Publication: Improving Access to Justice in Liberia – A 2023 JUPITER Assessment
Loading...
Date
2023-12-14
ISSN
Published
2023-12-14
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Liberia’s lack of effectiveness in handling judicial disputes has been consistently recognized as a weakness and one of the main obstacles to the country’s transition out of fragility. Liberia performs poorly in international datasets benchmarking justice and the rule of law. For instance, in the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index (WJP RLI), it ranked 112 out of 140 countries in 2022, meaning that it is among the thirty countries with the weakest adherence to the rule of law. This study originates from the Government’s desire to improve the delivery of justice to its citizens and to have recommendations on a practical sequence of reforms that are underpinned by hard data and analytics. In a first-of-its-kind JUPITER assessment, a standardized methodology is used to benchmark the state and performance of Liberia’s judiciary against specific measures of effectiveness and to compare key features across countries. The study focuses on the effectiveness of the system in service delivery in three areas – access to justice, efficiency, and quality – and presents the main challenges that emerged from the empirical work to provide data-informed context-specific suggestions for reform.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Bosio, Erica; Upegui, Virginia. 2023. Improving Access to Justice in Liberia – A 2023 JUPITER Assessment. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40737 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Reforming Justice(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-09)This note explores the use of technology to enhance the efficiency, transparency, and accessibility of judicial service delivery. It examines how technological solutions can support streamlining internal court processes, facilitate access for court users, and support the quality of judicial decisions through legal drafting and research tools. The note also emphasizes the importance of framing judicial digitalization within the broader context of public service modernization. This approach goes beyond mere automation and technological tools, encompassing the standardization of court operations, rationalizing processes, and developing regulatory frameworks that enable digital justice while protecting citizens’ rights to a fair trial, privacy, and security. Additionally, the Note highlights the importance of supporting all stakeholders in interacting with new digital technologies to build capacity and trust in digital justice systems, ensuring that these reforms are inclusive and effectively implemented.Publication Jordan Country Gender Assessment : Economic Participation, Agency and Access to Justice in Jordan(Washington, DC, 2013-07)Over the last three decades Jordan has made substantial investments in its human resources, spending more than 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health and education. Like their male counterparts, women and girls have benefitted from these policies and their quality of life has improved. The Jordan Country Gender Assessment (CGA) has two primary objectives. The first is to assess gender imbalances in the areas of economic participation in the labor market, agency, and access to justice; provide a framework for policies or interventions to the Government of Jordan (GoJ) on addressing imbalances; and provide a basis for implementing the activities included in the Gender Action Plan (GAP). The second objective is to develop and strengthen partnerships with GoJ agencies, Civil Society Organization's (CSOs), and academic institutions to promote collaboration on addressing gender-related issues impacting development, and in particular to develop mechanisms for cooperation on implementation of the GAP. This CGA will further explore, in the Jordan country context, the argument that the considerable progress in human development in Jordan has not yet led to consistently higher women's participation in economic, political and social life, which in turn has slowed women's economic participation. Access to justice is directly linked to the issue of agency-whereas agency defines the legal and social boundaries of rights and practices, the concept of access to justice covers the tools and mechanisms aiding persons in exercising these rights. Obstacles to women exercising agency in Jordan are caused by a combination of the treatment of women versus men under applicable legal frameworks, with gaps further widened by restrictive social norms that can govern women's behavior. Recent legislative and regulatory reforms, if implemented effectively, have the potential to increase women's agency through expansion of rights and improvements in service delivery. Despite legal and social impediments to accessing land, levels of registration of land by women have been increasing in recent years.Publication "To Whom Do the People Take Their Issues?" The Contribution of Community-Based Paralegals to Access to Justice in South Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)Paralegals provide a crucial link to justice services and legal redress in South Africa, particularly for the rural poor. Although post-Apartheid constitutional reforms guaranteed a broad range of rights and benefits to all South Africans, including the right to legal assistance, accessing many of these benefits remains a challenge for those who live in remote areas and those who cannot afford legal representation. Community-based paralegals fill this gap by providing dispute resolution and legal support that is both geographically and financially accessible and informed by a deep understanding of the social issues and everyday challenges facing their clients. Despite the prevalence and importance of paralegals in the South African justice sector, their role remains largely under-formalized and understudied. This report seeks to address this gap by providing a broad analysis of the current state of the paralegal sector. It begins with a historical overview of paralegal services in South Africa from the apartheid period to the present. The study then maps the current state of the paralegal sector, and provides detailed information on the structure and function of key organizations that provide paralegal services. Through an analysis of twelve case studies of paralegal-assisted cases, the report identifies facilitating and hindering determinants of Community Advice Offices (CAO) functions at both the institutional and organization level.Publication Increasing Access to Justice in Fragile Settings(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-12)This report explores the paths to increase access to justice in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations (FCS). It provides an analytical overview of the most common barriers to access to justice and presents the value and prerequisites of eight options available to governments to increase access to justice in these contexts. Fragile environments are considered among the most difficult for publicsector reforms, including judicial reform, partly because the root cause for fragility or conflict is often multifaceted. FCS are characterized by rapidly changing circumstances, differing levels of security, fragile and volatile political situations, low institutional capacity, and a weak enabling and investment climate for the private sector. The report takes these aspects into consideration and proposes context-specific policy implications. The report is intended for justice professionals and the general audience of development experts alike, and is designed to be a repository of data and country examples on common barriers and solutions for increasing access to justice in FCS. It can serve as a starting point for reform design and research toward good practices implemented across the world. The report relies on publicly available data and does not do any data collection. As such, it carries the limitations of the underlying datasets, including a general lack of data on outcomes and the unavailability of gender-disaggregated data. Section 1 discusses the determinants of access to justice and defines the concept of fragility used throughout the report. Section 2 uses publicly available data to extract common barriers to access to justice in FCS and organizes them around the three dimensions of access to justice. Section 3 outlines ways that these barriers can be addressed with corresponding in-country applications. Section 4 concludes by summarizing the policy implications of this analysis for governments.Publication Reforming Justice(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-09)Small claims courts and procedures play an important role in enhancing the efficiency and accessibility of the justice system. When well-designed, they can significantly streamline judicial processes, reduce the burden on courts, and increase access to justice for individuals and small businesses. This brief presents trends in the use of such mechanisms. It systematically analyzes key components essential for designing effective small claims systems, including the court structure, the nature of the proceedings (mandatory vs. optional), monetary thresholds for claims, filing processes, fee structures, timelines, and the admissibility of evidence. The brief concludes with recommendations for jurisdictions to assess and refine their small claims systems based on empirical data and user feedback, ensuring they effectively address the barriers to justice faced by litigants.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2018(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018)Every year, the World Bank's World Development Report takes on a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 Report, Learning to Realize Education's Promise, is the first ever devoted entirely to education. Now is an excellent time for it: education has long been critical for human welfare, but is even more so in a time of rapid economic change. The Report explores four main themes. First, education's promise: Education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies - both within and outside the education system. Second, the learning crisis: Despite gains in education access, recent learning assessments show that many young people around the world, especially from poor families, are leaving school unequipped with even the most foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. Third, promising interventions to improve learning: Research from areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, or school management have identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, that teachers are skilled as well as motivated, and that other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, learning at scale: Achieving learning throughout an education system will require more than just scaling up effective interventions. Change requires overcoming technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and being adaptive when implementing programs.Publication World Development Report 2011(World Bank, 2011)The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.Publication Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects(World Bank : Washington, DC, 2024-02-01)A structural growth slowdown is underway across the world: at current trends, the global potential growth rate is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s. Nearly all the forces that have powered growth and prosperity since the early 1990s have weakened, not only because of a series of shocks to the global economy over the past three years. A persistent and broad-based decline in long-term growth prospects imperils the ability of emerging market and developing economies to combat poverty, tackle climate change, and meet other key development objectives. These challenges call for an ambitious policy response at the national and global levels. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the growth slowdown and a rich menu of policy options to deliver better growth outcomes.Publication Greed and Grievance in Civil War(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-05)The authors compare two contrasting motivations for rebellion: greed and grievance. Most rebellions are ostensibly in pursuit of a cause, supported by a narrative of grievance. But since grievance assuagement through rebellion is a public good that a government will not supply, economists predict such rebellions would be rare. Empirically, many rebellions appear to be linked to the capture of resources (such as diamonds in Angola, and Sierra Leone, drugs in Colombia, and timber in Cambodia). The authors set up a simple rational choice model of greed-rebellion, and contrasts its predictions with those of a simple grievance model. Some countries return to conflict repeatedly. Are they conflict-prone, or is there a feedback effect whereby conflict generates grievance, which in turn generates further conflict? The authors show why such a feedback effect might be present in both greed-motivated and grievance rebellions. The authors' results contrast with conventional beliefs, about the causes of conflict. A stylized version of conventional beliefs would be that grievance begets conflict, which begets grievance, which begets further conflict. With such a model, the only point at which to intervene is to reduce the level of objective grievance. The authors' model suggests that what actually happens is that opportunities for predation (controlling primary commodity exports) cause conflict, and the grievances this generates induce diasporas to finance further conflict. The point of policy intervention here is to reduce the absolute, and relative attraction of primary commodity predation, and to reduce the ability of diasporas to fund rebel movements.Publication Infrastructure, Economic Growth, and Poverty(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05)How much an economy should invest in its physical infrastructure is a crucial question being asked by policy makers from developing countries where financial resources for economic development are limited. This paper aims to address this question by bringing insights from the literature that investigates the relationship between infrastructure investment, economic growth, and poverty alleviation. The study shows that there is no consensus among the existing studies, which are mostly focused on industrialized economies, on the relationship between public investment and economic growth. Studies that investigate the relationship between physical infrastructure and economic growth mostly conclude that there exists a positive relationship. This is also true between physical infrastructure and income inequality, as reported by a few studies. This study also identifies many gaps in the literature and highlights the need for further studies to narrow them.