“JUPITER” assessments being conducted by the World Bank promise to shed light on the transparency of national judicial systems in several African nations.
So far only one such assessment has been conducted, in Liberia, which was quite critical, but a handful of others are underway.
Transparency is one of five “sub-pillars” analyzed through a methodology that includes 103 questions. The assessments are intended to evaluate the effectiveness of a country’s judiciary in three areas: access to justice, efficiency, and quality. JUPITER is the acronym for Justice Pillars Towards Evidence-Based Reforms.
A JUPITER assessment for South Sudan is completed but not yet released. Assessments in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are underway. And “Lesotho is under discussion,” according to a Bank spokesperson.
A similar-sounding review in Zambia on access to justice, although not part of the JUPITER program, is being shared confidentially with officials in Zambia, but will be made public, the Bank official said.
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Report on Liberia Critical
The 2023 report on Liberia identified serious transparency issues in the “formal” justice system, and the low esteem in which it is held. The “customary system” involving traditional chiefs and elders is “an integral part of the justice system, by law and in practice, and the preferred way to solve disputes for most of the population.”
The formal justice system “is perceived to be inaccessible and unfair, significantly more so than the customary system, according to the Bank’s assessment and the courts “are inefficient and characterized by long resolution times and high costs.”
“Providing free access to regularly updated legal information can level the playing field by increasing people’s awareness of their rights and how to exercise them before the courts,” according to a Jan. 16, 2024, blog post by Bank officials.
The report documents many transparency problems.
“The absence of a comprehensive collection of updated laws and the lack of transparency in judicial proceedings is a challenge in Liberia,” summarizes the report. It says, “Currently, no centralized, official, or comprehensive and searchable website of laws and regulations exist in Liberia.”
Amplifying on the problem, the report identifies multiple consequences:
The lack of effective, comprehensive, and timely public access to laws, regulations, and court decisions has impact that extends beyond the right to access information as these documents constitute the foundation for the integrity, transparency, and accountability of the justice system. Without it, justice becomes fundamentally unavailable and inaccessible for citizens. The lack of effective access to legal information can affect critical aspects of the justice system, such as the overall quality of the laws, as officials are unable to harmonize new laws with existing ones before their implementation. Similarly, it prevents stakeholders from identifying regulatory gaps, loopholes, and deficiencies in the legal system, which can enable corrupt behavior by allowing individuals to exploit these gaps and inconsistencies. In other words, difficulties in accessing legal information significantly perpetuate the invisibility of corruption and hinder the judiciary’s accountability. The lack of transparency also impacts the efficiency of judges and clerks, who take longer to find basic and necessary information.
2022 Report on Zambia Still Nonpublic
The Zambia “Judicial Sector Public Expenditure and Institutional Review” was concluded in June 2022. It focused on “the demand-side aspects of Access to Justice in a rural Zambian setting” and also “evaluated the current state of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms in the country,” according to the 2024 Annual Report of the Bank’s Governance and Institutions Umbrella Program.
Elaborating, the annual report states:
Employing a people-centered approach, the assessment aimed to address three main lines of inquiry: understanding the justice-seeking experiences of citizens for a nuanced view of their behavior in pursuing justice; mapping the landscape of access to justice through ADR, including the infrastructure and interventions in Kawambwa, a rural area; and identifying actionable short- to medium-term solutions to enhance access to justice.
However, two and one half year after its completion, the results have not been made public. Rather, according to the annual report, “A draft consolidated report has been prepared and discussed in a validation workshop with the Ministry of Justice, which will use the report’s findings to inform a new Government Strategy Paper.”
