Understanding civil society contributions to access to justice

Abstract

Across the world, civil society legal empowerment programmes are making important contributions to securing access to justice and inclusive development. From assistance navigating justice processes to independent mediation services, civil society programmes deploying community-based paralegals provide practical avenues to seek rights and resolve disputes. Such programmes add to the range of access points to justice, offer additional avenues to pursue government accountability and improve community knowledge of their rights often at a scale and level of legitimacy in the community that is not readily available to government initiatives alone. The evidence base for the impacts of civil society legal empowerment programmes is slowly increasing. Such programmes have been subject to robust evaluation in multiple countries and legal empowerment programmes themselves are becoming more sophisticated in management and evaluation. From 2014-2016, Open Society Justice Initiative teamed with BRAC Human Rights and Legal Service programme (BRAC HRLS), a large legal empowerment programme in Bangladesh, to explore what BRAC HRLS’s programme data could tell us. Relying on existing and routine data collection we sought to: 1) Explore how internal data can help to manage performance and to make decisions about where to allocate resources; 2) Provide an example to other civil society organisations about what can be learned from internal data; and 3) Suggest that contributions of civil society actors toward access to justice can be measured as part of the effort under the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 in order to show a more complete picture of access to justice. The research relied on existing administrative data about mediation, court and registration services provided by BRAC HRLS from 2012-2014 as well as a new, small survey sample of former clients and current staff. Using these data points we explored indicators by which BRAC HRLS, and perhaps other civil society organisations, can measure impact in their operational programming. In particular we wanted to explore how BRAC HRLS ii Understanding Civil Society Contributions to Access to Justice legal services 1) strengthened community relationships to institutions, 2) enhanced social well-being of clients, and 3) improved economic well-being of its clients. Relying exclusively on such administrative data had limits. The aim of this study is not to generate a precise evaluation in the manner of a randomised control trial. Nor is the aim to suggest how such data could be successfully aggregated across multiple organisations and programmes. Rather it aims to explore lessons that may be found in ordinary data produced by most legal empowerment organisations. This data can be used by organisation leaders to better understand and demonstrate progress toward access to justice, and to make regular and timely management decisions and adjustments.