Opening Remarks by the Director-General, Ms. Jan Beagle
Warsaw, 27 June 2025
Good morning everyone,
Dear Revai,
Distinguished colleagues and friends.
It is a pleasure to welcome all of you, including everyone following online, to the first-ever Global Convening on Strengthening Customary and Informal Pathways to People-Centred Justice.
And, of course, first of all, a big thank you to Minister Bodnar, Mr. Michałowski and our hosts here in Poland for their warm hospitality, but also their inspirational example.
We were very happy yesterday to adopt the Warsaw Principles for the Rule of Law which will guide us going forward.
Today’s event is co-sponsored by the 23 organizations associated with the Working Group on Customary and Informal Justice and SDG 16+.
They are listed on the screen behind me. Thanks to them for all their work, including the representatives from my own organization IDLO, for all their work on the subject and for organizing this meeting.
Let us start with a very simple truth: for the vast majority of people around the world, justice doesn’t happen in a courtroom.
Customary and informal justice systems - or "CIJ" for short - are how most disputes globally are resolved.
These systems are incredibly diverse, including family mediators, traditional courts, paralegals, faith-based approaches, and Indigenous justice systems.
For many, they are the only option.
Women and girls are often the most reliant, although in many cases they struggle to realize their rights in the face of discriminatory social norms and exclusion.
But, despite all of this, CIJ systems are frequently left out of the conversation on how to make justice more accessible, inclusive, and effective.
Over the past four decades, IDLO has been working to better understand, and constructively engage with, these pathways for justice.
Since 2020, it has been our privilege to coordinate the Working Group on Customary and Informal Justice
This group brings together a wide range of voices - UN organizations, civil society groups, grassroots leaders, women’s rights advocates, academics, and research institutions.
Together, we’ve built momentum around a common goal: engaging with CIJ systems in ways that respect rights, empower people, and make justice real in their daily lives.
Our report, "Diverse Pathways to People-Centred Justice", captures that shared vision.
If you haven’t had a chance to read it, I really encourage you to take a look - it sets out not just why CIJ systems matter, but how we can work with them in practice.
At IDLO, we are applying these lessons on the ground in more than a dozen countries and the results have been quite remarkable.
In Somalia, for instance, we partnered with UNDP to set up Alternative Dispute Resolution Centres that use customary law - guided by traditional Elders - but also bring human rights principles and Somali legal standards.
In 2023, these Centres handled over 7,000 cases and received thousands more inquiries via their hotlines.
Early on, we noticed that while most of the disputes that were brought to these Centres related to land or family matters, very few women were actually approaching the Centres.
It became clear that the lack of women adjudicators was a key barrier.
In response, we moved quickly to increase the number of women in client-facing positions, including 22% of the adjudicators.
Last year, over 50% of those visiting the Centres were women.
By helping to resolve cases in a timely and cost-effective way, the Centres reduce the burden on justice institutions, strengthen respect for the rights of women and other marginalized groups, and prevent extremist actors from filling the justice vacuum.
In Rwanda, where floods, droughts and landslides are frequent, and can spur conflicts over the use and ownership of increasingly precious arable land and natural resources, we worked with the National Land Authority to strengthen engagement with state-mandated community mediators, called Abunzi.
Our support familiarized Abunzi with Rwanda’s national legal framework on land, and helped build practical skills in mediating and adjudicating disputes fairly, including those involving women farmers and landowners.
Over the past year, Abunzi helped to resolve over ten thousand community land disputes.
These are just two examples of what’s possible when we invest in justice systems that people actually use.
It’s not expensive, it’s practical, and it builds trust from the ground up.
So today is about moving this conversation forward together.
We’ll be hearing from inspiring speakers - policy leaders, grassroots organizers, and justice innovators - about how to make sure that formal and informal justice systems work hand in hand, with shared standards and mutual respect.
We will also be launching a global campaign, and a call to action, led by the Working Group, to push for stronger policies and smarter investments in CIJ systems.
It is fitting that we are having this conversation at the World Justice Forum.
This Working Group was established following an expert group meeting at the 2019 Forum.
My thanks once again to Alejandro and the World Justice Project team for bringing us together as a community at this critical time.
We are excited to keep working with all of you - to bridge justice gaps, to bring justice closer to people’s lives, and to make sure that no one is left behind.