In the wake of the multiple crises that followed the COVID-19 pandemic which had threatened to side-track progress towards the 2030 Agenda, UNDP felt the need to revisit and strengthen its rule of law work and approaches to access to justice. In June 2022, the Justice Futures CoLab was launched to promote new ways of thinking and approaching complex justice and rule of law challenges. The CoLab has become a space for practitioners from UNDP, the wider UN family and other external partners to discuss, design and implement more impactful action in countries and to inform advocacy and policy at all levels, informed by learning and data. This illustrates UNDP’s commitment and strategy to not only do more but also do better (and differently). A more strategic, people-centred and rights-based approach is taken to ensure meaningful access to justice for all, starting with those most at risk of being left behind.
The CoLab provides technical support to Country Offices, expands strategic partnerships, and facilitates learning exchange. It supports and enables integrated and interdisciplinary ways of thinking and working in such areas as digital justice, environmental justice and civil justice. A civil justice-focused CoLab Conversation, for example, engaged nine Country Office from five regions, and regional and headquarters specialists to exchange and validate good practices for advancing UNDP’s work on civil justice.
Through the CoLab, the paper “Beyond the Pandemic: The Justice Emergency" was launched in 2022, reflecting on emerging trends, opportunities and challenges for responding to and overcoming today’s pandemic of injustice, and which had informed the design of the new phase of UNDP’s Global Programme for Strengthening the Rule of Law, Human Rights, Justice and Security for Sustainable Peace and Development (the Global Programme).
The Justice Futures CoLab Office will be opened in The Hague, in the Netherlands in 2023.
Knowledge and thought leadership
Policy support and development
Partnerships
In line with its decades-long work on access to justice and human rights-based approaches, UNDP actively supports the ‘people-centred justice’ (PCJ) movement and is engaged in the Justice Action Coalition (JAC) which brought together more than 18 Member States and several international actors. As part of this coalition, UNDP is co-leading on developing the definition of what “people-centred justice” means. With other JAC partners, such as the Pathfinders, UNDP will be developing the key messages on PCJ to present them to policy and decision makers as well as justice actors and practitioners. To define how customary and informal justice mechanisms can be supported and engaged with to ensure better justice results for people, UNDP participates in the Working Group on Customary and Informal Justice and SDG16+, with the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and other partners.
UNDP’s Justice Futures CoLab held global conversations with Country Offices and partners on UNDP’s e-justice initiatives, civil justice and rule of law contributions to sustainable solutions in situations of forced displacement. At the World Justice Forum, the CoLab shared learning from the innovative and people-centred work in Somalia where informal and formal justice sector actors benefit from UNDP’s support through generative dialogues at the community level.
Knowledge and thought leadership
Policy support and development
Technical support
Funding support
Partnerships
Working in close partnership with the whole spectrum of national justice stakeholders, from ministries of justice to courts and law enforcement, from Bar Associations to legal aid civil society organizaitons (CSOs) and associations for alternative dispute resolutions, national human rights NGOs and community-based networks, individual lawyers or paralegals, UNDP continued its long-standing programmes in countries to advance access to people-centred justice.
Creating or recreating enabling environments is key, especially in crisis or post-crisis settings, where rule of law institutions face the most critical challenges. In Guinea (Conakry), in 2022, collaborative efforts resulted in the adoption of the law on legal aid, including the establishment of a legal aid fund, and the law offering judicial and non-judicial protection measures to victims and witnesses. These developments, in conjunction with overall capacity support to the judiciary, will facilitate the conduction of the trial of the 2009 stadium massacre resulting in more than 150 deaths.
Integrated and comprehensive interventions have proven impactful. In Liberia, to address sexual and gender-based violence, UNDP supported women-led civil society networks, capacitated criminal justice actors and introduced online case management and crime statistics information systems.
In Moldova, Pakistan and The Gambia, mobile legal aid services were deployed to enable those furthest behind or at risk to access their rights. In Burundi, targeted interventions in detention places with national stakeholders resulted in the release of over 1,400 individuals (including almost 200 women and 100 adolescents). In Guinea-Bissau, almost 9,000 people (47 percent women) received support at the Centers for Access to Justice, and 93 percent of the cases were successfully resolved by mediation, reconciliation, or other administrative processes.
In 2023, UNDP will continue co-leading efforts to define and implement the most impactful actions for people-centred justice, including through learning and data emerging from country programmes and in the context of the Justice Action Coalition.
The independent evaluation of UNDP’s global work on access to justice work undertaken in 2022 will, over the next years, further guide the thinking and operational programming at the global, regional and country levels. UNDP, through the Global Programme in particular, will use its integrator role on rule of law programming in countries to make access to justice and people-centred justice an integral part of all rule of law and governance efforts, in developing, fragile and crisis-affected contexts.
Knowledge and thought leadership
Policy support and development
Lessons learned
Over five billion people lack access to justice and find themselves navigating legal disputes and conflicts alone, with little or no little support from their governments. The majority of these legal issues are civil in nature, affecting health, financial stability and wellbeing of families and communities. The absence of, or insufficient access to civil justice, may trigger or exacerbate violence and conflict, as well as deepen structural problems such as poverty, inequality, discrimination and exclusion. The COVID-19 pandemic made the civil justice challenges more acute as people lost jobs, faced housing instability and relied heavily on health services, as well as socioeconomic support. Women faced additional vulnerabilities as the levels of gender-based violence increased during lockdowns. At the same time, between 2021 and 2022, the effectiveness of civil justice systems fell in 61 percent of countries (Rule of Law Index in 2022). To stem this backsliding and to support national stakeholders in delivering accessible and effective services to all, UNDP is expanding its focus on promoting access to civil justice.
Gender desk in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan | UNDP Pakistan
At the global level, to inform policy and learning, UNDP undertook an analysis and a mapping exercise on country programmes, challenges, and opportunities on civil justice. A strategic consultation was organized under the Justice Futures CoLab involving nine UNDP Country Offices to exchange and validate good practices for advancing UNDP’s work on civil justice. The consultation and the broader research demonstrated that civil justice was often promoted through programmes outside the traditional rule of law portfolios, or overshadowed within larger governance projects. As a result, important opportunities were missed to ensure that these programmes were responsive to people’s justice needs. Targeted support and a particular focus on civil justice and the new global SDG indicator 16.3.3 in policy and programming development will be an important step to make sure that people’s basic justice needs are addressed and no one is left behind.
In Pakistan, UNDP supported the establishment and institutionalization of Gender Desks that provide legal information, counselling and protection services on issues related to inheritance, property rights, divorce and gender-based violence. UNDP supported the development of an integrated framework to address people’s multi-layered needs. In addition to covering legal issues, this framework includes social protection referral mechanisms.
In Argentina, to facilitate progress and measurement of the new SDG indicator 16.3.3 on access to civil justice, UNDP supported the design and application of a new access to justice module that was incorporated into a national poverty survey.
The initial findings suggest that people living in poverty tend to be unaware of the legal dimension of their everyday problems and are unable to seek access to justice via formal or informal mechanisms for dispute resolution.
In 2023, UNDP will present its above-mentioned analysis and mapping on country programmes, challenges and opportunities on civil justice, as part of a bigger access to justice piece. This analysis will inform UNDP’s policy and advocacy on people-centred justice, especially in the framework of high-level forum on SDG16, and translate into the design and implementation of civil justice programming in countries.
Constitutional reform is often a central aspect of conflict prevention, peacebuilding, promotion of human rights and the rule of law, and sustainable human development. As the foundational law of the land, constitutions should provide legal certainty, equal applicability and accountability (foundational components of the rule of law), and they mandate courts and national commissions to protect human rights.
UNDP supports constitutional design and reform within the framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustaining Peace Resolutions of 2016, which emphasize the need for a comprehensive approach to sustaining peace that includes addressing the root causes of conflicts, strengthening the rule of law and good governance and building a common and inclusive vision of society.
In 2022, UNDP assisted the Armenian Constitutional Reform Commission and Belize People’s Constitutional Commission in designing and drafting constitutional roadmaps and strategic plans that empower these bodies to fulfill their mandates while emphasizing inclusion and public participation. In both countries, UNDP conducted orientation workshops for the newly formed commissions to guide the design and conduct of constitution-making processes based on global comparative good practice.
UNDP continued its support to the Chilean constitutional reform process through its promotion of the effective participation of women and Indigenous Peoples. Chile was the first constitutional process in history to have complete gender parity, which is an achievement that deserves praise and will hopefully inspire replication. Not only was gender parity a good unto itself, it also appears to have had a demonstrable impact on the rights-based reforms. UNDP provided data-driven evidence of the impact of gender parity on the deliberation of constitutional norms, suggesting that the equal presence of men and women was instrumental in strengthening gender equality, Indigenous rights, environmental rights and mechanisms for democratic participation.
Even with its historic inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups, the rejection of Chile’s constitutional draft at the national referendum offers a powerful reminder of the importance of including key political constituencies in a manner that compels negotiation and compromise. This degree of inclusion, though intended when the constitutional reform process had been designed, was missing in Chile's 155-member Constitutional Convention, a body mandated to draft a new constitution between 2021 and 2022. As a result, a draft that was put to the referendum did not have support from political constituencies representing a sizable portion of Chilean society. The draft text was rejected. To start the constitution making process anew, 24 experts appointed by the National Congress prepared a new draft that will be reviewed and finalized by a newly elected Constitutional Council.
UNDP will continue to support these and other countries to promote inclusion and broad-based participation, and to assist partners in designing and adopting constitutions that strengthen democratic governance, stability, human rights and the rule of law.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global demand for technology to increase the efficiency of court systems, introduce service standardization, provide more accessible services and modernize the legal sector is increasing. UNDP has received and responded to requests from counties to support the achievement of these digital goals. When facilitating the development of essential digital infrastructure, UNDP promotes technology as a tool to improve efficiency and to advance accessible, people-centred justice and the rule of law. UNDP’s commitment to human rights promotion and protection and the principle of leaving no one behind as the foundation for sustainable development is critical for technological change: as justice digitalization processes must not only be compliant with international standards, but remain human rights-based and people-centred.
In 2022, the e-justice initiative was launched under the Justice Futures CoLab to respond to the challenge of justice digitalization, learn from country experiences and to further expand UNDP’s thought leadership in this area.
The interactive Global Mapping of E-Justice developed by UNDP’s Global Programme for Strengthening the Rule of Law, Human Rights, Justice and Security for Sustainable Peace and Development (the Global Programme) presents over 200 projects by area of impact, type of technology, geography and the partners involved, to allow people working on e-justice initiatives to connect globally and learn from each other. The report “E-justice: digital transformation to close the justice gap” and an accompanying toolkit were designed and launched to help practitioners understand e-justice initiatives and bring a human rights-based framework to the design, implementation and monitoring of e-justice as a part of UNDP’s digitalization efforts. These were shared through the delivery of five e-justice trainings engaging over 40 UNDP Country Offices. Technical support was also provided to the design of e-justice initiatives in Chad, Djibouti, Moldova, Tajikistan and Viet Nam.
The Justice CoLab also contributed to the strengthening of a strategic engagement between the rule of law, security and human rights (ROLSHR) team and UNDP’s Chief Digital Office to ensure a justice and human rights lens is brought to UNDP’s global efforts around digitalization, including the scaling of digital public goods.
The joint work included the scalability assessment of the Mizan II court management system developed by the Palestinian High Judicial Council with the support of UNDP. The assessment highlighted the importance of building leadership, governance and ecosystems to develop and sustain not just a digital case management software but a functional, integrated national court management system. The use of Mizan II has resulted in meaningful justice outcomes in the State of Palestine and its digital transformation process has been recognized as a model worth replicating in other contexts.
In Burkina Faso, Colombia and Tunisia, digital justice initiatives were developed and implemented with UNDP support.
In 2023, UNDP’s Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights team, in close coordination with the Chief Digital Office, will continue to promote a responsible approach to justice digitalization in line with UNDP’s Digital Strategy. UNDP will provide technical and strategic support to new initiatives that expand access to justice, further improve internal and external capacities and invest in knowledge management and learning systems to increase access to expertise, models, technologies and tools that can be adapted to the specific needs of national and institutional contexts. In addition, UNDP will work to identify digital infrastructure components, such as registries, case management systems, online dispute handling portals and scheduling systems targeting the justice sector, that can be promoted as open-source and Digital Public Good (DPG)-based solutions, freely studied, amended and used by all without financial restrictions.
Knowledge and thought leadership
Policy support and development
Technical support
Strategic support
Funding support
All people depend on the environment in which we live. Globally, we are facing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and ecosystem loss, and pollution. This impacts the full enjoyment of human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, both directly and indirectly. These interlinked crises are threat multipliers. As environmental threats intensify, more human rights will be undermined and more people left behind in efforts to achieve sustainable peace and development.
In 2022, UNDP issued its first global strategy for environmental justice that seeks to increase accountability and protection of the newly recognized right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and promote the environmental rule of law.
The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right
What is the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment?
With its global policy network and country programming in over 160 countries, along with deep expertise in rule of law and access to justice, security and human rights, UNDP is clearly positioned to support progress toward environmental and climate justice as an urgent priority and support Member States to uphold the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Mr. David R. Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment.
Ms. Sara Omi, President of the Coordinator of Territorial Women Leaders of Mesoamerica and Embera Lead Advisor to the Embera Women Craftswomen's Association (Panama).
UNDP is supporting the piloting of integrated approaches to environmental justice in Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kyrgyz Republic, Lebanon and Pakistan and facilitating regional and country level knowledge sharing to promote partnerships and integrated approaches on the ground. UNDP’s Justice Futures CoLab is a framework to support the development and testing of new environmental justice initiatives, and also emphasize the need for constant monitoring, learning and improvement.
Funding support
Partnerships
While the global climate emergency represents an existential threat to current and future generations, youth perspectives are often neglected despite the injustices they face. In the Asia and the Pacific region UNDP is working on environmental and climate justice with youth, informed by the UNDP Environmental Justice strategy. The youth-centred approach empowers young people and positions them as leaders in the demands for accountability and justice to bring about institutional and social change.
UNDP’s Global Programme for Strengthening the Rule of Law, Human Rights, Justice and Security for Sustainable Peace and Development (the Global Programme) supported the establishment of a Youth Advisory Group on Environmental and Climate Justice (YAG). The YAG consists of 29 members and, through its focus on procedural rights in the attainment of substantive rights, seeks to empower young environmental activists to be effective players in claiming, enforcing and defending their environmental rights.
The YAG was launched at a workshop held in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Environmental Human Rights Defenders’ Forum in October 2022. Young climate activists were convened to build and expand their networks and capacities, and consolidate collective efforts for environmental justice within countries and in the region. The YAG has gender balance among its members and is committed to gender mainstreaming.
Asia Wy, member of the Youth Advisory Group, Philippines
Knowledge and thought leadership
Partnerships
In cooperation with partners, such as the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the UN Human Rights Office, UNDP continues to co-lead the work on supporting the rights of future generations including climate justice through the Secretary-General’s Call to Action for Human Rights. Joint advocacy and awareness raising including through publications such as “What is the Right to a Healthy Environment?" unpacks the elements and importance of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and outlines how diverse stakeholders can play an active role in making the right a reality for all.
Knowledge and thought leadership
Partnerships
UNDP supports strategic partnerships to deliver on gender justice and contribute to the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security and the 2030 Agendas. In 2022, UNDP partnership with UN Women evolved to the Gender Justice Platform, as a structured coordination system for joint initiatives to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. More than 20 partners have joined the platform, allowing it to provide integral, intersectional and inter-agency people-centred justice responses for women, with a focus on the most vulnerable and marginalized.
The Gender Justice Platform supported 18 contexts with a specific focus on crisis and fragile settings, such as Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Lebanon, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Kosovo.
In 2022, the Gender Justice Platform and the UN Global Focal Point for the Rule of Law launched the reporta "Women, Peace and Security and the United Nations Global Focal Point for the Rule of Law: Promoting Gender Justice for Peaceful and Inclusive Societies", with recommendations to better leverage joint UN rule of law assistance in crisis-affected settings to advance gender equality. The Gender Justice Platform also supported the creation and dissemination of strategic learning resources on gender-responsive transitional justice, including through "Documenting Good Practice on Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: the Sepur Zarco case" (Guatemala).
UNDP continues to promote gender justice in crisis contexts on conflict-related sexual violence. As a lead entity of the Team of Experts on Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict and through the joint programming, UNDP supported investigations of complex cases of conflict-related sexual violence, for example, in the Central African Republic and Ukraine.
Knowledge and thought leadership
Partnerships
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
Recognizing the importance of gender responsive frameworks for women to lead on justice responses, UNDP, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) and UN Women facilitated a regional bootcamp for women human rights defenders in Africa on human rights mechanisms and advocacy. The event brought together 18 young women human right activists from Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal and Togo who increased their knowledge of African and international human rights protection mechanisms.
UNDP, OHCHR and UN Women provided training on international protection mechanisms, such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies. The Institute for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (IHRDA), a pan-African organization, presented the sessions on the African mechanisms as well as avenues for litigation.
Applying the acquired knowledge, the human rights defenders were given space and guidance to work on alternative reports to be submitted to UN protection mechanisms. The participants strengthened their advocacy skills by benefiting from the experiences of human and women rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Frontline Defenders, AfricTivistes and Dafa Doy (‘It’s Enough’ – a Senegalese feminist movement).
During a so-called “speed dating” session, the human rights defenders had the opportunity to interact individually with potential donors and representatives of eight embassies.
The anonymous questionnaires that were filled out at the end of the workshop showed the highest levels of satisfaction and appreciation for this hybrid format, and praised the time and guidance given to draft reports, as well as the focus on advocacy.
Technical support
Funding support
Knowledge and thought leadership
Partnerships
Women’s leadership in the justice sector is UNDP’s priority with regards to gender justice. At the end of 2022, UNDP leveraged national initiatives to support women in the judiciary in Algeria, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal.
To ensure women’s access to justice services, UNDP supports national civil society to provide legal support on the ground with a special focus on women. In the Central African Republic, 225 survivors of gender-based violence received legal aid from legal clinics run by an NGO of women jurists. In Uganda, more than 1,100 women benefitted from legal advice, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, court representation or referrals. Nearly one third of these women were violence survivors.
In Mexico, UNDP supported an innovative approach to transform harmful social norms and mobilize men for gender equality by promoting positive masculinities.
To support the implementation of UNDP´s Gender Equality Strategy for 2022-2025, UNDP and UN Women will launch a report on women in justice in Africa. More broadly, efforts will be made to expand the Gender Justice Platform programming in new countries and to engage more partners to promote women’s leadership and meaningful participation in justice and security sectors.
Technical support
Funding support
Partnerships
Over 100 million people are forcibly displaced due to conflict, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations, or climate-related crisis. Rule of law is fundamental for the protection and inclusion of forcibly displaced populations, as well as to advance sustainable solutions, promote peace and enable development. Following the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) nexus approach, UNDP supports the delivery of justice and security services in humanitarian situations while strengthening national capacities to protect human rights of both displaced and host communities.
UNDP strengthened its partnership with UNHCR to support country engagement within the HDP nexus. A workshop was convened in Geneva gathering UNDP and UNHCR colleagues from eight Country Offices, six regions/sub-regions and HQ levels to advance access to justice for the forcibly displaced and ensure people-centred justice approaches in programming. Based on the workshop results, a report was developed on “Advancing Access to Justice and Legal Aid in Forced Displacement Situations”, with joint recommendations to enhance scope and quality of current interventions. These efforts have led to a renewed commitment to the nexus, with at least five new initiatives to improve access to justice for refugees or internally displaced people (IDPs) in Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Mozambique, Myanmar and Somalia.
The legal aid helpdesk in Saida and Baalbeck ensure that the most vulnerable have access to justice and rights
UNDP focused its efforts on the contexts that were most affected by the influx of refugees. Rule of law and access to justice initiatives were rolled out in Moldova – to support people fleeing the war in Ukraine, in Pakistan – to ensure Afghan refugees and host communities had access to legal aid and were not left behind during and in the aftermath of the floods, in Lebanon – to provide legal support to marginalized groups including Syrian refugees, and in Myanmar – to support people displaced after military takeover in 2021.
In Moldova, UNDP partnered with the National Paralegal Association to enhance the capacities of legal professionals to address the needs of refugees, asylum seekers and other people in vulnerable situations. In addition, mobile teams were operationalized in two regions to support gender-based violence survivors.
In Myanmar, where political turmoil triggered forced evictions and displacement, UNDP cooperated with civil society to focus on resolving housing, land and property issues. In Rakhine, UNDP’s partner organization provided mobile legal consultations to 571 people (including 227 women), almost half of whom were Rohingyas and minority Chin ethnics living in remote areas. In addition, over 550 individuals (including 203 women) were sensitized about HLP rights, land laws and procedures. Most of them were Rohingyas. It was the first intervention when UNDP’s partner could access the Rohingyas (Muslim communities) and naturalized citizens, increasing their awareness on land entitlements and supporting them in further actions to retrieve their land rights.
In Pakistan, more than 2,000 people (including 1,700 women) from Afghan and host communities received legal aid and/or benefitted from psychosocial support.
In Lebanon, more than 6,000 people (over 50 percent were women and 40 percent refugees, mostly from Syria) received legal support in the three pilot legal aid centres established to ensure access to justice for marginalized groups.
The Justice Futures CoLab will continue its efforts to advance UNDP’s rule of law contributions to sustainable solutions for the forcibly displaced, with a dedicated focus on advancing access to justice for refugees and asylum seekers, IDPs and returnees, and stateless people. The partnership with UNHCR will be further guided by a joint roadmap aiming at increasing joint policy and guidance, advocacy, capacity and programming, in line with the "Global Collaboration Framework for Inclusion and Solutions 2023-2025".
Knowledge and thought leadership
Partnerships
Technical support
Funding support
In 2022, a major milestone was achieved for people-centred transitional justice. The Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic issued its first verdict. Three combatants were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual violence, for their role in the massacre of at least 46 civilians in 2019.
This landmark decision had a strong significance for victims and has been an emblematic case for the fight against impunity: an outcome of the long-term joint efforts of UNDP, the Peacekeeping Mission and international partners. It serves as a reminder and evidence that for transitional justice to be delivered – and in complex contexts in particular – longstanding political, technical and financial investments and commitments need to be made.
At a policy level and through partnerships, UNDP enhanced its focus on women’s leadership in transitional justice. In 2022, the joint UNDP and UN Women global report on women’s meaningful participation in transitional justice was launched with the primary objective of encouraging a new vision for women’s participation in transitional justice, within the UN and beyond, by providing specific recommendations at policy and programme levels. The report and its dissemination, along with broader advocacy efforts, contributed to the inclusion of a point on the importance of women’s equal and meaningful participation into the Human Rights Council resolution on "Human rights and transitional justice" and in the forthcoming UN Secretary-General´s Guidance Note on Transitional justice. These documents will inform the UN approach to transitional justice for years to come.
Intergenerational meeting with the participation of youth from Alta Verapaz, Guatemala
Partnerships
Technical support
Strategic support
Funding support
In Colombia, the integrated Transitional Justice Infrastructure for Peace marked its fifth anniversary. In June 2022, the Truth Commission presented its final report with nearly 28,000 testimonies from individuals and groups, including Indigenous communities, afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero communities, organizations of victims, ex-combatants, rural people and business representatives. Over 14,000 individual and collective interviews were conducted in 32 departments (administrative regions) of Colombia and 24 other countries (to collect voices from exile) between November 2018 and June 2022.
In South Sudan, UNDP provided psychosocial support to almost 800 armed violence survivors who then organized themselves into 47 victim support groups to willingly participate in the truth, reconciliation and healing processes, and to seek compensation and reparations.
Through the Gender Justice Platform, UNDP and UN Women supported transitional justice processes in Colombia, Guatemala, Mali, South Sudan, Tunisia and Kosovo to better address the rights, needs and priorities of women, girls and LGBTIQ+ people, including by creating an enabling environment for their meaningful participation in transitional justice processes as leaders, survivors and activists. In Kosovo, for example, more than 1,800 people have accessed justice through the support provided to a reparations programme for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.
In 2023, recommendations from the glocbal report on women’s meaningful participation in transitional justice will be implemented through the strategic support provided at country-level. Following the launch of the updated UN Secretary-General’s Guidance Note on transitional justice in 2023, UNDP will support its strategic implementation through a development approach.
Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Liberia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Niger, Portugal, São Tomé and Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sweden and Switzerland. It also comprises the UN, OECD and other multilateral entities and NGOs committed to advancing the SDG16+ and rule of law agendas, and the principles of people-centred justice (PCJ).
Task Force on Justice. ”Justice for All – Final Report”. New York: Center on International Cooperation, 21; OECD (2019).
World Justice project Rule of Law Index, “2022 ??Insights: Highlights and data trends from the WJP Rule of Law Ondex 2022”. Available at https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/downloads/WJPInsights2022.pdf.
SDG Indicator 16.3.3: “Proportion of the population who have experienced a dispute in the past two years and who accessed a formal or informal dispute resolution mechanism, by type of mechanism.” The new indicator complements the two indicators (16.3.1 and 16.3.2) under SDG 16.3 which are predominantly criminal justice focused . It was approved by the UN Statistical Commission in March 2020 and is now a part of the SDG Indicator Framework. UNDP, as a co-custodian of the new indicator with UNODC and OECD, is supporting development of additional guidance and capacity building of the States to measure the progress under the new indicator. See https://www.oecd.org/governance/global-roundtables-access-to-justice/people-centredmeasurementofaccesstociviljusticethenewglobalsdgindicator1633.htm
All references to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).
All references to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).
