Justice is the infrastructure the world keeps forgetting

The world cannot build prosperous economies, peaceful societies or resilient democracies while neglecting its people’s everyday justice needs.

This post by Jude Udo Ilo is part of Global Voices’ November 2026 Spotlight series, “Justice as infrastructure.” In this Spotlight, Global Voices is partnering with The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) to highlight the ways justice functions as critical infrastructure for any society. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Imagine visiting a hospital with a serious illness, only to discover that every patient receives the same medication, regardless of their symptoms. We would rightly call this a failure of healthcare. Yet this is remarkably close to how justice is delivered in much of the world.

We have built justice systems around institutions rather than people, procedures rather than problems, and legal traditions rather than lived realities. We measure progress by the number of courts constructed, judges appointed and laws enacted, while paying insufficient attention to whether ordinary people can actually resolve the disputes disrupting their lives.

This institutional obsession reflects a deeper failure in how we understand development. Justice is not simply a legal service or a moral aspiration. It is essential for economic and social infrastructure. Our collective failure to treat it as such is undermining development, deepening inequality and threatening global stability. With the level of discontent across the world, distrust in institutions, poverty and inequality, and growing footprints of violent conflict, we need to refocus on what is necessary to heal our bleeding world.

The missing infrastructure of development

When governments and international financial institutions discuss infrastructure, the conversation invariably turns to roads, bridges, electricity and digital connectivity. These investments matter. But what happens when a highway project becomes trapped in unresolved land disputes; when a small business cannot recover payments from a supplier? When a woman cannot claim her inheritance, or communities cannot secure remedies for environmental destruction?

Physical infrastructure cannot deliver its promised benefits when the institutions and mechanisms for resolving grievances are inaccessible, ineffective or distrusted. Justice is the soft infrastructure that allows economies and societies to function.

For businesses, it provides the certainty necessary for investment, contract enforcement and growth. For individuals, it protects rights, livelihoods and opportunities. For communities, it creates peaceful pathways for addressing grievances before they escalate into confrontation.

Without functioning justice systems, economic development becomes fragile and social stability increasingly precarious. The World Justice Project estimates that the economic costs of legal problems, including lost income, health impacts and expenses of seeking resolution, average 1.7 percent of GDP across the countries studied.

The scale of the problem is staggering. The Justice for All report estimates that 5.2 billion people lack meaningful access to justice. HiiL's research demonstrates that everyday legal problems are widespread, while effective, satisfactory resolutions remain elusive. This is a crisis of development.

When injustice becomes insecurity

Across the world, unresolved grievances are quietly eroding the foundations of social cohesion.

In parts of Africa, disputes over land ownership, natural resources and community rights have contributed to recurring tensions. In fragile and conflict-affected societies, the absence of credible mechanisms for resolving grievances can deepen mistrust and reinforce cycles of violence.

But justice failures are hardly confined to developing countries. From housing disputes and discriminatory employment practices to unequal access to legal representation, even wealthy democracies struggle to ensure that justice works for everyone.

The consequences extend beyond those directly affected. When people repeatedly encounter institutions that cannot protect their rights or resolve their problems, confidence in public authority deteriorates. When people encounter injustice, they can easily become the enemy of the state. And where legitimate institutions fail, alternative systems of enforcement emerge. Sometimes these are constructive community mechanisms. At other times, they involve coercion, exploitation or violence. We cannot sustainably address insecurity while ignoring the injustices that help fuel it.

This should fundamentally change how governments approach peacebuilding and security. Military and policing investments may respond to immediate threats, but accessible justice can help address grievances before they become security crises.

Justice should therefore be understood as preventive infrastructure, not merely a mechanism for responding to wrongdoing after it occurs.

What the evidence tells us

Fortunately, evidence from across HiiL’s global operations demonstrates how people-centred approaches are transforming the design and delivery of justice services. Rather than relying solely on formal courtrooms or conventional approaches to conflict resolution, community-led initiatives and alternative justice pathways are meeting people where their disputes actually occur.

In Kenya, research informed the Judiciary’s Social Transformation through Access to Justice (STAJ) Blueprint. The Alternative Justice Systems (AJS) centres in Kenya are resolving family, land and other disputes locally, thereby preserving community cohesion. In Ethiopia, government-led community justice centers bridge formal laws and customary traditions to deliver rapid, reconciliation-focused resolution. In Nigeria, pilot community justice centers and domestic violence one-stop shops in Imo and Ogun States provide scalable, data-driven dispute resolution. In Tunisia, digital platforms co-developed for employment disputes directly connect workers, employers, and inspectors to resolve conflicts before they escalate.

Instead of assuming what institutions need, the question is: What justice problems do people actually experience, and what would help resolve them fairly?

Through Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) surveys, we gather data on everyday legal experiences rather than institutional outputs. The data consistently reveal a significant disconnect between supply and demand. In Tunisia, we found that nearly one in three adults experiences a legal problem annually, yet only a fraction reach formal courts. Similarly, research in Nigeria highlights widespread justice needs alongside heavy reliance on community and informal mechanisms. These insights expose the core limitation of traditional justice reform: expanding court capacity alone cannot solve the problem. People facing family, land, employment, or commercial disputes rarely seek lengthy litigation. They need solutions that are fair, accessible, affordable, and timely.

Similar approaches are yielding results. In Bangladesh, a government-led initiative  has strengthened village courts, enabling rural communities to resolve minor disputes locally, more quickly and affordably. These courts resolved over 82 percent of reported cases in an average of 25 days, at an average cost of just USD 2.70 to users. In Canada, the Indigenous Justice Program supports community-based initiatives that involve Indigenous communities in designing and delivering culturally appropriate justice services, reflecting their needs and traditions. In Colombia, Houses of Justice bring together formal and informal justice services, providing communities with access to legal information, mediation and dispute resolution through integrated service centres. These examples illustrate how justice services can be brought closer to people and organised around different pathways to better respond to their needs.

This does not make courts obsolete; rather, it underscores that formal courts are only one component of a healthy justice ecosystem. To truly serve society, functional justice infrastructure must integrate formal institutions with trusted community mechanisms, mediation, legal support, and innovative services.

From justice reform to justice investment

If justice is infrastructure, we must fundamentally rethink how we finance, govern and deliver it.

First, governments must stop treating justice as the Ministry of Justice's exclusive responsibility. Economic planners, finance ministries, development institutions, businesses and peacebuilding organisations all have a stake in effective dispute resolution.

Second, justice investments must be guided by evidence about people's needs and outcomes. HiiL's Delivering Justice, Rigorously framework emphasises data, evidence-based practices, scalable services, enabling environments, and accountability.

Third, we must move beyond endless small-scale pilots towards financing solutions that demonstrate results and can reach entire populations. The Justice Financing Framework developed  under the Justice Action Coalition offers important proposals for making people-centred justice services financially sustainable.

Finally, justice must become integral to development financing. International financial institutions and development partners should recognize that investments in agriculture, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, gender equality and peacebuilding depend partly on people’s ability to resolve disputes fairly and the credibility of the entire justice system. This is not an argument for diverting resources from development priorities. It is an argument for making those investments more effective and sustainable.

The foundation we cannot afford to ignore

The world faces intersecting crises of inequality, economic uncertainty, democratic distrust and violent conflict. Governments are searching for ways to build more resilient societies, yet one of the most important foundations of resilience remains chronically neglected.

Justice cannot continue to be treated as an institutional afterthought.

A society is not resilient simply because it has strong borders, modern highways or growing financial markets. It is resilient when people trust that grievances can be addressed fairly, rights can be protected, and conflicts can be resolved without violence.

The question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in people-centred justice. It is whether we can afford the economic, social and political consequences of failing to do so. This spotlight provides the argument for the justice case, evidence of what is working and a roadmap of what we must do to make justice work for our societies.

Udo Jude Ilo is the CEO of the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law. Written by Guest Contributor