Empowering Syrians with transformative solutions

In 2020, HiiL ran two justice innovation labs (JILs) within the Syria Justice Innovation Process (SJIP) project, on ‘reducing violence against women’ (VAW),  and on ‘safe access to personal documents’ (PD). Three sessions were planned per lab. However, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, only one of three planned sessions was held physically before SJIP was forced to transition into an online modality for the two remaining sessions. 

The justice innovation labs brought together teams of diverse Syrian stakeholders, comprising different sectors and areas of expertise. The groups were also balanced and reflective of Syria’s diversity in terms of age, gender, geography, and background. The participating group of stakeholders investigated the justice problems being tackled in the lab, sought out the root causes and leverage points, and devised prototype solutions. Starting with the discovery phase, they dived deep into the justice problems from a user-centric perspective. After identifying the pain points and main opportunity areas, they moved into the ideation phase where they designed innovative, user-friendly and sustainable solutions. Of the solutions designed by the stakeholders, four solutions were selected and prototyped after which feedback was given to refine each idea according to learnings from the testing phase.