On April 29, we issued a call for action. The question in front of us is: how are we going to make the emerging movement towards people-centred justice bigger, stronger, more effective?
The Justice Leaders have called for a focus on system change as a foundation for making the people-centred justice approach a reality. That is more relevant than ever in these times of crisis. Justice systems need to renew. To strengthen justice in the pandemic, we recommend the following:
- Create a forum for ministers of justice to share best practices and identify urgent actions to put justice at crisis response.
- At a regional level, bring together informal groups of justice leaders – so countries with similar justice challenges can work together. We are supporting HiiL with the setting up of two such regional meetings. The first brings together the ministers of justice of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The second is focused on the ministers of justice of Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan.
- Help justice leaders to solve the problems they face, by asking networks of former ministers, attorneys-general and senior judges to support them and respond to their requests.
- Rapidly build an “IPCC for justice” – a knowledge platform with readily available data about needs, experiences and what works, building on models that are common in the health sector.
- Set up a solutions platform, where justice leaders can find innovators, and work with them to develop their ideas, implement at scale, and learn from what works.
- Expand justice-for-all coalitions at local levels, by empowering paralegals, legal empowerment activists, traditional leaders, and other community workers to solve more justice problems on the ground.
- Bring together public, private, and philanthropic funders to provide “fast finance” for justice innovations, again building on health models
To learn more about the call for action, read on here.
