Access to Justice
We pursue innovative approaches to expanding access to justice to people who lack the power or the resources to secure the protection of the law.
Some 4 billion people around the world are excluded from the law’s protection, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation or even violence at the hands of the powerful.
The Justice Initiative works with a range of international and national partners to develop and implement strategies to provide free or low-cost legal assistance. We work with civil society and governments to develop and expand partnerships for civil and criminal legal aid. We advance community-based responses, such as the use of paralegals to provide basic legal information and assistance. And we engage with international efforts to strengthen access to justice for economic and social development, as part of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
Recent work
A New Guide Shows the Way Forward on Expanding Access to Justice
A new guide produced by the Open Society Justice Initiative with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) provides a road-map for the development of national tools to assess and improve access to justice.
Volunteer Lawyers Give New Direction to Nigerian Legal Aid Initiative
In the town of Ikorodu, local lawyers are delivering free legal aid to detainees within 48 hours of arrest and joining an effort to steer people charged with nonviolent crimes away from unnecessary detention.
A Community-Based Practitioner’s Guide: Documenting Citizenship and Other Forms of Legal Identity
This guide provides instructions on how to establish a community-based paralegal program to help people document citizenship and other forms of legal identity.
- Access to Justice
- Citizenship
- Economic Justice
- International Justice
- Corruption
- Criminal Justice
- Civic Space
- Discrimination and Equality
- Rule of Law
- National Security and Counterterrorism