Sites for sore eyes

A jumping off point to access the wealth of Internet resources on justice issues is the World Bank’s Legal and Judicial Reform Practice Group at www.worldbank.org/ljr. Here, and at the Knowledge Center for Legal Institutions of the Market Economy www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/legal, are reports on legal and judicial reform projects, an extensive bibliography, and information on access to justice, with an emphasis on judicial reform and civil justice.

The Asian Development Bank has a more explicit emphasis on access to justice and empowerment, including a summary volume on the Bank’s experience of legal empowerment www.adb.org/Documents/Others/Law_ADB/lpr_2001_Part_one.pdf

A growing range of posted documents are available www.developmentgateway.org/node/130655/.

The World Justice Information Network www.wjin.net/wp/main.aspx disseminates knowledge about justice and the rule of law for criminal justice professionals.

USAID’s Office of Democracy and Governance www.usaid.gov/democracy has guidelines on promoting judicial independence and impartiality www.dec.org/pdf_docs/PNACM007.pdf The UNDP Programme on Governance in the Arab Region www.undp-pogar.org offers papers on legal and judicial reform in the Arab world.

The Ford Foundation’s Global Law Programs Learning Initiative www.fordfound.org/publications/recent_articles/glpli.cfm reports on the experience of 40 years of support to grantees working to improve access to justice. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Democracy’s Rule of Law Project www.ceip.org/files/projects/drl/drl_home.ASP has some analyses of judicial reform processes. The American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative www.abanet.org/ceeli/home.html and the Open Society’s Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute www.osi.hu/colpi/indexie.html both support justice initiatives in former communist states.

Pioneering user surveys of the police and courts can be found at CIET www.ciet.org and a similar survey of users of the Indonesian justice system can be found at the Asia Foundation www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/IndoLaw.pdf.

The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library www.umn.edu/humanrts and Canada’s Human Rights Internet www.hri.ca/welcome.cfm have searchable databases of treaties, reports and human rights organisations.

Tim Morris
Queen Elizabeth House
University of Oxford
21 St Giles
Oxford OX1 3LA
UK

T +44 (0)1865 273600

F +44 (0)1865 273607

tim.morris@qeh.ox.ac.uk

With special thanks to

Nicola Pratt
Governance Resource Centre
International Development Department
University of Birmingham
Birmingham B15 2TT
UK

T +44 (0)121 414 3911

n.pratt@bham.ac.uk

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