Towards Basic Justice Care for Everyone: Challenges and Promising Approaches

Every year, one in every 8 people on earth runs into a serious conflict that is hard to avoid: at home, at work, regarding land, about essential assets they bought, or with local authorities. About half these people do not succeed in obtaining a fair, workable solution. This may evolve into a threat to their livelihood. What can be done to reduce the unnecessary suffering, injustice, and poverty caused by this lack of legal protection? In this extensive trend report, written with input from experts from across the world, we assess systematically what is known about access to justice, focusing on civil justice, administrative justice and redress for victims of crime. Our approach is new, because it consistently uses the perspective of what people seeking access to justice need, bringing together evidence from many different disciplines about what works to meet these needs. From this perspective, we also describe seven trends in innovative approaches from many different countries across the globe, showing why and how these are beginning to close the access to justice gap. Interestingly, none of these approaches requires major subsidies. The private sector and civil society can play a key role in delivering access to justice. Governments should nurture these innovations, acknowledging that access to justice cannot be organized top down, by issuing legislation alone, or by large scale subsidies. Governments, NGO’s and social entrepreneurs can also encourage the process of world-wide sharing of the best practices. That is our best hope to fight injustice. Step by step, problem by problem, in a way that is similar to how the medical profession fights disease.