Podcast

In this episode, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow Joe Haley speaks with a team of implementers at WeSolve Philippines, a civil society organization working to build a culture of open data and transparent budgeting, starting with greater accountability for the expenditure of public funds on the response to COVID-19.

In honor of Law Day on May 1, our latest Rule of Law Talk conversation focuses on an exciting new civics education effort, the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) initiative, spearheaded by iCivics and dozens of other organizations and institutions, including the American Bar Association. WJP's Elizabeth Andersen is joined by the Executive Director of iCivics, Louise Dubé; the President-Elect of the American Bar Association, Reginald Turner; and an experienced high school civics educator from Nevada, Averill Kelley, who in addition to his work on the civics front lines, has worked with both the ABA and iCivics to support their work.
 

As part of WJP's Rule of Law Solutions Initiative, World Justice Project researcher and ACLS Mellon Fellow Joe Haley speaks with the founder of LawPàdí, a legal empowerment platform. LawPàdí pairs a legal referral service with innovative approaches to legal education, such as street law clinics and automated chat bots, in order to help Nigerians resolve their most common civil justice problems. The conversation touches on the security ramifications of access to justice in the Sahel, and dives into measures of program impact, the role of legal self-help, the strategic use of data, and the importance of building public trust. Ultimately, Ibidapo-Obe shares his vision for a streamlined system of justice in Nigeria.
 

As part of WJP's Rule of Law Solutions Initiative, World Justice Project researcher and ACLS Mellon Fellow Joe Haley speaks with the founder of Femmes et Droits Humains, a non-governmental organization working to include Malian women in the justice and peacebuilding process. The conversation addresses the cultural disparities confronting Malian boys and girls as these pertain to education and access to justice, the effort to educate women about their rights under international law, and the importance of building a women's movement to resist theocratic rule. There is also a sobering discussion about the Malian government's reliance on customary justice to address instability.
 

As part of WJP's Rule of Law Solutions Initiative, World Justice Project researcher and ACLS Mellon Fellow Joe Haley speaks with the founder of tech startup Bankly, Tomiola Adejana. They met in the Hague, Netherlands, where Adejana had just been announced as the 2020 winner of the Innovating Justice Challenge, an incubator program run by the Hague Institute for Innovating Law. Their conversation explores Bankly's strategy for using traditional networks to introduce digital finance to Nigeria's "last mile." They also discuss the strategic role of impact investment, the process of social entrepreneurship, and the regulatory challenges confronting a financial startup in Nigeria.
 

As part of WJP's Rule of Law Solutions Initiative, World Justice Project researcher and ACLS Mellon Fellow Joe Haley interviews civil society activists and local justice practitioners in West Africa to understand how access to justice — the capacity of ordinary people to resolve their everyday justice problems fairly without undue hardship — works in the Sahel.
 

World Justice Project Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen is joined by Christof Heyns, Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria and member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, to discuss the right of peaceful assembly. A new General Comment issued this week by the United Nations Human Rights Committee provides guidance on this topic at a critical moment, with protest movements on the rise across the globe, any many countries grappling with the appropriate response—something that has become even more complicated with the COVID-19 pandemic and public health restrictions on large gatherings.
 

Killian Dorier, Senior Program Associate for Engagement at the World Justice Project, is joined by Nikole Nelson, Executive Director of the Alaska Legal Services Corporation, and Walter Flores, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Equity and Governance in Health Systems (CEGSS) to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected indigenous communities in the United States and abroad, and what this additional pressure on countries' rule of law systems means for them.

The winners of the 2020 WJP Anthony Lewis Prize for Exceptional Rule of Law Journalism— Pavla Holcová, Arpád Soltész, and Eva Kubániová—personify the principle quoted by their outlet, "Even if you kill a journalist, you can never kill a story."