The development of this concept paper/article has been informed by a facebook posting on the meaning of access to justice in the Ethiopian context. In commenting on that post, I have mentioned the various meanings that can be attributed to ‘access to justice’. Here is what I meant. Access to justice could be understood in various ways among which the three major conceptions are: as a right recognized under the international human rights framework, as an approach to public sector institutional reform, and a comprehensive rights-based development framework.
2 Access to Justice as a Right
Access to justice and fair trial are rights recognized under the major international and regional human rights instruments including: the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). The core instruments on the issue, the UDHR and the ICCPR, state that everyone is equal before the law and has the right to effective remedy against violations of fundamental rights. Thus, access to justice is a fundamental right that generally guarantees every person access to an independent and impartial process and the opportunity to receive a fair and just trial when that individual’s liberty or property is at stake. However, access to justice does not always involve judicial recourse but the availability of accessible, affordable, timely and effective means of redress or remedies.
3 Access to Justice Approach
The ‘access-to-justice approach’ has brought important implications on the conceptual understanding of access to justice. The approach has a broader scope covering “the full panoply of institutions and devices, personnel and procedures, used to process, and even prevent, disputes in modern societies” rather than the focus on access to legal institutions and their services. In the access to justice approach, access to legal services has become part of wider strategies aimed at legal and institutional reform, and achieving equal and equally effective access to law.