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.
