October 20, 2021
By: Hafsatu Z Bangura
The World Justice Project Rule of Law 2021 index has rated the judiciary of Sierra Leone high ahead of thirty one countries in the world during their global assessment amidst the Covid-19 outbreak.
The World Justice Project; Rule of Law Index 2021 was launched on Thursday 14th October 2021 in Washington DC, United states of America and relies on more than 138,000household surveys and 42,00 legal practitioner and expert surveys to measure how the Rule of Law is experienced and perceived worldwide.
In a year dominated by the global covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 Rule of Law index, ranked Sierra Leone 108 (Global ranking)with 0.44 overall score ahead of Cameroon, Turkey, Bolivia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Liberia, and Guinea amongst host of other countries in the world in terms of rankings and progress on the Rule of Law.
Sierra Leone was evaluated based on the Universal Principles of the Rule of Law including Accountability, Just Law, Open Government and Accessible and Impartial Justice.
“We have built an accountable and more transparent judiciary with daily updates on all our activities including Court proceedings and delivery of judgments”, said Hon. Chief Justice, His Lordship Justice Desmond Babatunde Edwards, adding that, this could be one of the key reasons why we were evaluated in 2020 for the first time with impressive gains ahead of many countries.
He further stated that the index looked at the clarity of Laws, accessible, fair and expedited justice system and we are moving in this direction with the deployment of Resident Magistrates in all districts and the deployment of Resident High Court Judges in places where they weren’t sitting Judges, all of these development are unprecedented he concluded.
The World Justice Project; Rule of Law Index 2021 states that the Rule of Law has deteriorated with 84.7% of the world’s population (6.5 billion people) live in a country where Rule of Law is weakening with greatest decline in timeliness of Justice and Absence of Discrimination especially during this Covid-19 pandemic, the declines were widespread and seen in all corners of the world.
The World Justice Project is an independent, multidisciplinary organization working to create knowledge, build awareness, and stimulate action to advance the Rule of Law by looking at policy outcomes, such as whether people have access to courts or whether crime is effectively controlled.