OGP Coalition on Justice

Over the past few years, justice and promoting transparent, accessible and inclusive justice systems has become an increased focus in the open government community. With this in mind, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) created the OGP Coalition on Justice, a group of OGP members, civil society organizations, and other national and international partners advancing a people-centered approach to justice through their OGP action plans.

All OGP members currently co-creating or implementing justice commitments will be invited to join coalition meetings.

As of May 2021, OGP national members co-creating or implementing justice commitments include:

Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Panama, Peru, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, United Kingdom, Uruguay

As of May 2021, OGP Local members co-creating or implementing justice commitments include:

Austin, United States; Jalisco, Mexico

OGP members or other organizations that do not meet the criteria above can join meetings of the Coalition as observers. To indicate interest in joining a Coalition meeting as an observer, please complete the information in this form. 

The inaugural meeting of the Coalition was held in October 2020. The meeting brought together 120 participants from a diverse set of OGP members and partners to share and learn about the ways the OGP community advances justice through action plans. In facilitating the exchange of commitment examples and good practices between OGP members, the meeting was a fitting follow-up to the high-level event that launched the 2020 Global Week for Justice, where ministers from over 20 countries committed to intensifying efforts to understand, solve, and prevent people’s justice problems.

In the run up to the inaugural meeting, the growing coalition of justice ministers and partners in OGP has met at key OGP and partner events, such as at a high-level roundtable at the OGP Summit in Ottawa. 

The Coalition’s members work together on a number of strategies to advance justice through OGP such as:

• Promoting learning and exchange on policies and actions that improve access to justice, create open justice institutions, and ensure justice processes effectively open government. 
• Promoting new technologies, transparency, citizen participation and increased access to information and data to advance legal empowerment and access to justice.
• Increasing the number of justice-related commitments in OGP action plans that take a people-centered approach to improve access to justice, create open justice institutions, and/or ensure justice processes effectively open government.
• Growing the evidence-base by fostering research and data collection, including proper evaluation and monitoring, of justice-related commitments and activity and developing shared approaches to measuring results and impact.
• Leveraging the Joint Declaration on Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and OGP’s peer-to-peer network of governments and civil society organizations to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 16 and, in particular, the promise of justice for all by 2030.

If you would like to request support from the OGP Support Unit and the OGP Coalition on Justice for justice-related activities in your OGP action plan, please provide more information about the nature of your request here.

Developed jointly by the Open Government Partnership and the Department of Justice Canada, the Terms of Reference serves as the guiding principles of the Coalition.