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Justice in Tunisia

Test for the purposes of a Presentation

0 %

Experienced
legal problems

0 %

Took action to resolve their problem

0 %

Completely or partially resolved their problem

Number of people interviewed in Tunisia

The Justice Gap in Tunisia is considerable. Forty percent of the Tunisians have to deal with one or more legal problems every four years. This amounts to around 1.17 million legal problems every year. Most likely this is a conservative estimate of the existing needs for justice.

Such a gap calls for radical transformation in the delivery of justice. We call such transformation – People Centered Justice.

How people experience justice in Tunisia

Have you encountered one or more legal problems?

A legal problem is a problem that takes place in daily life – a dispute, disagreement or grievance for which there is a resolution in the (formal or informal) law. It does not matter if the individual sees it as legal or whether she took action to resolve it.

The chart shows how many adults in Tunisia encountered one or more legal problems in the last 4 years.

The demand for justice in Tunisia?

Ethiopia is home to at least 117 million people. The country is the second most populous country in Africa, after Nigeria. Ethiopia has one of the fastest growing economies in East Africa. Around 57% of the total population is aged 15 or above. Ethiopia has one of the largest populations of refugees and asylum seekers in the world. UNHCR estimates that as of 2022 the country is hosting 840 000 persons of concern.

What the study shows is that every 4 years 22 Million people need to deal with legal problems. Some of them encounter multiple issues. On an annual basis this amounts to 7.41 million people who need protection from the law to resolve a legal problem. This is 2.5 times more than the reported malaria cases.

A gap this big means that from every 100 000 people there are 13 000 individuals who must cope with one or more legal problems.

Most frequent legal problems in the daily life of the Tunisian people

Land is the biggest cause of justice needs in Ethiopia. Of all people who had to deal with a legal problem, 38% have to deal with a land dispute. 26% encountered crime and 15% experienced a family problem. To put this into context we extrapolate these proportions to the general population. This means that we take the findings from the randomly selected sample and project them into the general population. Every year in Ethiopia there are:

Title

Land disputes, crimes, disputes between neighbours, family disputes, domestic violence and money-related problems are the most commonly encountered categories. Different people from different groups, however, encounter different types of justice needs. Women for instance have to deal with more problems around family and domestic violence. Crime is the top category for young Ethiopians. In the cities, there are more problems around money, employment and housing than in rural areas.

Do legal problems reach resolutions in Tunisia?

The sheer number of legal problems tells us about the size of the demand but is not enough to establish the justice gap. There might be many or few legal problems in society. The metric that really matters is whether these problems are converted into fair resolutions that help people to continue with their lives.

In Ethiopia, every year 282K problems are partially resolved. 2.3M are in a process of resolution and 1.9 are not resolved at all!

Given the size of the gap, it is clear that the usual approaches (such as training judges, building new court rooms or improving legislation) are not going to work. A People-centered justice transformation is needed!

Which paths to justice people in Tunisia use?

A lot of justice in Ethiopia takes place at community level. Read our report on Community justice in Ethiopia.

This distribution tells us about the market for justice. Where to people “vote with their feet”? The market size also tells us where justice can be improved. Clearly, a lot of justice takes place at community level of Ethiopia. Great processes at that level could be a “game changer”. Imagine if an accessible procedure helps to resolve in more fair manner the numerous problems with land that people encounter? Immediately hundreds of thousands, even millions of people will benefit from better justice.

The market for justice

The burden of justice

Which problems should be addressed first? The justice gap is enormous and policy makers and service providers must focus the limited resource where impact is most needed. We developed a simple mechanism to rank the burden of the legal problems. To calculate the burden we combine the impact and the prevalence (frequency) of the problems. The combination shows which problems are serious and frequent at the same time. Impact and prevalence vary across key socio-demographic variables. Therefore in the chart below we let the users play make their own selections to see what are the most burdensome problems for specific groups.

Justice Dashboard

Justice Dashboard

Justice in Tunisia

How people experience justice in Tunisia

Have you encountered one or more legal problems?

The demand for justice in Tunisia?

Most frequent legal problems in the daily life of the Tunisian people

Title

Do legal problems reach resolutions in Tunisia?

Which paths to justice people in Tunisia use?

The market for justice

The burden of justice

Justice Dashboard

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