Human rights and justice in Europe & CIS

Access to Justice for All

Access to justice is a basic human right, as well as an indispensable means of combating poverty and preventing and resolving conflict. In the Europe and CIS region, reform to create independent justice sectors is under way in many countries, in both the criminal and civil justice systems. In many countries of the region, both courts and governments have been run inefficiently and without systems of democratic accountability, while in some countries, public corruption has been fostered at every level.  Hence, parliaments are unable to assert their policy-making role, or effectively oversee executive action.  As a result, the poor and other vulnerable groups may be victimized by corrupt or indifferent officials, without having a reasonable chance to seek legal remedies for mistreatment. Moreover, it is important to understand that access to justice means much more than improving an individual's access to courts or guaranteeing legal representation. It is about ensuring that legal and judicial outcomes are just and equitable and that systems work in practice for the poor and disadvantaged as well.

There are six main support areas that serve to focus UNDP's work on access to justice: legal protection, legal awareness, legal aid and counselling, adjudication, traditional dispute resolution mechanisms and law enforcement.

Project document: Umbrella Human Rights and Justice project

Reading materials about the region

Practice note on Access to Justice

This practice note is intended to suggest strategies for UNDP support to access to justice, particularly for the poor and disadvantaged. Part II of the note emphasizes the need to focus on capacities to seek and provide remedies for injustice and outlines the normative principles that provide the framework within which these capacities can be developed. Part III sets out principles for action, approaches and techniques that can be used by UNDP practitioners involved in access to justice programming. It also suggests steps in policy dialogue, partnership building, design, implementation and execution that are intended to increase the likelihood of success of access to justice programmes. Part III also highlights issues related to monitoring and evaluation that are particularly important, including the use of disaggregated data to indicate whether there have been results for different poor and disadvantaged groups. Part IV suggests ways to capitalize on UNDP's advantage as an impartial and trusted partner of developing countries, and suggests possible entry points for programming. Finally, Part V lists knowledge resources for practitioners engaged in access to justice programming.

Contacts:

Louise Nylin, Analyst of Regional Programme, UNDP Bratislava, louise.nylin@undp.org
Tel: (421 2) 59337316

Ilona Mikoczy, Research Assistant, UNDP Bratislava, ilona.mikoczy@undp.org