COVID-19 has heightened awareness of the access to justice crisis--the difficulty people have resolving everyday legal problems relating to housing, employment, debt, social services, family issues, and the like. To meet these needs, policy makers need justice data that reveal how these problems materialize, whom they impact, and how they can be resolved equitably and efficiently. Legal needs surveys are uniquely suited to provide such data, and a diversity of governments, civil society, foundations, and other research institutions have undertaken such surveys over the years. To support research and policy making in this area, WJP has published a new interactive map and directory of all publicly available legal needs surveys conducted since 1993. The new Atlas of Legal Needs Surveys covers 108 countries and jurisdictions, including 21 subnational surveys, and it serves as the largest global repository of people-centered data.

A new Strategy for the Rule of Law 2021-2026 adopted by the government of Kosovo in August incorporates WJP Rule of Law Index data. On topics such as impartiality of the courts, timely dispute resolution, and corruption in the justice sector, the plan sets ambitious goals for improving performance as measured in WJP Index scores over the next five years. With support from USAID, WJP included Kosovo in the Index in 2020 for the first time, and earlier this year provided a detailed briefing on the findings to Kosovo Ministry of Justice officials, including Justice Minister Selim Selimi. The head of the EU Rule of Law Mission, the State Department’s Representative for the Western Balkans, and policy-makers also participated in the briefing. The government’s planned reforms are an important dimension of its Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union. 

WJP and its governmental and civil society partners have recently taken important steps to make Mexico’s justice system more open, accessible, and accountable to the people it serves. At the federal level, WJP is working with the Mexican National Access to Information Institute (INAI) to co-create an Open Justice Module for the National Open Government Metric. The WJP-INAI collaboration will establish and measure national standards for transparency, accessibility, open data, citizen participation, collaboration, and accountability applicable to all institutions in the justice system at both the national and local levels. To implement the standards, on September 23, WJP and Quintana Roo’s justice institutions entered into an Open Justice Declaration, a first-of-its-kind agreement among state justice institutions and civil society groups to develop and implement an open justice policy. Through capacity building and seminars, the Quintana Roo initiative will promote compliance with the new national standards for openness in key justice institutions such as the State Supreme Court, the prosecution office (fiscalia), and the state´s anti-corruption system. WJP plans to apply lessons and achievements from Quintana Roo to other Mexican states.

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