Accessing Justice through Innovation
Over the last few years, people have been prompting courts, governments to deliver justice effectively as set forth in SDG16. Legal institutions have however struggled to address various justice problems and crises such as political instability, war and inflation do not make the situation any better.
Every year, 1 billion people globally face justice problems every year and over 70% do not resolve them. With a resolution rate that’s lower than 30%, this majorly means that hundreds of millions of people globally are not accessing justice and do not have the means to do so. In Nigeria, the 2018 report on Justice Needs and Satisfaction stated that of the 73% of the people that report a legal problem, only 10% of these issues actually reach a lawyer.
In Kenya, 63% of Kenyans have encountered one or more legal problems according to the Justice Needs and Satisfaction Report, done by HiiL in collaboration with the Kenyan judiciary, but only 46% were able to resolve their issues. Access to justice for all cannot be achieved by a single institution but has got to be multifaceted and diversified in order to invite more players to innovate the sector.
HiiL(The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) has been at the forefront of the development of a new approach that is called people-centred justice. We do that in partnership with states, international organisations, academics, and civil society organisations. To achieve people-centred justice, we support startups that are innovating justice through various programmes such as The Justice Accelerator, a global programme which runs in East Africa, West Africa,North Africa and Middle East regions to provide entrepreneurs that have existing startups with mentorship, training and financial support in order for them to scale. Through this programme, we have been able to support over 193 startups globally. For instance, we have supported startups like DIY Law in Nigeria, a startup that provides simple and convenient legal information and services to users. In Tanzania, Sheria Kiganjani, is also bridging the justice gap by remotely connecting users to legal information.
HiiL Justice Accelerator: 2021 Kenyan Cohort
The Justice Entrepreneurship School is an incubation programme that we run in Kenya, Rwanda and Somalia, which supports early stage entrepreneurs with functioning solutions that solve pressing justice needs in their communities. Through this programme we have provided selected 20 justice game changers in Kenya, Rwanda and 3 in Somalia with necessary mentorship and support needed to create impact in their respective society.
In the last quarter of the year, we will be running the Jenga Haki Hackathon, an event that aims to stimulate ideas, by bringing people with different sets of skills and interests together, and putting them in a specific environment and timeframe to come up with solutions to different justice problems.
Facilitating change, especially in the justice sector is not easy. Supporting justice innovation requires constant and positive dialogue between policy makers, civil society representatives and people in business. Through strategic engagement with these stakeholders, we’ll be able to steer the justice innovation in the right direction and create an enabling environment for justice startups.
Players in the legal field need to begin to support this as we need more people in different sectors to try new innovative ways that help resolve the most pressing needs and that is the only way change in the justice sector will be achieved. With this we might have a chance at achieving SDG 16 (Promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies).