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(Following is the first post in a two-part series on land rights and the rule of law, as shared with us by WJP Strategic Partner Landesa.) More than 17 million rural families—children, women and men—across India are invisible. They are invisible to the government and to society because they do not own any land. They do not appear in any government records and that means they cannot access a wide variety of existing and new government services.

While gender equality is enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in legislation in most countries, women’s conditions of participation in markets and their rewards from that participation, still remain woefully unequal to men’s.  

One of the intended uses of the WJP Rule of Law Index is as an action planning tool for global civil society. The Rule of Law Index truly comes alive when citizens are given the opportunity to analyze information and shape implementation with their own aspirations and situational context.

Why are women being excluded from more profitable aspects of agriculture in Cote d’Ivoire? My colleagues and I were surrounded by women dressed in their best. Their colorful, patterned pagnes, or cloth wraps, were everywhere I turned in the village of Kouadioyaokro, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). I was in West Africa in January to listen to women cocoa farmers about their roles in the supply chains that result in my favorite chocolate treats.

With many people in low income countries denied the right to be heard, access to justice and equality under the law - fundamental and constitutional rights - it is not surprising to see individuals from affected communities taking matters into their own hands. In my country, Malawi, weak, unaccountable, and unresponsive legal institutions have led to groups of people standing up to protect what belongs to them.

Spending time on the ground in countries like Liberia and Nepal, it soon becomes clear that despite good intentions, we still have very little idea how best to support the accountability of power-holders to citizens. There are hundreds of organizations working on corruption, transparency and accountability (words which are themselves confused and used inter-changeably); but the combined effect of these efforts is still much less than the sum of its parts.

The World Justice Project’s Honorary Chair Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim is a Sudanese-born, British mobile communications tycoon, the founder of Celtel, and the chairman of Satya Capital and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Aside from being the most dynamic and populous region, Asia and the Pacific is a modern-day hub of people on the move in search of decent work. Some 25 million Asians are employed in countries other than their own. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the rate of Asian migration has been increasing. Since the beginning of the millennium, we’ve seen a clear acceleration of this trend.

"We do not have the tools and instruments to stop big companies buying land. Land acquisitions are a reality. We can't wish them away, but we have to find a proper way of limiting them. It appears to be like the wild west and we need a sheriff and law in place." - Food and Agriculture Organization Director General José Graziano da Silva, The Guardian , October 29, 2012.

Economic growth is a recent historical phenomenon. In 1776 when Adam Smith published “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” 75% of humanity lived on less than a dollar a day and the average per capita income was about US$ $550 – an income level that was stagnant for 2,000 years.

A measurement revolution has taken place in the fields of governance, justice, and the rule of law. Not only have the quality and amount of available data exponentially increased in the past two decades, but more importantly, the knowledge about precisely how to effectively use these data to advance reform in the field has greatly improved. This paper offers a brief account of progress made and lessons learned during the past two decades in the rapidly growing field of rule of law measurement, and offers some suggestions about remaining shortcomings and the path forward.

It is difficult to drum up widespread, grassroots political support for the rule of law.  In the eyes of many people, the rule of law does not put food on the table.  Worse still, the law can be a source of oppression.  Governments and law-enforcement officials can and do commit crimes.  The role of law in our Apartheid history is an awful example. Understandably, not all South Africans hold the law in high regard.

SoFEA stands for Social and Financial Empowerment of Adolescents. The word means ‘Wisdom’ in Persian. The project symbolizes its namesake by enhancing knowledge level of vulnerable adolescent girls in rural Bangladesh on issues that are crucial for them to understand, not just as adolescents, but as individuals partaking in a complex society.

Corporate governance has become a catchword in many legal systems, the more so today than ever before. Corporate and accounting frauds coupled with general dissatisfaction by shareholders on the ways corporate executives control and manage companies in which they have invested have accentuated the need for mechanisms which will make the management of companies more transparent. The need for such transparency reached a crescendo after the Enron Scandal in the US, which led to major financial losses to investors.