Protection Risk: Impediments and/or Restrictions to Access to Legal Identity, Remedies and Justice

This protection risk includes all measures, acts and practice that prevents people from accessing documentation, remedies and justice with consequent harm at individual, household and community levels.  Denial of access to legal identity refers to all situations preventing a person to possess legal identity or any other fundamental documentation to be recognized as a person before the law. Denial of access to remedies includes all impediments to obtain effective procedural and substantive remedies following legal claims. Procedural remedies include regulations, laws, processes, and entitlements. Substantive remedies include effective remedies at the conclusion of the processes – such as restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, or others. Denial to access to justice relates to the impediments to access to judicial mechanisms, processes, and remedies, ranging from access to statutory courts or commissions to traditional mechanisms such as customary or faith-based dispute resolution bodies. States have the duty to respect, protect and fulfil a population’s rights to access to legal identity and civil documents, remedies and justice, but non-State actors have responsibilities according to different national and international frameworks.