2022 World Justice Challenge to Build More Just Communities

Deadline: 10-Dec-21

The World Justice Project (WJP) is inviting entries for 2022 World Justice Challenge to Build More Just Communities that strengthen the foundational elements of the rule of law, support a just recovery from COVID-19, and tackle the root causes of societies’ persistent inability to deliver a dignified life for all.

The World Justice Challenge 2022 is a global competition to identify, recognize and promote good practices and high-impact projects and policies that protect and advance the rule of law.

Themes

Access to Justice: The World Justice Challenge 2022: Building More Just Communities seeks to identify, recognize, and promote good access to justice practices and high-impact projects and policies that help ensure the path of recovery from COVID-19 is just and that progress toward achieving the SDGs gets back on track.
Anti-Corruption and Open Government: The World Justice Challenge 2022: Building More Just Communities seeks to identify, recognize, and promote good anti-corruption and open government practices and high-impact projects and policies that help ensure the path of recovery from COVID-19 is just and that progress toward achieving the SDGs gets back on track.
Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination: The World Justice Challenge 2022: Building More Just Communities seeks to identify, recognize, and promote good equal rights and non-discrimination practices and high-impact projects and policies that help ensure the path of recovery from COVID-19 is just and that progress toward achieving the SDGs gets back on track.

Award Information

Cash awards ($20,000 USD) will go to five initiatives that show demonstrable results and promising prospects for future progress and replication/scaling.
The five winning initiatives will be selected in the following manner:
- Four winners will be chosen by a committee of experienced judges under the following three Challenge themes (one winner per theme), plus one special prize:
  - Access to Justice
  - Anti-Corruption and Open Government
  - Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination
- The Data for Justice Prize for the project that demonstrates the most innovative use of data and evidence to advance one or more of the themes
A fifth winner will be selected by a network of finalists from previous World Justice Challenge competition

Guidelines

Access to Justice: The World Justice Challenge encourages entries that address systemic access to justice challenges, including, but not limited to:
- Protecting those working in the informal economy and facilitating their entry into formal employment and benefits structures
- Ensuring legal identity for all
- Addressing issues of land tenure and housing rights, including substandard housing, informal settlements, homelessness, dispossession, and land grabs that target indigenous lands
- Addressing the justice needs of migrants, refugees, and other forcibly displaced persons
- Addressing the justice needs of crime victims and detainees
- Addressing the strained capacity of justice systems to meet demands, particularly around healthcare, gender-based violence, housing, employment, and debt issues exacerbated by the pandemic
- Strengthening the capacity of formal or informal justice systems to deliver timely access to justice services and legal resolutions
- Facilitating the rebuilding of justice systems disrupted by the pandemic, including through the use of digital, online, and new technological approaches that are equitable and accessible by most people
- Supporting new approaches to ensure the right to a fair and speedy trial, strengthening access to counsel, and improving the openness of trials and other hearings
Anti-Corruption and Open Government: The World Justice Challenge encourages entries that address systemic corruption and open government challenges, including, but not limited to:
- Vetting suppliers, tracking financial flows, disclosing beneficial ownership, and supporting public complaint or whistleblower mechanisms
- Ensuring the open publication of public contracts
- Ensuring openness of government distribution of economic recovery and social support programs
- Strengthening mechanisms that provide oversight and accountability for elected and appointed officials, including judges
- Protecting the right to information and the proactive publication of government data
- Strengthening the ability of independent media to track and report on corrupt practices
- Supporting citizen participation in public decision making at the local and national levels
- Ensuring fiscal openness, including budget and expenditure data transparency and oversight mechanisms
- Ensuring accountability of public works, expenditures and infrastructures
- Using innovative techniques for identifying, investigating and documenting corruption, including through the use of data analytics
Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination: The World Justice Challenge encourages entries that address systemic barriers to equal rights and non-discrimination, including, but not limited to:
- Addressing systemic discrimination and unequal treatment of women and girls, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTI+ communities, people with disabilities, migrants, indigenous communities, and other marginalized groups
- Ensuring women and girls, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTI+ communities, people with disabilities, migrants, indigenous communities, and other marginalized groups are included in both short- and long-term economic and social recovery plans
- Addressing gender-based violence
- Tackling the discriminatory impacts of climate and other environmental problems
- Protecting journalists and other media workers, especially those from historically disadvantaged communities
- Protecting human rights defenders and the lawyers who represent them, especially from historically disadvantaged communities
- Protecting the right to peaceful assembly and/or association free of discrimination and unwarranted interference
- Protecting the right to privacy in accordance with norms of legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination
- Ensuring digital technology is created and deployed in ways that reduce or eliminate inherent biases and discrimination
- Challenging discriminatory practices and policies relating to arrest, detention, prosecution, probation, or exile
- Strengthening the implementation and/or enforcement of hate crimes legislation

Eligibility Criteria

Initiatives addressing at least one of the following Challenge themes, as they relate to addressing structural inequities and fundamental barriers on the path to a just COVID-19 recovery, are eligible to apply:
- Access to Justice
- Anti-Corruption and Open Government
- Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination
The competition is multidisciplinary and open to organizations worldwide, including, but not limited to: non-profits; social entrepreneurs; media; national and multilateral government agencies; local government bodies; businesses/private sector enterprises; bar associations; and law firms from any country or territory in the world.
Applicants may submit no more than two entries.
Collaborative entries among several organizations are welcome.
Entries must be submitted in English.
Entries will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Impact: the initiative has demonstrably made a material contribution to improving an important justice problem in one or more the thematic categories
- Sustainability: the initiative demonstrates the potential for sustained operation over time
- Scaling/Replicability: the initiative demonstrates potential for expansion in its current context and/or replication in other contexts (e.g. other geographies, populations or sectors)