People around the world experience countless injustices. From unpaid salaries to losing a home to illegal detention. When facing troubles, where does one go to seek justice? Especially if courts are far away, legal advice is expensive and delays are painful? More than five billion people, around two-thirds of the world’s population, lack meaningful access to formal justice systems.

At the same time governments and institutions are under growing pressure, with more demands and fewer resources. Justice systems are no exception. Despite playing a vital role in keeping societies fair and stable, they receive just 1.4 percent of global development assistance. But what if we could make justice work better, faster and fairer by doing things differently? Good practices are already there. UNDP’s Justice Futures CoLab and Accelerator Labs are helping surface and scale them. We piloted peer learning to enhance justice services on the ground. 

Innovation in action

Rethinking how people experience justice is at the heart of innovation. Low-cost, people-centred initiatives are already reshaping justice services, with UNDP playing a leading role in co-developing and scaling these solutions in close partnership with national institutions and communities.

In Ecuador, families affected by femicide worked with the Accelerator Lab to develop 'Flowers in the Air', a storytelling map that geolocates the stories of women who were killed. These powerful narratives are now used to train judges and prosecutors, helping shift attitudes about gender-based violence. So far, over 450 judicial officials have been trained, and the model is expanding nationwide through a new online platform.

In Eswatini, long transfer times between prisons and courts have contributed to growing pre-trial detention delays. Transporting detainees for brief weekly remand appearances was resource-intensive and costly. The Accelerator Lab and governance team worked with the judiciary to design a remote remand hearing system that connects police stations, the High Court, correctional centres, and magistrate courts via secure video link. This reduced the need to transport detainees, cut costs and improved court efficiency. Crucially, the team collaborated closely with the Office of the Chief Justice to ensure the digitalized procedures fit existing legal processes. It now covers all four High Courts and is being adapted for bail and plea hearings.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, poor record-keeping and long delays were common. An in-house justice reform programme, supported by the Accelerator Lab, developed a suite of open-source tools for prison management, case tracking, criminal record issuance and staff deployment. These three tools are now live in three provinces, where clerks report search times dropping from days to minutes. Justice authorities have asked the team to prepare a scale-up plan, and it is now seeking funding to expand the approach further.