Our approach is bold and collaborative, driven by the urgent need to close the global justice gap. The campaign seeks to highlight the crucial role played by customary, community-based, and other informal pathways to justice in ensuring access to justice for all, and the potential of those pathways to accelerate the sustainable development agenda broadly.
What is at stake?
Over five billion people continue to face insurmountable barriers to justice, obstructed by limited resources, high costs, and systematic exclusion. This vast global justice gap fuels injustice and insecurity and undermines stability and economic growth. Around the world, the great majority of justice seekers turn to actors and practices outside state-based courts to claim their rights, find redress for grievances, and resolve everyday disputes. These range from traditional chiefs and village elders to community paralegals and family mediators. Customary, community-based, and informal justice pathways don’t just work for people—they also ease the strain on formal systems and contribute to crime and conflict prevention. Together, these trusted actors create accessible pathways to justice that match the needs of the people they serve.
Our purpose
Justice Within Reach envisions a world where everyone, everywhere, has a pathway to everyday justice. That means they can claim their rights, find redress for grievances, and resolve disputes using systems that are nearby, familiar, and trusted—irrespective of whether those systems use state-based courts and trained lawyers. It also means that all available justice pathways must respect basic human rights standards and procedural safeguards and deliver fair outcomes, and can be held accountable by all justice seekers. Everyday justice problems are addressed by customary, community-based, and other informal actors and practices—from traditional chiefs and village elders to community paralegals and family mediators. These actors perform a unique role in meeting local justice needs, using approaches that are accessible, culturally relevant, and rooted in community trust.How we drive change
Our campaign brings together a coalition of international organizations, civil society actors, formal and informal justice providers, and grassroots justice defenders. Together, we take collective action to:- Champion an enabling policy environment for customary, community-based, and informal justice at all levels
- Catalyse greater investment in customary, community-based, and other informal justice systems by governments and donors
- Elevate and amplify local leadership to ensure national ownership
