Building the Movement

The Open Government Partnership has become a major platform to push for more open, transparent,
participatory and responsive government. Increasingly, OGP is being used to advance reforms related to
access to justice, open justice, and goal 16 more broadly (including access to information, anti-corruption
and ensuring citizens have a voice in government decisions). Last year, 28 countries made commitments as
part of their OGP action plans. The session included presentations from Moldova, Indonesia, Macedonia,
and Argentina on how the countries are using OGP to advance access to justice. Recommendations from
the session include:

● Identify champions within government who are open to being allies on A2J issues and willing to use
the window of opportunity created by the OGP process;

● Link A2J agenda to other issue areas to make it relevant to other areas of social and economic
development, and to ensure that it can be sustained within other agendas;

● Link international commitments to local implementation and vice versa to ensure that high-level
commitments are felt by target communities, and to showcase the work that is already being done
at the national and sub-national level;

● Build a multi-country coalition on A2J commitments within the OGP; and

● Continue to push for justice commitments. 

Read the full summary for this working session. 

In order to effectively address global health issues such as HIV/AIDS, people and institutions focused on
public health and those focused on justice must work together. Discrimination and other human rights
abuses all impact the effective treatment of global health epidemics. This session explored how to build
support and partnerships between these two interconnected fields. Speakers and participants discussed
how to make the case for integrating legal empowerment and justice approaches into health programs, and
identified three key opportunities to strengthen collaboration between justice and global health, including:
increasing funding for justice related public health work; moving from ad hoc, small scale programming to
comprehensive programming brought to scale; and embedding justice programs into existing strategic
public health frameworks such as those for HIV and TB.

Read the full summary for this working session. 

To bridge the justice gap, innovation is needed, yet the regulation of legal services and procedural rules
create obstacles. The Innovation Working Group of the Task Force on Justice has called for a “level playing
field.” In this working session, representatives of the access to justice movement and organized bars
considered case studies from South Africa, the United States and elsewhere and engaged in constructive
dialogue. The session considered three issues: How to regulate high quality justice journeys that lead to fair
solutions? What should the focus be on regulation and deregulation efforts? And how to create a level
playing field? 

Read the full summary for this working session. 

As Myanmar emerges from decades of isolation and military rule, MyJustice has provoked a broad-based public conversation about what justice means and where it can be found. Using data about justice needs and perceptions, people joined in Myanmar’s largest campaign using social and mass media to challenge injustice. The MyJustice campaign sought to use a wide variety of communication tools that would access and engage the population. This resulted in the “Let’s Talk” campaign, which used mass media, social media, and community events to espouse a positive message and advocate for fairness and equality for everyone, especially ethnic minorities, the Muslim population, and the LGBT community. Participants were taught how strategic communications can complement community-based solutions to promote access to justice in a politically informed and adaptive way.

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Those born after 1980 have much to gain or lose from SDG16 and can play a key role in the movement for justice. This session highlighted lessons learned in a new initiative to engage this “Cohort 2030,” working with educational institutions and city governments as critical partners. The session highlighted three pillars to harnessing Cohort 2030: identifying and elevating the next generation of young civil society leaders and social entrepreneurs; growing the next generation of human rights and development experts; and closing Cohort 2030 data gaps and activating cities as partners in achieving the SDGs. During the session, pilot survey findings on the knowledge, attitudes, and practice of youth on access to justice, reducing violence and corruption, and combating human trafficking were shared—important data for successfully messaging the 16+ Agenda and making the case that not only do these issues matter but the voices of youth are critical.

Read the full summary for this working session. 

Hope-Based Communications is a simple, practical tool anyone can use to reframe the messages they are using to make the case for their cause and change public attitudes. Sharing examples of values-based messaging from Amnesty International, other movements and the worlds of business and politics, this session introduced the concepts of narrative and framing along with findings from neuroscience and cognitive linguistics that show why these tools are crucial to winning debates and shifting what is considered “common sense." Hope-based Communications can be explained through five steps, which require five shifts in the way organizations communicate:

            1. Against -> For: Highlight what we stand for, not what we oppose;

            2. Fear-> Hope: Change messaging from triggering fear, to inspiring hope;

            3. Victims -> Heroes: Emphasize support for heroes, not pity for victims;

            4. Threat -> Opportunity: Create opportunities, drop threats;

            5. Problem -> Solution: Talk about solutions, not problems;

Read the full summary for this working session.