...deliver timely, dynamic content to our friends and supporters about the progress, innovation, inspiration, and imagination being generated through our work and collaboration with partners worldwide.

Founded in 2007, the World Justice Project is now entering a new stage of development and growth. Organizationally, we have obtained an independent 501(c)(3) status and expect to complete the transition to an entity outside the American Bar Association on March 31, 2010. Our governing and advisory structures will be under transformation to better reflect our international and multidisciplinary mission and founding premises. Programmatically, we are streamlining and branding future activities and programs to build on our successes, as well as lessons-learned, in the past two years. These were two extremely productive years: the convening of two large-scale action-oriented World Justice Forums and several regional forums; the launch of the ground-breaking Rule of Law Index and the release of initial findings for the first round of 35 countries; the publication of two volumes of scholarly, multidisciplinary writings on the Rule of Law; and the establishment of an Opportunity Fund to provide seed grants for the concrete implementation of action plans incubated at the World Justice Forums.

I am proud to note that the compact staff at the World Justice Project cannot be more diverse and international. We come from countries in all five regions of the world and speak all six United Nations official languages and more. Together, we aim to deliver this newsletter to you on a regular basis and hope you will let us know what content will be most meaningful to you as a member of the World Justice Project network, a colleague from one of our co-sponsoring organizations, or one of our treasured donors.

You can help guide the future of this newsletter by sending your comments and ideas to WJP. We especially welcome your stories about how the work of the World Justice Project has impacted your life, your community, and your profession.

Thank you for supporting the World Justice Project and helping us to strengthen the Rule of Law worldwide for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.

With warm greetings for the holidays.

Sincerely,

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...– including architecture, the arts, business, education, environment, government, faith, human rights, international development, labor, media, military, public health, public safety, science. These thought leaders explored WJP’s Rule of Law Index data and findings from testing in 35 countries and provided feedback which will strengthen further the development of the Index as it expands to 70 countries in 2010. The Forum also afforded space for reporting and discussion on the first round of our Opportunity Fund seed grant program.

The overall purpose of the Forum was to incubate informed and practical action-oriented Rule of Law programs designed and executed by multi-disciplinary groups in their respective communities. Informed by keynote speeches, Index results, and other presentations, participants met in disciplinary and regional breakout sessions to develop such programs. In the upcoming months, the innovative ideas that began in November at the Forum will take form and be implemented in countries around the world. Following the Forum’s pledge, the WJP will launch the second round of the Opportunity Fund to support programs sparked as a result of the Forum breakout sessions and thoughtful discussions. The Forum continued the WJP’s progress in stimulating multidisciplinary collaborations to strengthen the Rule of Law, building new partnerships, and identifying best practices for dissemination and replication.

World Justice Forum in Numbers

Participants: 312

Countries: 82

Regional:

• Africa: 12.4%
• Asia: 12.8%
• Europe: 15.0%
• Latin America: 12.8%
• MENA: 21.2%
• North America: 25.8%

Disciplines: 16

Male/Female Ratio: 61/39

Breakout Sessions: 30

Action Plans Developed: 87

...The World Justice Project was founded by William H. Neukom, a former ABA President. Its new Board of Directors consists of William C. Hubbard, Columbia, S.C.; James R. Silkenat, New York; and Neukom. Over the next few months the board will be expanded to include geographically and professionally diverse world leaders.

Officers of the WJP include Roderick B. Mathews, Richmond, Va., Treasurer; Laurence B. Bailey, Seattle, Secretary; and Deborah Enix-Ross, New York, Vice President. Honorary co-chairs of the WJP include Emil Constantinescu of Romania; Hilario G. Davide Jr. of the Philippines; Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan; Sandra Day O’Connor of the United States; and Mary Robinson of Ireland.

Launched in 2007 as a special initiative of the American Bar Association (ABA), the World Justice Project is grateful for support from the members and leaders of the ABA and we look forward to collaborating with the ABA as one of our co-sponsoring organizations.

The transition outside the ABA is scheduled to be completed by March 31, 2010.

The Rule of Law Index is a new quantitative assessment tool designed by the World Justice Project to measure the extent to which countries around the world adhere to the Rule of Law. The Index provides detailed information regarding a variety of dimensions of the Rule of Law, which enables policymakers and other users to assess a nation’s adherence to the Rule of Law in practice, identify a nation’s strengths and weaknesses in comparison to similarly situated countries, and track changes over time. To date, 41,000 citizens and over 700 experts have contributed their knowledge to the Index.

The World Justice Forum II in Vienna included the public launch of the new Rule of Law Index, containing data gathered from an initial round of 35 countries across the globe. By bringing together a large, international assembly of distinguished leaders from a multitude of disciplines, the Forum provided the ideal platform for the Index’s presentation. Index data and findings were explored with enormous interest and lively engagement of Forum participants. The Index has also recently received attention in a USAID program brief on corruption in the judiciary and its launch was covered in press from Bulgaria to Jordan to South Africa.

The preliminary Rule of Law Index Report 2009 is now available for download. Building on the valuable engagement of the Forum participants, the final Rule of Law Index Report 2009 will be released by the end of the first quarter of 2010. It is anticipated that the Index will attain a global reach of 100 countries by 2011.

For more information on the Rule of Law Index and its methodology, please visit the Rule of Law page. collapse.

Established to provide seed funding for programs conceived by multidisciplinary coalitions formed at the first World Justice Forum in 2008, the Opportunity Fund currently supports 36 programs spanning all the world's continents. Opportunity Fund programs are working on a wide variety of Rule of Law initiatives, ranging from capacity building to legal services for the poor in India, to legal aid training for women in Lebanon, to developing a model for delivering justice services in China. The Fund encourages program ownership by local partners, innovative and multidisciplinary methods for implementation, engagement with the informal justice sector, and measurable impact with long-term sustainability.

With the launch of the interim Opportunity Fund Report, the World Justice Project identified initial lessons learned for the first round of the Opportunity Fund. These include: multidisciplinary collaboration enhances the impact and sustainability of Rule of Law programs; program solutions are most workable when they are designed and implemented by local stakeholders; and most successful programs were those intended to bridge the gap between the laws on the books and the implementation and enforcement of the same laws. Particularly successful programs include:

• Growing Up with the Rule of Law (Argentina);
• Making Environmental Justice a Reality for Pollution Victims in China;
• Engineers & Anti-Corruption in Tunisia;
• The Public Health Foundation of India;
• Women’s Access to Health-Related Information in Lebanon;

Following the Forum’s pledge, the WJP announced the launch of the second round of the Opportunity Fund. This new round will support programs sparked as a result of the Forum breakout sessions and thoughtful discussions and continue WJP’s progress in stimulating multidisciplinary collaborations to strengthen the Rule of Law, build new partnerships, and identify best practices for dissemination and replication. The WJP particularly looks forward to supporting programs targeting areas for improvement and reform that have been identified by the Rule of Law Index as well as those that address urgent Rule of Law needs. For more information on the Opportunity Fund, please visit the Opportunity Fund page. collapse.