The Nordic Africa Institute

PROJECT

Gender, Poverty and Access to Justice

Started • 01 January 2018
Ended • 01 September 2020

The 'right to access justice' is transversal and dependent on other rights – especially socio-economic rights. Furthering our understanding of the intersection between poverty, empowerment and justice, highlights the need for greater integration of justice policies, into broader pro-poor programming for the very poorest and marginalised External link, opens in new window..

The ongoing project adopts varying approaches to identify gendered vulnerability, empowerment and poverty – analysing the impact at the household and aggregate economy level. Following on from a series of prior works considering the economic growth: “Gender and Growth in Sub Saharan Africa External link, opens in new window.” and time poverty impact External link, opens in new window., most recently we consider policy implementation issues within SSA: “Gender, Poverty and Access to Justice: Policy Implementation in Sub Saharan Africa External link, opens in new window.

While most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa provide that everyone has the right to access justice, in practice women and girls are often denied for a number of reasons, including, both procedural, as well as substantive grounds. The focus of gendered consequences and experiences of the right to access justice in the region is a focus of a forthcoming international conference “Engendering Access to Justice for Development”.