Our Work - Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development

The GFLJD Working Groups are the engine of the Forum’s collaborative work. They translate shared priorities into action by co-generating legal knowledge, tools, and reform strategies. Working Groups are designed to be flexible and partner-led, allowing members to shape agendas, define deliverables, and adapt to emerging issues. Each group operates with autonomy while remaining aligned with the GFLJD's broader strategic vision and governance structure.

A key strength of the Working Groups is their capacity for cross-pollination of ideas across the Forum’s partners. Members from academia, the judiciary, development agencies, civil society, and the private sector collaborate across institutional lines, enabling theory to inform practice and practice to refine theory. This multidisciplinary, cross-regional engagement ensures that outputs are not only innovative, but also grounded, inclusive, and scalable.

GFLJD Working Groups

Water Law. Focuses on strengthening legal frameworks for the sustainable management and governance of water resources, addressing cross-border, environmental, and climate-related challenges. Lead: Christina Leb
Environmental Justice. Aims to integrate principles of environmental justice into legal systems and development policy, ensuring that marginalized communities have access to legal remedies and protections in environmental matters. Lead: Remi Moncel
Domestic Resource Mobilization. Works on improving legal tools and strategies for more efficient, equitable tax systems and fiscal governance, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Lead: Nneoma Nwogu, Nightingale Rukuba-Ngaiza (co-lead)
Access to Law and Justice. Promotes inclusive legal empowerment by developing tools and approaches to improve access to law, legal information, and justice services for underserved populations. Lead: Christian Brugerolle
Human Rights and Sustainable Development. Explores the legal, policy, and operational links between human rights and sustainable development, focusing on the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG16. Lead: Duygu Çiçek
Gender Justice and Empowerment. Advances gender justice through legal empowerment, policy reform, and access to rights, as well as addresses harmful practices, including Female Genital Mutilation, while promoting broader legal tools to protect and uplift women and girls across diverse cultural and legal contexts. Lead: Isabella Micali Drossos.

GFLJD Publications

Reports

Integrating Human Rights into Development: Law, Policy and Practice (2024, English). This report brings together the key political and policy developments of recent years with a discussion of the approaches and experiences of bilateral and multilateral agencies engaged in integrating human rights in their development cooperation activities in a variety of ways.
Community Mediation for Local, Familial, and Low Economic Disputes: A Review of Existing Approaches (2023, English). This project offers best practices on community mediation using examples from three countries: The Afghanistan Spinsary Group, The Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo Land Dispute, and The Bangladesh Madaripur Mediation. It also proffers suggestions on how community mediation model can be more inclusive and sustainable.
STILL Progress: Reviewing the Implementation of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Francophone Africa (2022, English). Water and sanitation are necessary for survival. Making these rights visible and meaningful in domestic law is the first step to realizing access to water and sanitation. This report identifies whether the rights to water and sanitation have been recognized expressly in the domestic law of francophone African countries.
The Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development Review of Legal Experiences and Global Practices Relating to COVID-19 (2021, English). This Review aims to provide a holistic and non-exhaustive overview on the various laws and policies that have been implemented by states, international organizations, the private sector and civil society organizations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Impact of Orders from Inter-American Court of Human Rights—Juveniles Deprived of Liberty in Brazil (2018, English). This article aims to show how the provisional measures ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights positively impacted Brazilian public policies related to juveniles deprived of their liberty.
Instrument of the European Law Institute—Rescue of Business in Insolvency Law (2017, English). ELI Business Rescue Report contains 115 recommendations on a wide variety of themes affected by the rescue of financially distressed businesses: the legal rules for professions and courts, contract law, treatment and ranking of creditors’ claims, labor law, laws relating to transaction avoidance and corporate law, all focused on business rescue.
Afghanistan’s Forced Displacement—Legal & Policy Framework Assessment (2017, English). This Assessment is conducted as part of a larger platform established in 2016 through a joint World Bank and UNHCR initiative to support Afghanistan’s forcibly displaced population.
Patentability, Global Development and Ethical Considerations of Bioprinting (2017, English). This article seeks to inform the potential of bioprinting (3D printing of human organs), the legal aspects of the technology, its patentability, regulation, and ethical considerations. Although these patents are presumed valid, the validity of some of these might be litigated in due course, as the technology advances and the market expands.
Cross Analysis on Compensatory Measures in International Public Procurements Contracts (2016, English). There are more than 100 countries in the world today which are practicing a form of offset together with their government procurement without any common regulation. The purpose of this Community of Practice conducted by ECCO is to propose a draft to UNCITRAL to regulate this dimension of public trade.
Compendium of International, Regional and National Legal Instruments on Forced Displacement (2016, English). This Compendium provides an accessible reference for research on international, regional and national law relating to forced displacement. It is organized to present information about a significant number of international, regional and national legal instruments that affect the forcibly displaced persons.
African Regional Communities and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities (2016, English). The African Task Force on the Prevention of Mass Atrocities (ATF) was an 18-month initiative of the Budapest Centre for Mass Atrocity Prevention. This final report reflects the outcome of desk research and interviews conducted by the members of the ATF, as well as the result of five subsequent workshops and bilateral interviews organized with the senior management of the relevant organizations in Africa.
Strengthening the Legal Environment for the Elimination of Falsified and Substandard Medicines: Uganda Report (2016, English). Falsified and substandard medicines (FS) are a known public health problem. The initiative is designed to provide the pilot country, Uganda, with guidance on steps it can take to address the problem of FS medicines within its borders and with its neighbors.
Increasing the Effectiveness of International Environmental Law—Duties of States, Rights of Individuals (2015, English). This report contains 21 proposals for enhancing environmental justice in the 21st century. It is the result of discussions among the Environment Committee of the Club des Juristes. The report was produced to contemplate the international environmental law of tomorrow.
Protecting Children from Cybercrime in Latin America (2015, English). This Regional Study is focused on the prevention and combat of violence against children through the Internet in Latin American countries in order to illuminate problems shared by the different countries, identify the gaps in legislation, and highlight good practices in the prevention and protection of minor victims of online sexual exploitation.
Drivers of Corruption—A Brief Review (2015, English). This report concludes that it is possible to develop efficient policy mechanisms and control the problem—if the international community understands the consequences of corruption and is equipped with insights about the sources of context-specific values achievable through corruption, the individual propensity to grab, and the moral environment.
Protecting Children from Cybercrime, Legislative Responses in Asia (2015, English). This study enhances the protection of children by supporting legislative responses to deal with ICT-facilitated child abuse and exploitation in 17 targeted Asian countries. It provides an analysis of domestic law in alignment with relevant international instruments; examples of good legal practices for child online protection at a national level; and national legal frameworks to deal with issues of online child abuse and exploitation.
OECD Foreign Bribery Report: An Analysis of the Crime of Bribery of Foreign Public Officials (2014, English). OECD Foreign Bribery Report allows readers to better understand the “who, what, where, why, and how” of foreign bribery. This report measures and describes transnational corruption with reference to actual cases, rather than with statistics derived from econometrics, perception surveys or unsubstantiated allegations.
Women are Smart, Motivated, and Hard-Working: How to Convert Their Energy into Sustainable Income (2014, English). An article explores how Intellectual Property Rights (“IPRs”) can help lift disenfranchised women from oppressive and repressive circumstances. By stimulating new income generation and creating educational opportunities in rural areas, IPRs have the potential to make a tangible difference for women.
Warning Signs of Corruption and Fraud: A Bidding Process (2014, Portuguese). A document focuses on corruption that may occur in funded projects of government or international organizations.
Desk Review of the Legal and Regulatory Framework of EAC Countries and Compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2012, English). An overview of the legal and regulatory framework of East African Community countries in the area of education for persons with disabilities and analyzes compliance with the obligations pertaining to education in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Training Manuals

Legal Training Manual for Professionals on the Law against FGM in Nigeria (2022, English). This legal training manual is a comprehensive material developed to train professionals on the Law against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Nigeria. This legal training manual aims to provide a complete and up-to-date knowledge of the legal framework surrounding FGM in Nigeria in order to improve law enforcement and help professionals to best exercise their work and protect citizens from this crime.
Legal Training Manual for Professionals on the Law against FGM in Senegal (2022, French). This legal training manual is a comprehensive material developed to train professionals on the Law against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Senegal. This legal training manual aims to provide a complete and up-to-date knowledge of the legal framework surrounding FGM/C in Senegal in order to improve law enforcement and help professionals to best exercise their work and protect citizens from this crime.
Legal Literacy Community Training Manual on the Law against FGM in Guinea (2022, French). This legal literacy community training manual is an illustrated description of the national legal framework on FGM/C and of a selection of existing case law in Guinea in order to improve legal literacy within communities speaking different languages and/or for illiterate members.
Legal Training Manual for Professionals on the Law against FGM in Guinea (2022, French). This legal training manual is a comprehensive material developed to train professionals on the Law against Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in Guinea. This legal training manual aims to provide a complete and up-to-date knowledge of the legal framework surrounding FGM/C in Guinea in order to improve law enforcement and help professionals to best exercise their work and protect citizens from this crime.
Legal Literacy Community Training Manual on the Law against FGM in Guinea Bissau (2022, Portuguese). This legal community training manual is an illustrated description of the anti-Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) Law and existing case law in Guinea-Bissau. The illustrations describe each article of the anti-FGM/C law in order to improve legal literacy in respect to FGM/C within communities speaking different languages and/or for illiterate members.
Legal Training Manual for Professionals on the Law against FGM in Guinea Bissau (2022, English). This legal training manual is a comprehensive material developed to train professionals on the Law against Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in Guinea Bissau. This legal training manual aims to provide a complete and up-to-date knowledge of the legal framework surrounding FGM/C in Guinea Bissau in order to improve law enforcement and help professionals to best exercise their work and protect citizens from this crime.

Policy Papers

Regulating AI and Big Data Deployment in Healthcare: Proposing Robust and Sustainable Solutions for Developing Countries’ Governments (2021, English). This paper is intended to identify both barriers to AI deployment at scale in developing countries and the types of regulatory and public policy actions that can best accelerate the appropriate use of AI to improve healthcare in developing countries’ contexts.
Exploring Legal, Ethical and Policy Implications of Artificial Intelligence (2017, English). This white paper attempts to lay out central concepts related to AI and complementary technologies, their rapid progress, and discuss the attendant salient legal, ethical, innovation and development policy issues. The paper aims at providing a broad overview of key issues thus stimulating World Bank Group wide discussion on the topic.

Journal Articles

General Theory of Law and Development (2018, English). Although scholarship in law and development that explores the relationship between law and social and economic progress has evolved over the last four decades, this area of inquiry remains unfamiliar to many legal scholars, lawyers, and policy makers. Scholars have not yet been able to develop a theory that systematically explains the interrelationship between law and development, which would establish law and development as a robust and coherent academic field. This Article attempts to fill this gap by presenting a general theory that defines the disciplinary parameters of law and development, and explains the mechanisms by which law impacts development.
The Principles of the Most-Followed Religions in the World versus a Human-Centered Business Model (2016, English). Seventy-five percent of the share of the global population follows one of the world’s major faiths. The moral and ethical principles that these religions preach seem very close to the secular common principles adopted by the international community over the last hundred years in the framework of international institutions through their legal instruments like treaties, agreements, resolutions and declarations. This report exams this overlap.

Digital Reference Library

Online Briefs

Compendium of International and National Legal Frameworks on Child Marriage (2022, English). The Compendium of International and National Legal Framework on Child Marriage provides a survey of the key international, regional and national legal instruments as they relate to the right to marry with the full and free consent of the intending spouses and to the obligation for government to take legislative measures to abolish child marriage.
Compendium of International and National Legal Frameworks on Female Genital Mutilation (2022, English). Researcher have shown that FGM/C deprives women of sexual satisfaction, sexual health and psychophysical wellbeing. The Compendium was prepared to contribute to this urgent and important development debate with the understanding that the knowledge of the law is an important empowerment tool to end FGM.

Media & Voices

Blogs

Innovative finance – How securitization tools can mobilize private capital for climate finance by Shirmila Ramasamy (Feb 3, 2025). "Building the legal and financial architecture necessary for a new, innovative financing mechanism dedicated to climate finance."
An evolving role for law and lawyers in development by Christopher Stevens (Nov 6, 2023). "Laws and their implementation are the essential link between policies aimed at reaching the goals of the sustainable development agenda and the actual realization of that agenda."

Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development

GFLJD Working Groups

Water Law

Environmental Justice

Domestic Resource Mobilization

Access to Law and Justice

Human Rights and Sustainable Development

Gender Justice and Empowerment

GFLJD Publications

Digital Reference Library

Media & Voices