BURUNDI_U.Edinburgh_Does legal aid improve access to justice in ‘fragile’ settings? Evidence from Burundi

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BURUNDI_U.Edinburgh_Does legal aid improve access to justice in ‘fragile’ settings? Evidence from Burundi

Does legal aid improve access to justice in ‘fragile’ settings? Evidence from Burundi

Inanga's 2021-2022 Annual Report

Access to justice is often described as key for building and consolidating peace and enhancing socio-economic development in fragile and post-conflict states. Since the year 2000, legal empowerment has been one of the most popular approaches to improve such access, and a growing literature has presented mixed evidence of varied quality of its outcomes. This article evaluates and discusses the impact of a locally provisioned legal aid program on justice-seekers’ use of dispute resolution fora, legal agency, and trust in judicial institutions. The program was implemented between 2011 and 2014 in 26 municipalities of rural Burundi. The study considered its effects on 486 beneficiaries using various propensity score-matching methods and data on nonbeneficiaries from two distinct control groups (n = 3,267). Forty-eight interviews with key informants help discuss judicial practices. The observations indicated that:

The program increased the use of courts but not trust in the judiciary.
It had no significant impact on the use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms
While legal aid programs can improve access to courts, it does not necessarily mean an erosion of judicial ‘forum shopping’ or that trust in state institutions is reinforced and rights fully realized.

To read the full article, you can access it here.

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INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONSULTING

"Nothing is self-evident. Nothing is given. Everything is built."

"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."

"The essential is always threatened by the insignificant."

"Listen carefully, we used to say in old Africa, everything speaks, everything is words, everything tries to communicate knowledge to us."

"The real sometimes quenches hope's thirst. That is why, against all odds, hope survives."

"We must always try to understand our fellow man. If we exist, we must admit that he too, exists."

"The simplifying modes of knowledge mutilate more than they express the realities or the phenomena they give an account of."

"If you think like me, you are my brother. If you don't think like me, you are my brother twice over because you open me up to a new world."

"The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know."

"Be ever vigilant, hold government accountable, struggle for peace and justice."

"The disease is not cured by saying the name of the medicine, but by taking the medicine."

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

"There is no simple, there is simplification. The simple is always simplified."

"When you do something, know that you will have against you those who would like to do the same thing, those who would like to do the opposite, and the vast majority of those who would not do anything."

Does legal aid improve access to justice in ‘fragile’ settings? Evidence from Burundi

Inanga's 2021-2022 Annual Report