Benefits for people
The approach improves people’s access to justice and security and strengthens their ability to exercise rights, resolve problems and live in dignity. In particular, the approach:
- Expands access for marginalized and underserved groups by addressing barriers such as cost, distance, language, discrimination and legal exclusion.
- Empowers individuals and communities to understand and claim their rights and participate in shaping justice and security solutions.
- Helps people resolve disputes early, avoiding crises such as homelessness or family breakdown.
- Improves well-being and mental health by reducing the stress of unresolved problems and helping people feel safer, more secure and protected under the law.
- Strengthens protection from violence, exclusion and discrimination, including gender-based violence and rights violations affecting children, minorities and displaced people.
- Builds trust in institutions by making services more responsive, inclusive and accountable to people’s needs and rights.
- Supports early and peaceful resolution of disputes through accessible mechanisms (e.g., paralegals, mediation, village courts) that safeguard rights and prevent escalation.
- Enhances social cohesion and economic participation by resolving justice problems that limit mobility, livelihoods and local development.
- Increases access to services through improved civil documentation or legal identity (e.g., birth registration), enabling people to access healthcare, education and social protection.
Benefits for governments
The approach helps governments strengthen legitimacy, improve service delivery and build resilience. In particular, the approach:
- Improves the functioning and fairness of justice and security systems by aligning services, policies and outcomes with people’s needs, rights and experiences
- Restores trust and legitimacy by demonstrating responsiveness to public needs and delivering fair, accessible and quality justice and security services.
- Improves service delivery and policy design through evidence-based analysis grounded in people’s rights, needs and experiences, enabling better prioritization and resource allocation.
- Reduces the economic and social costs of unresolved justice and security problems, including loss of productivity, public health burdens and community tensions.
- Increases efficiency in justice processes by addressing factors that drive case backlogs, prison overcrowding and over-reliance on lengthy formal proceedings.
- Builds resilient, adaptive institutions by grounding services in people’s needs, strengthening inclusive decision-making and using continuous learning to maintain fair, legitimate and accountable services during crises.
- Advances national development goals, including social protection, gender equality and inclusive governance, by ensuring justice and security are integral to broader development.
- Strengthens compliance with international frameworks, including Agenda 2030 and SDG 16, human rights treaties and peacebuilding commitments, and improves coordination with development and humanitarian actors.
- Enables data-driven decision-making through participatory monitoring, local feedback loops and real-time learning that enhance accountability and adaptive governance.
Benefits for international partners
For international partners, the approach supports risk reduction, effective aid delivery and alignment with global strategies. In particular, the approach:
- Reduces risks to investment and development gains by addressing root causes of instability such as injustice, exclusion, impunity and unresolved grievances.
- Supports resilient, investment-ready societies by strengthening accountable governance and public trust in institutions.
- Aligns with global donor strategies (e.g., EU Global Gateway, Team Europe, Compact with Africa) that balance economic goals with governance, rights and inclusion.
- Delivers value for money through scalable, cost-effective models (e.g., legal empowerment, community mediation, paralegal services) that sustain results locally.
- Strengthens prevention and system resilience, reducing future humanitarian and security spending by resolving disputes (e.g., over land, natural resources or family disputes) before they escalate, which helps maintain social cohesion and mitigate conflict risks.
- Improves aid effectiveness and accountability through strong local engagement, transparency and results tracking that enable better targeting, monitoring and evaluation.
Benefits for UNDP
The approach strengthens UNDP’s ability to deliver on its mandate while enhancing its strategic positioning and programme quality. In particular, the approach:
- Reinforces UNDP’s mandate to promote human development, dignity, rights, inclusion and agency in justice and security work.
- Enhances programmatic impact and sustainability by embedding justice and security into development pathways that address both root causes and immediate needs.
- Increases UNDP’s relevance and influence with governments and development partners through a proven, locally anchored approach that responds to complex challenges and supports long-term transformation.
- Improves strategic coherence across peace, development and humanitarian efforts by integrating justice and security into systems change.
- Strengthens UNDP’s role as a convener between State and civil society actors, especially in politically sensitive contexts where trust-building is essential.
- Promotes adaptive, integrated programming by grounding decisions in people’s priorities and experience, generating data that captures diverse needs, and using these insights to design rights-based, context-specific solutions that draw on UNDP’s comparative advantage across sectors.
- Supports learning and innovation by grounding interventions in local realities, using evidence to refine strategies, and scaling what works in diverse contexts.
- Aligns with global agendas—including the Agenda 2030, the United Nation’s Our Common Agenda, the Secretary-General’s Call to Action for Human Rights, and the New Vision for Rule of Law—that prioritize justice, inclusion and accountable institutions.