equal access to justice for women and men

States have obligations under international law to ensure access to justice. Women’s access to justice is a legal and constitutional framework that guarantees women’s rights, but without education, awareness of rights and decision-making power, women are often unable to claim their rights, obtain legal aid or go to court.

In a procedural sense, access to justice means providing those seeking to secure their vested rights with the following: appropriate and understandable information about the scope of these rights and how to access them; a readily accessible infrastructure − in both the formal and practical sense − for acquiring this information and then acting upon it; the quality of the functioning of this infrastructure in practice; and the confidence in the utility and integrity of the infrastructure. To avoid secondary victimisation and stigmatisation of women during legal proceedings, a gender-sensitive approach is required.

A substantive aspect of justice focuses on ensuring that legal and judicial outcomes are themselves ‘just and equitable’.