Justice Action Update #8—June 2025

1. Update on the Justice Action Coalition

The Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) organized the SDG 16 Conference 2025: “Advancing Peace, Justice and Institutions for Sustainable Development,” which was held on Monday, May 12, 2025 at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The Justice Action Coalition viewed this as one of the key moments in 2025 to discuss people centered-justice. Thus, a Joint Statement was presented during the conference by the Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the United Nations in New York, Dr. Bahia Tahzib-Lie, on behalf of the Justice Action Coalition.

The statement emphasized the critical role of equal access to justice in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 and supporting broader development, peace, and democratic resilience. It called for urgent, people-centered investment in transparent and inclusive justice systems, particularly in times of global crisis and inequality, framing justice as both a foundational right and a tool for social cohesion and recovery. A recording of the statement can be found on the United Nations Web TV.

While this is the Justice Action Coalition’s first official statement of the year, it is by no means the last. Throughout the months ahead, the Justice Action Coalition will actively seek out and seize key opportunities to reaffirm and amplify the core messages of people-centered justice. By doing so, we aim not only to maintain the momentum that has been steadily building, but also to inspire new allies to lend their voices, commit their resources, and become part of this growing global movement. Sustained advocacy and visible leadership are essential to keeping people-centered justice at the forefront of the global agenda and that’s exactly what we intend to do.

This past February, Workstream 3 on Communication, Narrative, and Connection to the SDGs released “A Repository of Thematic Messages on People-Centered Justice,” which complements the Justice Action Coalition Key Messages on People-Centered Justice and the Actions We Must Take to Achieve People-Centered Justice. The key messages found in this document cover the following topics: data and evidence, financing, inclusion, and issue intersection. They also cover specific themes such as:

• Justice for Women.
• Justice for Children.
• Youth Engagement.
• Justice for People with Disabilities.
• Customary and Informal Justice.
• Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.
• Justice in Conflict-Affected Settings.
• Transitional Justice.

These messages are informed by research and expertise of Justice Action Coalition members. They provide specific actions and targets for a diverse array of audiences.

In April, the Board of the Justice Action Coalition convened to review recent developments and chart the path forward. During the session, board members received detailed updates on the progress of the Justice Action Coalition’s four workstreams, each of which has been steadily advancing its objectives and contributing to the broader mission of promoting people-centered justice.

The board also engages in a forward-looking discussion on upcoming priorities, strategic opportunities, and ways to deepen impact across regions and sectors. Overall, there was a strong sense of momentum and shared purpose, with board members expressing satisfaction with the progress to date and a clear commitment to building on this foundation in the months ahead.

The meeting reinforced the importance of continued collaboration, innovation, and resource mobilization as the Justice Action Coalition prepares for a busy and impactful year ahead.

2. Upcoming Events

This year features several key global events that present important opportunities for the Justice Action Coalition to advance its goals and amplify its messaging. Among the most significant is the upcoming World Justice Forum (WJF), set to take place in Warsaw, Poland from June 23 to 26. This gathering will serve as a crucial moment for the global access to justice movement, offering a space to exchange ideas, share progress, foster learning, and build meaningful connections across sectors and regions.

On June 23, the Justice Action Coalition will convene a Senior-Level Meeting, in parallel to the WFJ, to reflect on the progress of its workstreams, explore strategic opportunities, and chart a course for the months ahead. Key outputs of the Justice Action Coalition, such as the Justice Financing Framework, will be spotlighted in various sessions, sparking dialogue and encouraging broader adoption.

Additionally, regional and thematic affiliates of the Justice Action Coalition, including the Ibero-American Alliance for Access to Justice, the African Alliance for People-Centered Justice, the Young Justice Leaders and the Working Group on Customary and Informal Justice will host their own events, contributing diverse perspectives and initiatives to the forum’s rich agenda. For anyone passionate about advancing justice, equity, and inclusion, this will be an essential event to engage with, and a powerful platform to be part of.

To support sustained and cohesive advocacy and communications efforts across the Justice Action Coalition, Workstream 3 on Communication, Narrative, and Connection to the SDGs has developed two Communications Toolkits for JAC members to use for upcoming events. The first provides resources to inform messaging, advocacy, and statements around the World Justice Forum. The second does so for the International Conference on Financing for Development. These toolkits are available to adapt and use by members of the Justice Action Coalition.

Check out all of the JAC-related events at the World Justice form →

3. Update on the Workstreams

Workstream 1: Data and Evidence

Over the past months, the OECD has continued work on the preliminary justice measurement framework, connecting to existing efforts and aligned with the OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centered Justice Systems.

A draft set of policy indicators has been developed, together with a government questionnaire for national self-assessment and reporting. In June/July, all Justice Action Coalition member countries will receive an invitation to complete this questionnaire, alongside all OECD member countries. Other governments interested in participating in this exercise are invited to reach out.

HiiL, World Justice Project, and OECD are developing a core set of internationally comparable outcome indicators for the justice system. Data collection and analysis for the policy indicators and outcome indicators will take place in 2025 and findings and insights will be published in the State of People-Centered Justice report (planned for the first quarter of 2026).

A methodology to estimate the socio-economic costs of unresolved justice problems has been developed and is being used to conduct country case studies for Canada and Colombia. Initial results will be presented at the World Justice Forum in June and final reports will come over the course of the year. Additionally, work is set to begin shortly on a country case study for Indonesia. Outreach to South Africa is ongoing.

A knowledge sharing and update meeting was held for member countries of the Justice Action Coalition on February 12, 2025, to present progress on all areas of the workstream. Twelve JAC member countries were represented in the meeting. This

Looking ahead, key results and findings from Workstream 1 will be presented, and policy dialogues convened, both online and in the margins of key global events on Justice this year. These events include the World Justice Forum (June 23-26, in Warsaw) and the OECD Global Roundtable (November 12-14, in Madrid).

Workstream 2: Strategy, Programming and Innovation

Led by UNDP, Workstream 2 administered the second round of the Justice Action Coalition (JAC) Catalytic Fund. After the successful funding of six initiatives in 2024 across Colombia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, São Tomé & Príncipe, Samoa, and the Dominican Republic, the second round aims to provide funding to three new countries. UNDP received more than 20 applications from a call for expression of interest, demonstrating extensive interest in working on people-centered justice. After a systematic assessment of the expressions of interest, three countries were selected and, as of May 22, are receiving additional technical support to refine their project proposals. The formal launch and confirmation of the new projects will take place before the end of June.

Meanwhile, the implementation of the six projects funded in 2024 has advanced considerably. For example, in Kenya, access to justice has expanded through the operationalization of the Small Claims Court in Mombasa, with a 7.7 percent increase in case filings and over 1.25 million people reached via public outreach. Community Justice Hubs and a new E-Judiciary Mobile App have enhanced digital access and citizen trust. At the same time, Colombia’s work on the Agrarian and Rural Jurisdiction has mobilized 70 institutional and community actors, fostering a participatory consultation process regarding gender- and territory-sensitive approaches to land conflict resolution. These examples illustrate how catalytic funding is enabling innovation, deepening institutional engagement, and promoting more inclusive and people-centered justice systems.

The examples above show that the JAC Catalytic Fund can effectively bridge the gap between policy commitments and tangible action, enabling governments to co-create and implement practical solutions that address justice barriers at the community level. Close collaboration with non-state actors is prioritized to fully recognize the importance of engaging the whole justice ecosystem. The projects have taken the actual justice needs of people and their justice journeys as the starting point for the interventions, focusing on digital transformation, legal empowerment, mobile justice services, and institutional reform. By doing so, they aim to ensure that justice institutions become more inclusive, efficient, and responsive to people’s needs.

To make sure the funded countries can benefit from each other’s experience, a peer-learning session was implemented on April 30. The session allowed national partners from all six countries to discuss challenges, opportunities, and important lessons learned. The exchange, which included both government and civil society, was robust with national partners recommending additional sessions in the coming months. These sessions will build upon the initial engagement while further exploring specific thematic areas, such as the importance of reaching remote communities, or addressing the bottlenecks in fostering justice innovation.

Further, the workstream implemented a mapping of programmatic engagements in the six countries that are currently receiving JAC catalytic funding. All organizations that are members of JAC were invited to indicate their engagements and contact points within these countries. This information is now being used to enhance synergies and ensure that JAC stakeholders can effectively coordinate their work on people-centered justice.

To complement and strengthen work on people-centered approaches, UNDP finalized a Policy Framework on People Centered Justice and Security, which will be officially launched in 2025. Looking ahead, Workstream 2 will focus on the continuous implementation of new and existing projects. Lessons learned from the first round of projects will inform future scaling strategies, ensuring that successful models can be replicated in other Justice Action Coalition member countries. Workstream 2 will also facilitate additional peer learning exchanges among countries to share best practices and strengthen regional cooperation on people-centered justice.

Workstream 3: Communication, Narrative, and Connection to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Coordinated by Pathfinders, this workstream seeks to support coordinated advocacy and communications for the Justice Action Coalition by ensuring a shared vision and a coherent narrative on people-centered justice, supported by the findings and outputs of Workstreams 1, 2, and 4. It plays an instrumental role in tying key aspects of the JAC together through communications outputs and tools to amplify narratives around people-centered justice and the work of the Justice Action Coalition. Specifically, Workstream 3 supports other JAC workstreams in the following ways:

• Developing advocacy and communications tools for use by JAC partners and members to highlight the role of people-centered justice in achieving equal access to justice for all, as well as the Sustainable Development Agenda at large, in alignment with learnings from the other JAC workstreams.
• Coordinating communications strategies across Justice Action Coalition partners and members for key global moments.
• Profiling and providing advocacy and communication on innovations arising from country-level implementation of people-centered justice as supported by catalytic funding in Workstream 2.
• Sharing the importance of (promising and) good practices on data collection and data usage in policy- and decision-making based on research in Workstream 1.
• Supporting advocacy and messaging on financing for justice, based on lessons and insights arising from the research and discussion under Workstream 4.

This past February, Workstream 3 released Actions We Must Take to Achieve People-Centered Justice alongside Repository of Thematic Messages on People-Centered Justice, These new advocacy tools complement the Justice Action Coalition Key Messages on People-Centered Justice. The key messages found each of these documents cover the following topics: data and evidence, financing, inclusion, and issue intersection.

Workstream 3 also finalized a 2025 Strategy and Workplan that, alongside the aforementioned videos, will see the development of joint communications toolkits for use by Justice Action Coalition partners and country members for key moments including the World Justice Forum, the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, UNGA, and the OECD Global Roundtable on Equal Access to Justice. This strategy is endorsed by both the Working Group and all of the JAC board members, and communications toolkits for the World Justice Forum and the International Conference on Financing for Development have already been developed and published on the groups’ Trello board.

As part of this strategy, Workstream 3 will also produce a series of short videos to disseminate the eight actions to achieve people-centered justice. Alongside this, the Workstream will develop a series of explainer videos and one-pagers on the Justice Financing Framework, indicators for people-centered justice (PCJ), the business case for PCJ, and the national catalytic funding outputs.

As additional resources to Justice Action Coalition members, there is now a JAC Member & Partner Open Calendar and an open-source publication list that any member can upload information to share with the JAC community. Quarterly calls will continue with the civil society and a growing number of member state representatives engaged with the Justice Action Coalition Communications Working Group.

4. Reports, Policy Briefs, and Other News

Workstream 4: Justice Financing

Pathfinders also coordinates the work of Workstream 4 with technical support from HiiL and ODI Global to draft the Justice Financing Framework (JFF). The aim of the Justice Financing Framework is to guide country-level justice financing, setting out financing principles, benchmarks and ambitions to deliver people-centered justice. Its foundation is the 2019 Hague Declaration of Equal Access to Justice for All by 2030 and the OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People Centred Justice Systems.

The JFF enables effective strategies and policies to transform justice systems to respond to the unmet legal needs of billions of people and ensure respect for human rights. It comes from the realization that without changing financing structures and processes, ministries of justice and judiciaries will not be able to effectively make the transition to people-centered justice programming, as set out in the OECD Recommendation. The JFF draws inspiration from the approach to financing in other sectors (especially health and education) that have scaled-up front-line services and improved outcomes.

Workstream 4 is set to finalize the JFF for review and adoption at the Justice Action Coalition Ministerial meeting in November. In March, the Justice Financing Framework was introduced to Justice Action Coalition member countries through a virtual consultation. During this session, members were briefed on the framework’s guiding principles and modalities, while also being invited to provide initial feedback and recommendations for its refinement. This early engagement sought to ensure that key stakeholders have the opportunity to shape the framework from its inception, aligning it with the needs and priorities of Justice Action Coalition member countries.

This past April, the JFF underwent a review by the Justice Action Coalition Board, where members assessed the framework and provided preliminary feedback. Discussions focused on identifying key concerns and areas requiring further development, ensuring that the Justice Financing Framework is both comprehensive and responsive to needs. In June 2025, a revised version will be shared at the Justice Action Coalition Senior-Level Meeting in Warsaw, Poland for further input.

Through consultations and strategic discussions, additional insights will be incorporated to strengthen the JFF’s alignment with Justice Action Coalition’s overarching objectives. The finalized Justice Financing Framework will be presented to Justice Action Coalition Ministers in November 2025 for the final review before it is adopted.

• Facilitated by HiiL through its Justice Innovation Program in Niger (PIJN), the people-centred justice strategy in Niger was launched following year-long consultations between various justice leaders in the country composed of government institutions, civil society, legal professionals and traditional leaders (the stakeholder team).
• In collaboration with the Women’s Lawyers’ Association of Burkina Faso (AFJ-BF), HiiL released a fact sheet that sheds light on women’s access to justice in Burkina Faso.
• Together with the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice and Destiny Ethiopia, HiiL announced the recent inauguration of Community Justice Centres (CJCs) across three regional states in Ethiopia (Afar, Sidama, and Addis Ababa).
• IDLO’s Director General penned a letter to partners which, amongst other things, highlighted IDLO’s work to make justice systems more people-centered, address barriers to access, and enhance the capacity of institutions to deliver justice effectively and inclusively.
• IDLO’s Director General also delivered a policy statement during the 58th Session of the Human Rights Council outlining that first, the rule of law is a powerful force for peace and stability. Second, the rule of law is key to restoring public trust. And third, the rule of law can help to accelerate progress on the social and economic rights that are high on people’s minds.
• The Justice Financing 2024 Annual Review: Domestic Financing and Aid policy brief published by ODI. presents the latest global data on justice finance. It covers the level of finance flowing to the justice sector from domestic resources and aid.
• Moving the dial on SDG 16.3.2: Evidence from LIC’s on scaling up legal advice and assistance for unsentenced detainees is a policy paper by ODI which considers the impact on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 16.3.2 of providing unsentenced detainees with legal advice and assistance.
• A new podcast series titled, Conversations with Young Justice Leaders, has been launched by Pathfinders. It is hosted by the Young Justice Leaders, a group of young changemakers from across the globe who represent young and innovative voices and are influencing international dialogues and research around justice.
• Pathfinders published the blog, Regional Alliances for People-Centered Justice: Promoting Equal Access to Justice for All in Africa and Ibero-America. It explores the modalities, benefits, and unique aspects of regional alliances for justice and their role in advancing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.3, which aims to promote the rule of law and ensure equal access to justice for all. This blog can also be found in French and Spanish.
• The blog, 7 Eye-Opening Facts About Justice Across Africa, released by the African Alliance for People-Centered Justice highlights the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of justice across the continent.
• UNDP released its People-Centred Approach to Justice and Security policy brief which, amongst other things, calls for renewed efforts to strengthen rights-based rule of law and promote justice and security by placing people at the center.
• UNDP also released its Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) Toolkit. It is a transformative resource designed to integrate human rights principles and standards into sustainable development programming.
• The World Bank released a brief called, Reforming Justice: Fostering Engagement Between Statutory Courts and Customary Law Systems. It, amongst other things, argues that attempts to replace customary practices with uniform legal frameworks have largely failed, suggesting instead that a harmonious coexistence of these systems can enhance access to justice and fairness.
• The brief, Reforming Justice – Benchmarking Judicial Effectiveness through the JUPITER Assessment by the World Bank, introduces the Justice Pillars Towards Evidence-Based Reform (JUPITER) initiative, a standardized yet flexible, country-based assessment tool that evaluates the effectiveness of justice systems across countries.
• Building on the World Bank’s experience in supporting client countries reform their judicial maps, the Reforming Justice – Balancing Efficiency and Accessibility through Judicial Map Reform brief lays out a framework for the design and implementation of such programs.
• WJP together with the Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank and the Korea World Bank Partnership Facility published “Advancing Access to Justice via Information and Communications Technology: A Literature Review.” One of the key contributions of this literature review is the emphasis on a people-centered approach to analyzing justice technologies.

5. Justice for All Calendar 2025

Get in touch!
Have an event, report or activity related to people-centered justice that you would like to see featured in this newsletter? Contact: Themba.Mahleka@nyu.edu