OpenTrial (www.opentrial.org) works to substantially reduce the scope for harassment, corruption, violence and political influence in legal systems and legal processes, particularly in developing countries; and in doing so give individuals, families, communities and entire societies, access to justice.
Ours is a bottom-up approach aimed at enhancing rights awareness and legal system transparency and accountability to the 'end users', i.e. society. We harness modern technology to do this by complementing conventional means of communicating and conventional media. We focus on: (i) Information provision, ease of comprehension (in local languages, legalese minimised), facilities to report rights violations, and data collection/analysis to identify flaws and tackle them with focus; (ii) Databases, smartphone apps, social media, websites, etc.that will complement posters, leaflets, press articles, focus-group discussions, radio/t.v. programmes, music and culturally appropriate media. (iii) Ensuring a concerted and collaborative effort to achieve enduring and maximum impact. We encourage the local legal fraternity (including judges, police and prosecutors), government and local NGOs, to coordinate a concerted effort aided by international players.
We welcome contact via our OpenTrial website or this forum from those wishing to participate.