Founding Chief Executive Officer, HiiL. Our mission is that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing justice problems. HiiL has developed an approach that uses big data, innovation, and entrepreneurship to increase access to justice to do this.We call it Justice Innovation. First, we collect robust and actionable data about people’s experiences with justice with our Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) tool and other sources. We make the data public through
workshops and an interactive Justice Dashboard that is available through a web platform and an
app. The Justice Dashboard can also incorporate data from other sources than ours. We build coalitions for change based on the data about the most pressing justice needs. These
coalitions take ownership, prioritize, and develop innovation plans that include a detailed review in of
a justice need, terms of reference for improvement, and user-centred designs for resolution processes. We can then develop ‘treatment guidelines’: best practices combined with evidence about what works, providing a more standardized, higher quality way of ‘treating’ a particular justice problem. In parallel, we work with the private sector to empower justice entrepreneurship in developing new solutions. We select entrepreneurs from all sectors - civil society, government, the judiciary, business, law firms, and international organisations to kickstart new justice innovations that address the most pressing justice problems. The HiiL Justice Accelerator supports them in an incubation programme that lasts a year and that provides seed money, training, business development services, access to an international mentor network, and connections to investment. The right leadership is critical. HiiL helped set up the Justice Leadership Group: 10 internationally
renowned justice leaders from all over the world. With their immense experience and stature they
help us build coalitions around most pressing justice problems and develop the new kind of
leadership that is connected with the methods we use: a leadership that puts the users of the justice
systems at its heart and that drives, bridges, and innovates towards constant improvement. We
have conducted JNS surveys in over 20 countries (a little over 700.000 voices) - most recently in Yemen, Mali, Indonesia, The Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Uganda, and Tunisia. Surveys are now under way in Kenya, Lebanon, Bangladesh and Jordan. Rwanda and Nigeria are in preparation. Since 2012, by supporting 40 of the world’s best justice entrepreneurs, the HiiL Justice Accelerator has provided access to justice for 1.4 million people. We have set up local Innovating Justice Hubs in Nairobi, Lagos, Kiev and The Hague to support our community. Hubs in Kampala, Johannesburg, Accra and Tunis are being set up. In 2016, we supported promising justice entrepreneurs with more than €200.000 in seed money. For the 2017 Justice Innovation Challenge we received an unprecedented 600 applications from all over the word. Recent succesful justice innovations we helped set up and which now have offices in The Hague include
the Wildlife Justice Commission and Justice42. Our current long-term partners include the Dutch
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the World Bank, UNDP, the City of The Hague, the Ford Foundation, and the Ministry of Justice of the United Arab Emirates.