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Background of the project
In times of crisis, access to justice by affected populations – whether to informal or formal justice systems – is often deprioritized. Access to justice is frequently considered a development issue or a very sensitive type of programming. During crisis, particularly those characterized with rights violations, there are often perceptions by humanitarian actors that the existing systems may not be of interest or even harmful to victims of violence, and can reinforce discrimination, inequality and practices of violence.[1] And yet still, even in these situations, women, girls, boys, men, person with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ continue to seek justice through these structures which in some instances can lead to more harm. Because humanitarian actors are either unwilling or lacking capacity and understanding on how to navigate the justice mechanisms, humanitarian action tends to exclude access to justice or include it in a very limited way at the onset of a crisis and in humanitarian response plans.
The IRC has launched a new two-year initiative entitled, ‘Strengthening capacity to deliver access to justice programmes for crisis affected populations’ funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) – from April 2023 – March 2025. This project aims to strengthen capacity to deliver A2J programming in crisis. The project will support analysis of formal and informal A2J systems with linkages to operational action in prevention and response to protection risks in crisis contexts. This initiative will deliver improved protection to crisis affected people through strengthening legal protection programming and ensuring that tools are available for A2J programming in humanitarian responses that are grounded in high quality needs analysis.

The project will take the global conceptual framework of A2J programming and develop operational crisis response A2J tools reinforcing community driven approaches for A2J programming. The project aims to achieve two major results:
Result 1: Strengthened capacity to understand justice systems in times of crises.
• Deliverable: Access to Justice Toolkit that enables in-depth analysis of justice systems.
Result 2: Adapted paralegal approach to humanitarian crises.
• Deliverable: Community Empowerment Paralegal Toolkit and Training Manual