Justice Systems, Reform, and Human Rights

Access to justice has gained notoriety in recent decades across Latin America. Different countries in the region have proposed judicial reforms with the aim of expanding access to justice, especially for the economically vulnerable population. Despite some differences observed in the reforms proposed in different countries due to the need to adapt to different national contexts, they all start from the same model and aim to bring the common citizen closer to legal institutions, responding to a unique political and social movement for access to justice that would aim to make the Latin American justice system more democratic, effective and transforming new social realities, such as special courts, Public Defenders, Itinerant Justice. This session aims to investigate possibilities of access to justice and promotion of human rights in Latin America, through initiatives that have a theoretical basis structured in the field of an epistemology of the South, which analyzes the relevance of the cultural context and power relations. in the production and reproduction of knowledge and the disruption of colonial practices. In this session, we propose to present and discuss the foundations of these judicial reforms in Latin America, focusing especially on new institutional projects to promote justice and citizenship in the countries of the region.