Apply for the HiiL​ Innovating Justice Challenge 2020

Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is calling for applications for the 2020 Innovating Justice Challenge.

Is your organisation developing sustainable, scalable solutions to pressing justice needs? Are you creating access to justice, reducing inequality and unfairness? Then you should apply for the HiiL Innovating Justice Challenge.

We are looking for promising innovations that are already showing measurable impact, have the potential to become financially sustainable, and have the plans and ambition to scale across different markets. These enterprises are led by a strong team with experienced and inspiring founders.

This year, as a result of Covid-19 and its impact across sectors, it has become even more important to identify and support those startups and organisations that are reducing inequality and modernising access to justice. We want to help them to reach more people, more quickly.

"From what we've seen over the years, justice innovations come from all sectors of society as they underpin the Sustainable Development Goals intending to reduce all forms of inequality", Odunoluwa Longe, HiiL's Justice Accelerator Head for West Africa, said.

"Some innovation reduce the cost of legal services, some reduce financial inequalities, some reduce disputes by visualizing legal information and contracts and others are designed to support informal mechanisms of conflict resolution in communities".

Longe is also a justice innovator. She co-founded DIYlaw, a past Innovating Justice Challenge winner.

At the 2019 Innovating Justice Challenge, Nigerian startup Bankly and Ghanian startup Appruve came first and second, respectively.

Applications for the challenge is open from June 10 till August​ 5, 2020. Apply here.

The Innovating Justice Challenge scouts and selects the most promising justice innovations for the Justice Accelerator programme.

The Justice Accelerator offers a four-month programme that provides €10,000 non-equity, non-debt funding, business development support (which includes training, coaching and mentorship), access to a global network, international exposure, and connections for further investment opportunities for startups.

HiiL's Justice Accelerator is the only accelerator in the world that focuses on preventing and resolving justice problems. We look for startups that can grow and scale to impact thousands and potentially millions of people.

HiiL has supported more than 110 ​justice innovations worldwide since 2011. Some of those innovation have impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and scaling to a regional level with the potential to become global players.

Examples of startups that we have supported in West Africa in the past include:

• a mobile app operated by agents to help people without smartphones and internet save without falling victim to fraud;
• a bot-powered mobile app that provides answers to legal questions for SMEs in Francophone West Africa;
• a website that helps prevent digital fraud through identity verification and protection and intrapreneurs within a state ministry of justice that are using community-focused ADR to bring peace to conflict-ridden communities.

Interested entrepreneurs should apply now.