Across the world, civil society legal empowerment programs are making important contributions to securing access to justice and inclusive development. Many such programs deploy community-based paralegals to provide practical avenues to seek rights and resolve disputes. Such programs 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 impact of...

This is the first in a series of three posts we are featuring on the work of the Federal Supreme Court in Ethiopia.

The Federal Supreme Court has been one of the most engaged Ethiopian government institutions in the process of reform to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their services, as well as the responsiveness of the services to the needs of the public. This series describes a new system of judicial evaluation that the Supreme Court has been piloting at the federal level for the last few years, and has recently adopted as formal evaluation policy. The series will explore the nature of the new evaluation system, the challenges in the implementation, and its prospects for sustainability.

... Read more about The Evolution of Judicial Evaluation in Ethiopia - Part 1: How did it all start?

As we look ahead to a century characterized by unprecedented increases in temperature, even on the best case reduction and compensation strategies, our world is likely set to become a very different place. Our environment will look different, our available resources and available places to live will contract. Likewise, our ability to live in peace will face new strains. As space and resources become contested in new places and at a larger scale than ever before, we are likely to face new forms of migration, scarcity, disease and conflict.

In some countries, the national security and...

Since 2009, the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management has been drawing attention to the potential of indicators as catalysts for justice reform that can inspire and protect local innovation within government agencies. A new opportunity emerged in Turkey to test this versatile role for indicators in late 2013, when the Ministry of Justice in Turkey established a new Victim Rights Division.

... Read more about Building a Case for a New Victim Support System in Turkey: What Role for Indicators? By Selen Siringil Perker