A People-Centered Approach to Justice

WJP’s Access to Justice Research is rooted in a people-centered approach that prioritizes the experiences and needs of people and communities impacted by injustice. The initiatives described here are along two primary lines of effort: 

1. Advancing people-centered justice through data and evidence by…
   
   1. Generating, compiling, analyzing, and reporting data to measure and understand people’s legal needs, including where, how, and why justiciable problems arise.
   2. Supporting countries and justice actors in strengthening their data ecosystems through the provision of technical assistance and the development of standardized measurement frameworks.
2. Providing tools to support decision makers conducting reform and pursuing innovative approaches to expand access to justice, particularly through the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). 
    

Advancing People-Centered Justice Through Data and Evidence 

Measuring and Understanding People’s Legal Needs 

In order to deepen the evidence base for inclusive measures of access to justice, WJP has developed and administered a survey module on legal needs and access to justice as part of its General Population Poll (GPP). This survey represents the first-ever effort to capture comparable data on legal needs and access to civil justice on a global scale. The WJP Global Legal Needs Survey (GLNS), has been conducted in over 100 countries and jurisdictions between 2017 and 2024, representing the voices of more than 100,000 people. The survey module captures data on how ordinary people deal with their legal problems, highlighting the most common legal problems, respondents’ assessment of their legal capability, and sources of help. In addition, the access to justice module gathers information on the status of people’s problems, the resolution process, and the impact of their justice problems on their lives. 

The WJP GLNS draws on a comprehensive review of past legal needs surveys and builds on what is known in the literature as the “Paths to Justice” tradition. Throughout the development of the survey module, the WJP received vital input from an advisory stream of expert stakeholders and justice measurement experts convened by the OSJI and OECD to produce methodological guidance on the development, implementation, and use of legal needs surveys. 

The data collected via the WJP GLNS informs the following analyses: 

• The World Justice Project EUROVOICES (2024) evaluates, analyzes, and maps out national and regional variations in how people in the EU perceive and experience democratic governance, fundamental rights, justice, safety, corruption, transparency, regulatory enforcement, and the business climate.
   
• Dissecting the Justice Gap in 104 Countries: WJP Justice Data Graphical Report I (2023) is a comprehensive statistical analysis of how economic development influences legal problems, a stocktaking of Sustainable Development Goal Indicator 16.3.3, national estimates of the justice gap, and an enhanced analysis of the economic costs of legal problems.
   
• Disparities, Vulnerability, and Harnessing Data for People-Centered Justice: WJP Justice Data Graphical Report II (2023) examines how gender, development, and wealth impact access to justice; delivers new findings on the use of informal justice dispute resolution mechanisms; explores the impact of COVID-19 on justice delivery; and underscores the need for collaboration.
   
• Global Insights on Access to Justice (2019) is the first-ever effort to capture comparable data on legal needs and access to civil justice on a global scale, representing the voices of more than 100,000 people in 101 countries.
   
• Measuring the Justice Gap (2019) demonstrates that many people face justice problems, and too few get the justice they need. This “justice gap” undermines human development, reinforces the poverty trap, and imposes high societal costs.
   

Compiling Legal Needs Data to Support Public Use and Knowledge 

The Atlas of Legal Needs Surveys is an interactive map and directory of all publicly available legal needs surveys conducted since 1991. The Atlas includes more than 250 studies conducted in 110 countries and jurisdictions and is updated semi-annually. Addressing people's unmet justice needs effectively depends on the availability of data that accurately reflects their real experiences and struggles. Among various tools available to justice actors, legal needs surveys play a crucial role—they uniquely capture justice demands that reach institutions, but also those that remain hidden. By illuminating who faces critical justice issues, how these problems materialize, and why many individuals never seek institutional support, legal needs surveys empower decision makers to design targeted reforms that directly translate into meaningful improvements in people’s lives. The World Justice Project’s Atlas of Legal Needs Surveys contributes to strengthening this essential connection between data collection and effective justice reform. The Atlas compiles and organizes legal needs surveys from around the globe into a freely accessible resource, aiming to support informed decision-making and the identification of important gaps in justice data by tagging survey information according to geography, thematic focus, and vulnerable populations. 

Supporting Justice Actors to Strengthen Their Data Ecosystems and Inform Policies 

Informed by consultations with public and private actors, Grasping the Justice Gap (2021) takes stock of research and experience in improving justice data and identifies data priorities for advancing people-centered justice. Now, WJP is building on this through partnerships with the OECD, the Hague Institute for the Innovation of Law (HiiL), UNDP, and the Judiciary of the Dominican Republic. 

The WJP, in collaboration with the OECD and HiiL and as part of the Justice Action Coalition’s Data and Evidence Workstream, is developing justice outcome indicators intended to inform policies and reforms that align with peoples’ justice experiences. The proposed indicators at this stage focus, on the one hand, on whether people resolve their justice problems, on the degree to which people find fairness in the resolution processes and trust justice institutions. On the other hand, the outcome indicators reflect the extent to which people find that justice systems deliver essential functions they need in their journeys to solve their justice problems. This effort is part of a larger OECD initiative to develop a Justice Measurement Framework and contributes to the standardization and strengthening of the justice data ecosystem among OECD and Justice Action Coalition member states and beyond. 

Drawing form this broader framework of people-centered justice indicators, the WJP is working with UNDP to develop an indicator framework to monitor and evaluate the performance of the Dominican Republic's Judiciary. A subset of these indicators will be incorporated into the institution's strategic planning process for the next ten years, making it a pioneer in integrating a people-centered approach to justice into institutional management. }

Developing Tools to Support Justice Innovation 

Advancing Access to Justice via ICT-Driven Reforms in Family Justice is a multi-stage project oriented towards supporting the use of justice technologies, pursued in partnership with the World Bank Legal Vice Presidency and the Korean Legal Trust Fund. The project has included the development of a comprehensive literature review—Access to Justice via Information and Communications Technology: A Literature Review—and the Assessment Tool for ICT-Driven Reforms in Family Justice, which seeks to support decision makers in their evaluation of the institutional and environmental factors that may influence their success in addressing family justice needs through ICT-based innovations in legal information and advice. 

Given its orientation to addressing the identified justice needs through concrete and targeted solutions, the Tool contributes to filling a gap in the current efforts towards the digital transformation of justice services. 

Access to Justice as a Cross-Cutting Research Theme 

As a central focal point of our work, access to justice is explored in standalone products and is a cross-cutting theme in the WJP Rule of Law Index, EUROVOICES, the Mexico States Rule of Law Index, and our country-specific reports.