THE PROJECT
Objective
The Project aims to promote learning among governmental authorities and World Bank staff about the various avenues for expanding access to justice for vulnerable groups; particularly women, youth and the poor in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA).
The information collected on the perceptions of both actual and potential users of the justice system illustrate that the core judicial needs and barriers are likely to apply beyond the scope of the individual countries and extend to the wider Sub-Saharan Africa region.
This website is a presentation of the main highlights on the findings from the action research study conducted by participating countries. The full reports for each country can be obtained through the World Bank website
Methodology
The main tools are household surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews planned and undertaken by the policy makers themselves, with the close collaboration of NGOs and citizen representatives.
As the case studies are diverse from a legal, judicial, and institutional socio-economic standpoint, Voices of the Vulnerable lays out the specific recommendations and policy considerations for individual countries.
The Project also provides a model questionnaire for conducting similar action research in other countries, and permitting the development of a common methodology of analysis and cross-country dialogue and analysis.
Often data on the views of citizens in Africa with regard to the challenge of access to justice is limited; an effort is made to compare and contrast the action research findings with other available data, such as from Afrobarometer and the Mo Ibrahim Index
Rational for this Website
The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) Report 2016 indicates that Sub-Saharan Africa’s justice systems are driving down the overall governance and public sector cluster scores of International Development Association (IDA) countries, which in turn negatively affects their IDA financial resource allocation. Governance indicators account for about 40 percent of the CPIA score, of which 25 percent pertain to the judiciary. IDA 18 accounts for about 50 billion US Dollars for Sub-Saharan Africa over the next three years, which is twice as much as the previous round.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals call for “access to justice for all” and emphasize the strengthening of institutions as a means for equitable development, growth and public good. Access to justice is a fundamental right and a sine qua non for peace and development. In order to address these aspirations, justice institutions and services, as well as knowledge, need to be improved with a citizen centric focus.
World Bank Twin Goals 2030 call for rapid data production and dissemination in all areas. While some sectors such as macroeconomics and infrastructure are relatively well documented, the justice sector still lacks relevant and actionable statistics. Indeed, quality information and data at the household and court-user level, and general public views on the justice sector is generally limited, which impedes policy decision making. Specifically, views and perceptions of vulnerable groups, including women, the youth and the poor, are seldom heard or incorporated into policy making. The overall perception in Sub-Sahara Africa remains that justice is a privilege of the rich.
In this context, the Voices of the Vulnerable knowledge portal seeks to systematically collect and disseminate statistics on access to formal justice in Sub-Saharan Africa for internal and external users to complement existing data. While a large proportion of the population still resorts to traditional justice mechanisms, even less data is available thereon and it is more challenging to gather. Therefore, this knowledge sharing activity focuses on the formal justice system as a prerequisite to the enforcement of the rights and protections guaranteed under the Law and for social and economic development. Specifically, it explores the barriers to access to justice faced by citizens in Sub-Saharan Africa while offering some insight into court users and their judicial needs.
The data provided through the portal is designed to be used internally by World Bank country teams within the Africa Region in the preparation of CPIA reports, P4Rs, IPFs, DPOs, SCDs, CPSs, and other analyses and training. Externally, it will benefit government and justice sector officials, civil society and other stakeholders in support of national and regional access to justice improvement programs. In addition, multimedia and how-to tools, including survey questionnaires in multiple languages, will help stakeholders conduct their own case studies and advance data sets to promote capacity building within their institutions and expand data availability on the continent.
This effort is the result of the partnership between the Governance Global Practice and the Nordic Trust Fund, the Chief Economist Office for the Africa Region, the Poverty Global Practice, Afrobarometer, the African Union Commission and participating case study countries and institutions under the NTF-Promoting Stakeholder Learning – Voices of the Vulnerable Access to Justice in Sub-Saharan Africa P156150.