IBJ’s Biennial Report 2017-2018
“On a recent trip to Sri Lanka, I met family members whose loved ones had been arrested and not seen in months. Something struck me as I was in the midst of witnessing their tragedy. Despite the very real possibility that they might never see their loved ones again – and their horror of imagining them being tortured while in arbitrary detention – the mothers, fathers, wives, and sisters I met all showed an incredible inner strength. I was astounded. I couldn’t stop myself from asking out loud, “How do you keep on going?” One mother signaled to the room we were sitting in, surrounded by committed lawyers and human rights defenders, and replied, “I can because of this community. It supports me. It gives me hope.’ Later that year in Sri Lanka, we were able to open a program. It gave me great joy, as did the start of two other new Country Programs in Syria and Myanmar. Our new Country Programs have already provided concrete results by directly reducing the risk of torture and protecting the due process rights of tens of thousands of individuals.
As IBJ enters its third decade of pioneering access to justice, we have seen unprecedented developments that reflect the strength of our teams and defenders around the world. Step by step, we see signs of change, from the thousands of arbitrarily detained prisoners that have been released to the system and policy changes that have occurred, including Memorandums of Understandings signed with justice sector authorities, which symbolize the collective effort to uphold rule of law.
Through IBJ, lawyers and justice sector stakeholders bring light into the darkest corners of prisons by providing the protection of access to justice and bringing wholeness to broken justice systems. Since its founding in 2000, IBJ has moved the needle of international human rights by making access to justice a global priority, as evidenced in 2015 by the promulgation of SDG 16. With this worldwide spotlight on the work we do, we are once again poised to move the needle even further – from responsive action to proactive prevention, from defender manuals to enforced criminal law procedures, from memorandums of understanding to technology platforms connecting our partners worldwide. Every day, our lawyers courageously enter police stations and court rooms with the prophetic imagination to create a new future. Through their individual and collective efforts, we are all succeeding.
When considering IBJ’s challenges and achievements in 2017 and 2018, we are especially proud of the growing success of our work. We have now impacted over 30 million people through legal representation, rights awareness campaigns, roundtables, training workshops, and our JusticeMakers program. We have worked to strengthen every aspect of complex justice system infrastructures to ensure systematic respect for due process rights. In Burundi we trained newly qualified Judicial Police Officers on effectively upholding due process rights and in Cambodia we strengthened our partnerships, renewing our Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Justice and the national Bar Association. In Syria our work has moved forward despite the difficult current landscape. We have developed modules there that are now formally part of the Aleppo Bar Association’s mandatory legal training.
Innovation, science, and technology now provide a critical focus for IBJ as it continues to drive transformative change to reach our collective goal of realizing UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. We embrace the power of technology to ensure early access to justice for all and we have envisioned a technological solution by creating the JusticeHub, a digital home and platform that systematically activates the power of the networks we have built. After a two-year development and trial period, the JusticeHub will provide a global justice solution exchange and will enable access to justice, rule of law development, information gathering, training, and support. It will help us move toward a new age of implementation and further our mission to protect due process rights and end the use of torture as an investigative tool.
As the mother in Sri Lanka said, it is because of our community that we have the strength to continue. You are an important part of our global community: we could not do any of this without your support.
On behalf of all of us, thank you.”
Warmest regards,
Karen I. Tse
CEO and Founder