From MicroJustice

Contents 1 Purpose of this page 2 Upcoming 3 January 2010 4 December 2009 5 November 2009 6 October 2009 7 September 2009 8 August 2009 9 July 2009 10 June 2009 11 May 2009 12 April 2009 13 March 2009 14 February 2009 15 January 2009 16 December 2008 17 November 2008 18 October 2008 19 September 2008 20 August 2008 21 July 2008 22 June 2008 23 May 2008 24 April 2008 25 March 2008 26 February 2008 27 January 2008

Purpose of this page

The purpose of this page is to share noteworthy information. For instance, a milestone is reached, a new project is being kicked off or finalized, an important partnership is being established, the 5000th person is being helped to access his or her right in Bolivia, etc. In this way, the communication team gets a overview of news and events, and can determine when a newsletter should be sent to all our stakeholders.

Upcoming

• April/may conference on measuring access to justice and legal empowerment in The Hague, see developments on Hague Institute for Internationalization of Law website
• Stakeholder event Microjustice where stakeholders can present their microjustice projects and strategies in january/february.
• Kick off Microjustice Facilitator Toolbox project.
• January/march 2010 Action research in Cambodia, Tadzjikistan, Ethiopia, Bangla Desh, Palestine, Egypt, Rwanda and/or South-Sudan
• 5 to 15 March 2010: action research in Bangla Desh

January 2010

• January 3-13 january: Action research in Mali took place at Deme So and Wildaf legal aid organizations. Many interesting best practices in the area of family disputes in this sophisticated program. Opportunities for microjustice identified: joint development of tools ("outils"), database of best practices.
• Microjustice rated nr 3 in the top 10 positive stories from 2009 of Ode Magazine.
• Microjustice approach is proposed in a tender for designing and implementing a paralegal program in Guyana

December 2009

• Action research from 11 to 21 december with Oxfam Novib in Azerbaijan at Praxis. This is the first country where Tisco and Oxfam Novib investigated the added value of the microjustice approach to existing legal aid projects. Project that works for IDP's (Internally Displaced Persons) under very difficult circumstances and helps them with identity documents, property rights issues and access to social security benefits. Opportunities identified for microjustice were: strategies for providing legal information and education, exchanging "snapshots of experiences" from other countries and cooperation between NGO's providing legal aid. A more detailed report will follow.
• Data-collection started at Facilitadores Judiciales project in Nicaragua.

November 2009

• International Tisco seminar about 5 essential elements of dispute systems, with many international experts on problem solving negotiation and access to justice, November 18.
• A microjustice group has been formed on LinkedIn. Be among the first to join!

October 2009

• Legal Empowerment of the Poor. A round table conference on Microjustice was a brainstorming event on microjustice and human rights organized by NJCM on October 28, 19.00 hours at the Raad van State building in Den Haag.
• Maurits Barendrecht (Tisco) and Marco de Swart (Oxfam Novib) visited a the Legal Empowerment Round Table at the European Development Days in Stockholm on October 23. Speakers included Mary Robinson, Helen Clark and George Soros, whose Open Society Justice Initiative supports legal empowerment projects. UNDP presented a portfolio of 51 legal empowerment projects in a booklet "Envisioning Empowerment," which gives a good overview of the field. It presents 3 projects supported by the Microjustice Initiative and looking for futher funding.
• City of the Hague and Ministry of Economic Affairs grant IRI2 proposal, which enables the Microjustice Initiative to develop Microjustice norms and processes (sharing rules) pilot website, jointly with 5 partner NGO's and research institutions in developing countries.
• Advocatenblad (Dutch lawyers journal) publishes short article on Microjusticia Bolivia and microjustice research activities.
• Presentation about Microjustice and human rights at Annual researchday Dutch School of human rights research, October 2.

September 2009

• Start of the work of the Innovative Rule of Law Inititiative, in which Microjustice Initiative is one of the four partners. Aim is to jointly develop an Innovation Model for innovations in the area of rule of law, such as new procedures, innovative regulation programs, legal education programs, and knowledge sharing tools. The Microjustice Facilitator toolbox and the Measuring Access2Justice methodology are two of these innovations.
• Exploration of possible Microjustice project in New Delhi area India, or Afghanistan. This is a possible partnership with eBay/PayPal. They are major players in online dispute resolution, through their Resolution Centre and Square Trade dispute resolution system.
• Finally news about Microjustice entry in Google 10^100 contest. Google changed the rules of the game. Instead of making a shortlist of 100 of the best ideas and let people vote on them, Google now grouped the ideas in 16 groups (without any reference to the origin/snders of the ideas). One of the ideas is: Make government more transparent. It is inspired by suggestions to "increase the transparency of laws, eliminate duplicate ones and communicate them better to affected citizens". Which seems to refer to the Microjustice Sharing rules entry (and possibly many other entries).
• Two new research papers become available, that analyze how justice policies and NGO efforts can become more targeted. Based on transaction costs analysis, and an extensive review of the literature on access to justice, the message is to enable justice to emerge bottom up, in the interactions between clients and providers of justice services (microjustice, legal empowerment). Good justice policies focus on the information needs of disputants, low cost default procedures, choice for plaintiffs, accountability towards clients, gradual, needs-based formalization of legal relationships, and strengthening informal compliance mechanisms (Maurits Barendrecht, Understanding the Market for Justice and Growing Justice: Justice Policies and Transaction Costs).

August 2009

• Visit to Facilitadores Judiciales project of the Organization of American States in Nicaragua. This project is very innovative and a good example of how neutral facilitators can bring justice to communities. In this project, the facilitators are elected by the members of the community. They mediate disputes and help local judges, with all kinds of practical issues, such as delivering documents. The local judges supervise the facilitators, who are thus also part of the formal justice system. An agreement was reached that Tisco will do an impact study regarding this program as it will be extended to urban and suburban communities in Nicaragua, using state of the art measurement methodologies for legal empowerment, access to justice and economic impact of development interventions.
• Journal The American Lawyer publishes short article about Microjustice.
• International Legal Alliances (microjustice4all) publishes handbook for implementation of Microjustice, funded by Eureko Achmea Foundation, and now downloadable at www.microjustice4all.org.

July 2009

• City of the Hague and Ministry of Economic Affairs grant IRI1 proposal, which enables the Microjustice Initiative to develop a Microjustice facilitators toolbox, jointly with 5 partner NGO's and research institutions in developing countries. It also enables the MJI to further develop and test measurement methods for access to justice.
• Oxfam Novib makes Microjustice a special project. Agreement reached with Tisco to do Action Research in locations covered by Oxfam Novib supported legal aid programs in 6 countries. Aim of the project is to assess the state of access to justice and to do workshops with the legal aid providers. In these workshops, best practices for access to justice from the Microjustice Initiative will be enriched by and compared to best practices from this particular project.
• Business plan (Project Identification Document) Microjustice Sharing Rule finalized. Search for investors starts.

June 2009

• Microjustice Initiative and its partners in the Innovative Rule of Law Initiative submit a proposal IRI 2, which contains a program to develop Normsandprocesses.com, now also called Microjustice Sharing Rules.
• 25 of the founders and active team members who make the Microjustice Initiative work meet informally for diner in Amsterdam, and listen to presentations about developments in Microjustice.
• Business plan Microjustice Initiative finalized. This process was facilitated by Sandra Franken, Ackordera.
• International Legal Alliances now focuses primarily on microjustice, and rebranded itself under the name microjustice4all. Its services include consultancy, training, coaching, networking and lobbying in this area.

May 2009

• Microjustice Initiative is one of four innovative rule of law programs that present themselves at the official European launch of the report of the UN Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor. The other programs include the Faciliatadores Judiciales Rurales project of the Organization of American States in Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay, Amnesty International, and Oxfam Novib's legal aid program in Cambodia. Commission members Madeleine Allbright and Lloyd Axworthy present the report in the Peace Palace in The Hague. UNDP's Olav Kjorven gives a key note lecture. Major Jozias van Aartsen announces that The Hague will have an Institute for Global Justice.

April 2009

• Journal Ode (appearing in the US and the Netherlands) publishes extensive article about Microjustice, focusing on Microjusticia Bolivia and the efforts of ILA in the area of providing people with identity documents.

March 2009

• Achmea sponsors microservices research at Nijenrode University. One researcher (Maike de Groot) starts PhD research on the way microservices and other interventions interact with legal infrastructure. Can Microjustice help microfinance and microinsurance? The hypothesis is that poor conflict resolution and regulation capacities make it difficult for development interventions to reach their objectives. The focus will be on the sharing of the gains and risks resulting from new products and services.
• Tisco proposal for Microjustice research at NWO Conflict turned down. Good score, but not good enough.

February 2009

• Column Microjustice in Internationale Samenwerking appears by Pieter Hilhorst.
• Extensive article on Microjustice in Dutch lawyers magazine Meester, by Michel Knapen.

January 2009

• Two Microjustice papers appear. The first sets out the five basic elements of a dispute system Microjustice should support. The second gives the academic foundations of the Model microjustice facilitator (see Maurits Barendrecht, In Search of Microjustice: Five Basic Elements of a Dispute System and Best Practices for an Affordable and Sustainable Dispute System: A Toolbox for Microjustice.

December 2008

• Microjusticia Bolivia also becomes a regional office for Microjustice in Latin America. Microjusticia Peru starts its services and eables clients to obtain identity papers.

November 2008

• Township Blues, Legal needs of individuals in Ndirande, Blantyrethat. That is the title of the needs and capabilities assessment by a team from Malawi, led by Michel Knapen and Mirjam Vossen. Conclusions: People already pay a lot of money to solve their legal issues. Microjustice should focus on the legal problems that residents of Ndirande identify as the most urgent: property grabbing, family issues (notably paternal neglect), employment issues, land and tenancy issues, theft and detention. Microjustice could focus on providing legal information about issues such as inheritance rights, affiliation responsibilities, tenancy rights, land rights and rights for accused. Other options are contracts and legal documents, as well as mediation skills. The report will be available through Microjustice.org shortly.

October 2008

• Under the name Microjustice Sharing Rules, the norms and processes.com project was succesfully submitted to the Google project 10 to the 100. As part of this entry, a video was uploaded on YouTube.
• The Executive Board of Tilburg University announced to support the Microjustice entry to the Google Competition. The Board makes available funding for the development of the 30 second YouTube video and other related communication activities.
• Tisco has submitted a research program for a subsidy from NWO (the Dutch Research Foundation) in relation to the strategic theme Conflict and Security. The program proposal has the title: Microjustice: Evidence Based Dispute System Design. See MicroJustice:Evidence Based Dispute System Design for more information. The idea is that Microjustice presents opportunities for major advances in the direction of evidence-based dispute-system-design. A theoretical framework will be developed, integrating insights from conflict research, best practices, and potential remedies for market/government failure. Dispute systems (formal, informal; from countries in different stages of development) will be compared to the framework, and evaluated with a methodology for measuring the quality and costs of conflict management processes from the perspective of the user. Results will be disseminated through the knowledge sharing network of the Microjustice Initiative, and in a first handbook on evidence-based dispute-system-design.

September 2008

• Before 20 October 2008, the Microjustice Initiative plans to file MicrojusticeNormsandProcesses.com for Google's competition for the idea that helps the world most, see Project 10 to the 100. A Youtube film of 30 sec. is one element of the presentation. We plan to make a longer film, for other communication activities.
• The Mission, Vision, Strategy and Values for the Microjustice Initiative were approved by the board of the MJ Initiative.
• The department of Private law of Tilburg University decided to invest €200k in Microjustice research.
• Research in Malawi into the needs and capabilities related to access to justice, as well as the prospects for Microjustice started, see BoP Protocol Needs Assessment Malawi.
• The program for Facilitadores Judiciales Rurales of the Organización de los Estados Americanos (OAE) considers cooperation with the Microjustice Initiative in the area of ensuring sustainability of its program.
• On 24 september Eureko (Achmea) opened its new headquarters in Zeist with a conference about Microinsurance in the presence of Princess Maxima. During the panel discussion, for a high profile audience, Prof. Gert van Dijk (Nijenrode) introduced Microjustice as an important new member of the family of microservices that reduce vulnerability.
• The Centre for International Legal Cooperation (Leiden) considers integrating elements of the Microjustice approach into its paralegal program in Mali.
• Tisco and the Centre for International Legal Cooperation (Leiden) consider organizing a workshop for access to justice experts on best practices.
• Martin Gramatikov, Maurits Barendrecht and Jin Ho Verdonschot publish paper Measuring the Costs and Quality of Paths to Justice: Contours of a Methodology describing a system for assessing procedures that give access to justice.
• Maurits Barendrecht and Jin Ho Verdonschot publish paper Objective Criteria: Facilitating Dispute Resolution by Information About Going Rates of Justice. This paper describes part of the theory behind MicrojusticeNormsandProcesses.com.
• A Microjustice Research Program has been finalized, which defines research projects at Tilburg University and connected research institutions.

August 2008

• The board of the Microjustice Initiative met for a day at the premises of the DOB foundation to discuss the second version of the strategic plan.
• Four master students from Tilburg University started their work at the Microjustice Bolivia project. Panagiotis Tsatsos & Mark Overdevest work on a Business case for Facilitators, Guido van Dijcke on Improving Property Rights Protection, and Erik Vosselman on Modularity, which is an essential element for Product Development. Their blogs can be found through the Microjustice-BOP Lab Master Thesis Project page.
• A first version of the clickable demo for MicrojusticeNormsandProcesses.com has been developed. It shows how users can view norms, request norms that they need to settle issues, and rate norms according to their quality. Professionals, or other citizens that have knowledge about the going rates of justice have the possibility to upload norms, to answer requests for norms. Third parties can sponsor norms for issues that are not yet covered by norms of sufficient quality.

July 2008

• Duarte Silveira reports on his thesis regarding information flow in a team setting up a Base of the Pyramid project. Bottom-line: feeling personally secure and safe is a very important condition for an open flow of information. Conditions in the phase of setting up a project may involve a lot of uncertainty, though.
• Tisco presents a report to the Dutch Assistant Minister of Justice relating to the Dutch Access to Justice situation, formed through an interactive process with 120 stakeholders. The report stresses the importance of many elements that are also central to the Microjustice approach (transparency of going rates of justice, support with know how and structures for negotiation, the option of an early intervention by a court), see the wiki of this project. The Ministry of Justice has unofficially announced that it will continue developing policies in this direction
• Microjusticia Bolivia introduces an improved website. It now has four service points, in La Paz (FIE and Corte Departamental Electoral de La Paz), El Alto, and Achacachi. The website contains self help information for issues regarding Civil Documentation (birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, and identity documents).

June 2008

• Under the title 'Innovatieve Rechtsstaat' (Innovation related to the Rule of Law) a cooperation-agreement is enacted between the Hague Institute for the Internationalization of the Law, the Centre for International Legal Cooperation, the Academie voor Wetgeving, and the Microjustice Initiative. Aim is to set up an infrastructure to facilitate processes for developing innovative services and products that support the rule of law. In the wider The Hague area, a cluster of organizations and businesses exists that develop innovative legal procedures, support courts, facilitate ADR programs, find new legislation methods, develop evaluation methodologies, interactive web-based legal aid interfaces, and other innovations. This cluster, however, can still profit from innovation know how, and research and development methodologies that are used in business and market organizations. A program has been submitted to the City of The Hague and to the Ministry of Economic Affairs to this end.

• On June 3, the UN Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto, published its report Making the Law Work for Everyone. It calls for enhancing bottom up approaches to the rule of law, and contains a wealth of information about the state of the art regarding access to justice. Maurits Barendrecht contributed texts to the report, and co-edited the Working Group report on Access to Justice.

• Mirjam Vossen and Michel Knapen (of the organization FAQ Congressen) set off to Blantyre, Malawi. They will conduct a needs and capabilities assessment in order to explore the possibilities for Microjustice solutions. Further, they will make a SWOT analysis to find out the feasibility of a Microjustice Program in Malawi.

May 2008

• Microjustice Initiative enacted as a Foundation (stichting). The board is formed by Toon Bullens (chair), Maurits Barendrecht (secretary), Freek Kauffmann (IT), and Frederik Schutte (legal, finance).

April 2008

• MicrojusticeNormsandProcesses.com was kicked off as a project in April. Goal of this project is to define the specifications of the web interface and to build a prototype (clickable demo).
• The first master student from Tilburg University, Duarte Silveira, arrived in Bolivia in april for conducting his master thesis research on sharing information in cross functional teams at the base of the pyramid.
• A paper, Microjustice 2: Understanding the market for justice, was presented at the Rule of Law Network meeting of Hiil, and at the Amsterdam Centre for Law and Economics.
• The Stichting Dijkverzwaring granted funds for developing the Microjustice Initiative Network Organization and transforming ILA's cross-border activities in Serbia into a sustainable Microjustice process.

March 2008

• The Eureko Achmea Fund granted funds for developing Microjustice Products, the Handbook for setting up a local Microjustice organization, defining specifications and building a prototype of MicrojusticeNormsandProcesses.com, and developing a network organization.

February 2008

• Cooperation with Base of the Pyramid Lab Tilburg university established.
• Maurits Barendrecht , Peter Kamminga and Jin Ho Verdonschot publish Priorities for the Justice System: Responding to the Most Urgent Legal Problems of Individuals. This paper shows the issues and relationships on which access to justice efforts and dispute systems can focus.

January 2008

• This wiki started operating. See Microjustice.org for news and events from before this period.