Manual for the prevention and resolution of land conflicts in Niger based on people-centered justice

The Niger Guideline on land disputes provides actionable recommendations stemming from evidenced-based research to help justice practitioners prevent and resolve land disputes throughout the country. The Guideline was developed with a Committee of Experts - a group of diverse Nigerien stakeholders - who played a fundamental role in gathering and evaluating the best practices and evidence on which the Guideline is founded. The experts have been instrumental in ensuring the local Nigerien context is taken into account for all the recommendations and best practices.

Justice guidelines can help integrate and standardise best practices and are meant to support justice practitioners in their daily work. Practitioners include traditional leaders, judges, mediators, social workers, police, lawyers, religious leaders and other professionals who directly engage with people around land justice problems, all of whom may benefit from the recommendations in this guideline.

Guidelines are inspired by the medical sector and consist of clear and actionable best practices on how to prevent and resolve justice problems. 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 justice practitioners across Niger) and evidence-based practice (recommended interventions from international and local research) into recommendations and best practices. Guidelines are living documents, so that with new information and responses from practitioners and users, they continually improve through an iterative process.

More information on evidence-based guidelines can be found on the Justice Dashboard.