Programmes ::: Project

OUR PROJECTS

AJ's projects aim to enhance integrity and independence in the judicial system, attack unethical judicial behaviour and corruption, strengthen judicial safeguards of human rights, and defend human rights. The following projects are currently being implemented:

1. Monitoring Judicial ethics and independence through:
Publication of The Justice Observatory Journal

Through this journal Access to Justice publishes monitored and investigated cases of unethical conduct within the Nigerian judiciary. The Journal follows or tracks “ethics currents” within the justice system, picks up signals and traces of delinquent judicial conduct, investigates and analyzes them, and produces reports on them. By doing this, AJ attacks corruption, exposes those who abuse judicial office by engaging in it, define areas where extant rules, safeguards, policies or arrangements are weak or vulnerable and require improvements, and provides some form of deterrence against future delinquency.

Mission Statement of the Journal

View Published Editions of the Journal

2. Avancing Human Rights Jurisprudence through:
Publication of Cases on Human Rights (CHR)

The publication of this yearly casebook aims to enhance legal expertise and understanding of human rights and the special use of requirements of its defence in Nigeria, and expand horizons of legal scholarship and skill in the safeguarding of human rights through the shared use of comparative resources. Access Volume 1, 2, 3, 2005, 2006 of Cases on Human Rights

3. Confronting Impunity in Extrajudicial Executions by Using Coroners to find Paths to Justice.

THE CORONERS PROJECT (Summary)
In 2001, Access to Justice published a two-year report documenting extra judicial killings by police and vigilante groups in Nigeria. The report identified a thriving culture of impunity, and the clear absence of accountability as key responsible factors for the high incidence of extra judicial killings, and recommended among others, the resuscitation of coroners inquest mechanisms, as a way to strengthen accountability safeguards, and reduce impunity. The Coroners project is conceived after this purpose and aims to revive and revitalize the use of dormant State coroners procedures in Nigeria through programmes that clarify its purposes, popularizes its use within States in Nigeria, and mobilize political support for its implementation.

View Newsletter of the Project ( The Coroner's Place )

About The Coroners Place
The Coroners Place builds and promotes public awareness of coroners' laws and procedures and advocates the revitalization of coroner procedures as a way of discerning the truth about deaths brought about in “suspect” circumstances. By inquiring into the circumstances in which people in detention (or in other interactive situations with law enforcement agencies) die, and identifying those responsible for their deaths, Coroners promote accountability and confront impunity and violence in the delivery of policing services. The publication further summarises reports of extensive field studies on the use of coroner courts by States in Nigeria, and looks at coroner programmes across some parts of the world.

View Newsletter - The Coroners Place (TCP) Vols 1 & 2

4. THE TORTURE PROJECT:

Objective: Strengthening Judicial Safeguards Against Torture

Summary
Torture has remained widely practiced in Nigeria in spite of weighty constitutional provisions against the use of inhuman and degrading treatment in obtaining prosecutorial evidence by crime investigators. Although the democratic constitutions of Nigeria (1963, 1979 and 1999) represent some of the finest codifications of human rights provisions among the constitutional systems of the world, they have not, of themselves, achieved the desired protection for the criminal defendant significantly on account of poor judicial recognition of and inadequate sensitization to the pervasive use of torture in interrogatiON. The project aims to heighten judicial oversight over the process of criminal investigation and defend the dignity of the human person through the stages of the criminal process.

VIEW REPORT - BREAKING POINT (BP)