In 2015, the Guinean government adopted the 2015-2019 Justice Reform Strategy. This initiative, which partly focuses on human rights and access to justice, has the specific objective of bringing justice closer to litigants by implementing a judicial system based on the concept of Justice de Proximité or Local Access to Justice. PartnersGlobal and our Conakry-based partners, CECIDE and COGINTA, implemented the Partners for Access to Justice project to support the justice reform process led by the Ministry of Justice of Guinea. The project established fully equipped and operational Justice Houses in three regions—Kankan, Kindia, and Labé; strengthened these Houses’ institutional sustainability through training and institutional support; built citizens’ awareness of the services that Justice Houses provide; and educated Guineans on their legal rights. In just their first two months of operations, the three Justice Houses received 125 cases and satisfactorily resolved all but one that they referred to a court (Justice Houses are required by law to file with the Ministry of Justice records of their resolved and unsuccessful cases.) The types of cases taken ranged from domestic abuse, land and inheritance issues, to conflicts between neighbors and debt settlements.
Justice Houses help to mitigate conflict and resolve disputes at the community level. Functional Justice Houses contribute to more inclusive systems, both through making justice more accessible to groups that traditionally face barriers to formal institutions (e.g., women, youth, minority groups), and through empowering local populations to participate in more collaborative conflict resolution processes of resolving their own issues directly, with durable results.
Funded by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement