Data and Indicators

During this session participants discussed the opportunities presented by the Voluntary National Reviews
and HLPF processes and examined some of the ways in which civil society justice practitioners can work
with governments to demonstrate successful examples of implementation as well as areas where more
action is needed. Discussants were asked to share information about their country’s Voluntary National
Review processes so that other participants could learn and exchange knowledge. Speakers highlighted the
importance of involving non-state actors in the process, improving collaboration between variety of actors
including legal advice offices, civil society, government, and other local and international actors in
implementing the targets, and improving financing to improve the effective implementation of SDG Goal
16. 

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Key tasks for these sessions will be to articulate the narrative regarding justice and its relationship to other outcomes to support future advocacy, developing strategies for promoting key messages and themes in important venues and communities, articulating metrics for measuring progress, and defining what success will look like. 

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a variety of Hague-based institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.” 

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a wide variety of global and local institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.” 

Participants will learn from justice sector case studies, movements in other sectors, and communications experts how to better understand, practice, and deploy the wide range of communications tools and techniques available to achieve their messaging goals.

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a wide variety of global and local institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.” 

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a wide variety of global and local institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.”

A framework and measurement for access to justice is necessary to ensure the existence of effective legal frameworks and policies to benefit the Indonesian people. During this working session, the consortium working on an Access to Justice Index, including the Indonesian Government, sought input and guidance from Forum attendees on their ongoing process to establish this Index for Indonesia.

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This session proposed key categories of data needed to properly assess national trends relating to Pretrial Justice  and to report on the Agenda 2030 Goals to the UN. Recommendations regarding the specific SDG indicators on pretrial detention (PTD) included keeping the current indicator so that comparisons can be made over time, but fine-tuning it to make it more meaningful, and developing new indicators that are simple, do not create perverse incentives (e.g. arrest quotas), and focus on the quality of decision-making as opposed to the outcome of the decision. During the session several initiatives in countries that prioritized implementation of the Goal 16 pretrial detention indicator, such as Brazil, Sierra Leone, and South Africa, were showcased. Links to other Sustainable Development Goals and issues were also discussed, including the need to implement smart policies—such as not using PTD for crimes with a punishment of less than five years or for women who are pregnant or have children under 12—to reinforce the other SDGs.

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This session explored ways to advance the collection, analysis and programmatic use of people-centered data, indicators, and measurement tools that capture the legal needs and paths to justice of citizens and businesses. The session discussed strategies to produce accurate diagnostics of the challenges and opportunities around effective access to justice, and helped identify issues that could be addressed by public policies. To this end, the session drew on the experiences of various countries to illustrate opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned arising from the implementation of legal needs surveys, use of administrative case data and other data collection exercises, and featured various resources including the newly released Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Open Society Justice publication Legal Needs Surveys and Access to Justice. Key recommendations include:

• Frame data collected by the government as a public good that should be used by academia and civil society, and involve civil society in the development of survey instruments and tabulation plans. This ensures that government data does not lose its edge as a tool for advocacy and activism.
• Focus on measuring justice dispensed outside of courtrooms. We know that only 5-10% of people’s legal problems end up in courts.
• Use the OECD and OSJI methodological guidance on legal needs surveys and forthcoming Praia City Handbook as tools for your efforts to design measurement tools on access to civil justice. Stay tuned regarding a proposed indicator on civil justice for SDG target 16.3.

Read the full summary for this working session.