented in a particular direction.
Client surveys on the other hand report high satisfaction ratings but, again, the full meaning of that awaits further research. It was hard to determine objectively how much usage was being made of the site but between the beginning of November 2012 and the beginning of March 2013, 200 couples and 500 single people had begun the ‘journey’ through the package relating to the divorce and parenting plan (which can be accessed through the Rechtwijzer site or directly). Overall usage on the old site, prior to the 2012 revamp, was around 145,000 in 2011. Plans have been drawn up to develop a ‘digital assistant’ whereby a user can effectively proceed to a ‘side Bar’ for an email exchange with an adviser – the identity of which is to be decided but might include or be the Juridisch loketten (the counters).
The commitment of the site to integrative negotiation (biasing towards settlement) would seem acceptable (and, indeed, desirable) provided that sufficient exit routes are signposted, eg where, in a matrimonial case, there is a threat of violence. There has, of course, to be great care in how this is done. The research should tell us whether the redirection of those suffering from domestic violence works as well as it appears it should. There is an issue to be logged about the potential effect – both good and bad – of a site which restructures a query and leads the questioner off in a direction, the consequences of which may not be transparent. This is a discussion to be had as the site develops. It will parallel similar debates that particularly occur in relation to the handling of matrimonial cases by such techniques as collaborative lawyering. The question is the balance achieved between a drive for settlement and the recognition of legal entitlement.
The site has been connected with the Board’s legal service counters so that the website can be supported by face to face services which exist throughout the Netherlands. This, to some extent, will assist in addressing the digital divide. To see how effectively, again we will need the University of Twente research. There remain enormous questions. Will the Dutch public accept their policymakers’ drive to make them more self-reliant and self-helping? Traditionally, those going through relationship breakdown, particularly women who tend to be the weaker party, have wanted the support of face to face assistance. It may be that they find as little solace in the website as did the single parent blogger in the DWP site quoted in the last chapter. At the moment, the safeguard exists of mandatory review by a lawyer of agreements relating to children and maintenance. However, the Board would like this removed. In those circumstances, will the site adequately protect the weaker side in relationship breakdown? Is there any danger that potential clients overall will split on income grounds – the poor getting second rate mediation and the rich first class lawyers? Will the government and the judiciary play their part in simplifying the law to assist online dispute resolution and avoiding complexity?
Whatever the answers to these questions, however, this site shows clear signs of being a game changer and far in advance of anything else in the world in terms of its dynamic and client-centred approach.
Courts do not have to be slow, formalistic and expensive. The Dutch Council of Judiciary (Raad voor de Rechtspraak) wants to show how adjudication can move online, become much more user-friendly and can effectively intervene in legal problems that many people experience. HiiL’s lab has been facilitating judges to design a prototype for an innovative website interface called: ‘Burenrechter’.
Courts go online and come to neighbourhoods
Burenrechter is envisioned as an online platform where people who face disputes with their neighbours can login and describe their issues. After the issues have been documented, Burenrechter suggests a dialogue between the parties involved to negotiate a solution. This solution is guided by questions that are designed to empower neighbours to solve their problem together. The second step in the conflict resolution only takes place if a resolution is not yet reached between the parties in the first phase. A mediator then joins the platform to comment on the dialogue. In case the dispute persists, a judge would login and study the documented story and its progress. This is then followed up by a personal visit from the judge to resolve the conflict, either through a settlement, or a binding decision. The prototype of Burenrechter has already been approved by the Dutch Council of Judiciary and the Ministry of Justice. The project is at the pilot stage and has been tested with real life cases in 2014.
Process design
HiiL developed Burenrechter together with judges from courts in Utrecht and Amsterdam. The police, neighbourhood mediators, social housing companies and IT specialists all gave their input in a scrum process in two-week long sprints. Using this input, teams from HiiL and the courts created all the necessary elements of a working prototype. In cooperation with Modria, a leader in online-dispute resolution in Silicon Valley, a website was developed to host the Burenrechter platform. People know that living next to each other can be difficult. They also seem to understand that when issues arise, it is best to solve these in an effective, low-cost and accessible way. This is exactly what the Burenrechter platform intends to provide.
Everybody needs basic justice care: access to fair, workable solutions for problems that can become a threat to a person’s livelihood. Access to justice ensures secure, trustworthy and economically viable relationships: at home, at work, on the land, and within the community. The Innovating Justice Forum 2012 is the first attempt to assess how people’s basic justice needs are protected and what are the trends in delivery of legal services to meet these needs across the world. Our trend report describes:
Justice needs | What are the most frequent and urgent problems for which people tend to turn to advisers and neutral third parties for assistance? What is the impact of these problems?
What works to meet these needs and what makes it challenging | As most problems are solved by communication and negotiation, and some by adjudication, we asess what makes these processes work, and what are the challenges for lawyers, judges, NGO’s and the many other providers of access to justice to deliver this assistance.
Promising, innovative appproaches | Across the world, lawyers, NGO’s, project leaders, judges and entrepreneurs are working hard to improve access to justice. Their innovations are about to change the delivery of justice in fundamental ways. We highlight the trends in dispute resolution, courts and internet based services, showing how each of them contributes to a setting in which more fair outcomes can be guaranteed.
A panel of experts and innovators, meeting in The Hague on 16 and 17 April during a Working Conference on the topic, will evaluate each of these promising approaches. Another outcome of this meeting will be a number of recommendations:
What is needed to nurture these innovations so that the access to justice gap can be closed?
What can policy makers, the legal profession, donors, social entrepreneurs, innovators and law faculties doing legal research contribute?
In a second part of this Trend Report on Basic Justice Care for Everyone, we will report these recommendations.
Share your expertise
If you want to share your expertise at the Working Conference please let us know.
Gramatikov, M.A., Barendrecht, J.M., & Verdonschot, J.H., Measuring the costs and quality of paths to justice: Contours of a methodology, Hague journal on the rule of law, 2011/vol.3(2), pp. 349-379
The 2011 Conference was the culmination point of the long-term Law of the Future initiative started by HiiL in 2010. A process in which creative thinkers from academia and practice join to reflect on alternative futures for law and legal systems. The aim is to set a world standard in thinking ahead, to guide decision makers today.
About 200 of the best legal brains worldwide debated the Law Scenarios to 2030 exclusively presented by HiiL during its 2011 Law of the Future Conference on 23 and 24 June in the Peace Palace, in The Hague. Participants discussed how law will evolve in the next 20 years. For the first results of the discussions that were shared during the 2011 Law of the Future Conference see the Law of the Future Vision 2011. The Mayor of The Hague Jozias van Aartsen officially accepted the first copy of the Law Scenarios to 2030 and The Law of the Future and the Future of Law publication.
First ever scenarios for the future of law presented!
Signposting the space of the legal future
About 200 of the best legal brains worldwide debated the Law Scenarios to 2030 exclusively presented by HiiL during its 2011 Law of the Future Conference. The Law Scenarios to 2030 provide three wind tunnels in which ideas and strategies concerning the law of the future can be tested and debated. The scenarios help us think, imagine, conceptualise and debate in order to make law more than just a reactive force. A force that helps shape a better future. Download PDF here
Outcome of 2011 Law of the Future Conference:
Publication: Law of the Future Vision 2011
The first results of the discussions that were shared during the 2011 Law of the Future Conference are published in the Law of the Future Vision 2011. This brief report captures the essence of the debate and also contains the plans for the further development of the Law of the Future Forum. Download PDF here
49 Think Pieces on how will law evolve in the next 20 years
Publication: The Law of the Future and the Future of Law
Some of the world’s best academics and leading practitioners were involved in the Law of the Future Programme. More than 100 experts have been consulted through interviews and Think Pieces. The submitted Expert Think Pieces have been compiled into the exclusive 750 pages publication: The Law of the Future and the Future of Law.
Some of our 2011 Law of the Future Conference participants shared their visions in video messages. View the videos at:www.youtube.com/hiilthehague
Most of the 2011 Law of the Future Conference presentations can now be found online. Check the presentations at:www.slideshare.net/HiiL
Odunoluwa Longe – HiiL Innovation Hub Head, West Africa
Adam Oxford – Hiil Innovation Hub Head, Southern Africa
Dmitry Foremnyi – HiiL Innovation Hub Head, Ukraine
Eric Mwangi Kariuki – HiiL Innovation Hub Head, East Africa
Jazem Halioui – HiiL Innovation Hub Head, MENA
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What works on what?
