By Ross Maclaren and Lorenzo Wakefield

Numbers tell a story — a difficult one.

According to the groundbreaking Justice for All report published in 2019, more than 5.1 billion people around the world lack meaningful access to justice. That’s two-thirds of the world’s population, and all indications are that the number has increased since then.

The Mott Foundation has supported grassroots justice work for over 30 years — granting over $50 million to increase access to justice around the world. This work will continue to be a priority for us.

Going back to the 1980s, Mott funded community advice offices in South Africa to support people arrested because of activism against the apartheid government. Today, we’re supporting the expansion of people-centered justice in South Africa, Ukraine, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. From that work, we’ve learned how life changing it can be for people to have access to effective remedies for their legal problems.

However, local justice services are sorely underfunded worldwide. That was the key finding of a survey by the Grassroots Justice Network in 2018. The evidence prompted Mott to help kick start the Legal Empowerment Fund — a joint initiative of donors and grassroots justice practitioners to resource community justice groups around the world.

Mott worked hand-in-hand with the Hewlett Foundation to develop the initiative, along with partners at Open Society Foundations, Namati, the International Development Research Centre, ODI (previously called Overseas Development Institute), and Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies at New York University.

We all wanted to support communities in ways that formal legal structures cannot. The secret sauce was not to rely on the rigid, formal legal systems of lawyers and judges, but on empowering community members to know the law, use the law and shape the law to protect themselves and advance their interests.

With this intent, the Legal Empowerment Fund was launched in 2021. LEF is hosted by the Fund for Global Human Rights, which administers grantmaking and oversees the day-to-day activities of the program. LEF got off the ground with a $10 million commitment from Mott, $5 million from Hewlett and $5 million from Namati.

We knew the initiative had the potential to make a huge difference on issues related to social, economic and environmental justice. And we wanted to inspire other funders to come to the table to join us in supporting access to justice for all.

Our initial goal was to raise $100 million for the fund. We thought this figure was both ambitious and sufficient, but we were wrong. In just the first round of open applications, LEF received grant requests worth $247 million from eligible organizations — more than twice what was expected — showing the need is much higher than we anticipated.

And LEF is already making a difference.

Beyond numbers, people tell even more of the story. They are the why and how behind LEF.

Mariana Gil Bartomeu is the director of the Office for the Defense of Children’s Rights in Mexico City. Her organization was awarded an LEF grant in the second round in 2023. Her work typifies what it means to know, use and shape the law.

Mexico ranks among the highest in the world for cases of child sexual abuse, child pornography, sex tourism and human trafficking. On a recent visit by Mott to Mariana’s office, we learned how she worked with 17 young children, ages three to five, who were victims of sexual violence at their school. They were just preschoolers.

Mariana’s grassroots justice organization managed to get the courts to record the children’s testimonies before the trial began, instead of having to wait years before the case was brought to trial and details were forgotten by the young children. This “anticipated testimony” previously had not been widely used in Mexico’s courts. The case set a precedent, and the practice has now been adopted in other parts of Mexico, showing how the work of a small nonprofit can have far-reaching effects throughout a country — and in the everyday lives of people.

In many ways, this case exemplifies a driving principle behind LEF: The status quo is defined by powerful in-groups, whom the law protects but does not bind, and powerless out-groups, whom the law binds but does not protect.

LEF aids grassroots justice defenders, like Mariana, who are focused on ensuring access to justice for marginalized and vulnerable communities. That is, on ensuring that the law not only binds these communities but protects them, too.

In four years since it was founded, LEF has helped 282 grassroots justice organizations work with their communities to find protection and solve problems. For example, LEF grantee the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide is holding government officials to account for investigating femicides in Mexico. The Mathare Social Justice Centre is helping residents in an informal settlement self-organize to access clean water and sanitation in Nairobi, Kenya. The Green Belt Movement, also in Nairobi, is tackling climate justice, working to ensure that all people have access to clean air and quality green spaces.

What justice means looks different in each community — even within one country. That’s why it’s so important to work with grassroots organizations. They know the issues people in their communities are facing.

So, LEF provides these grassroots groups with mostly general operating and flexible support — small multiyear grants of $20,000-$40,000. The organizations can then use the funds in pursuit of their mission, working with their communities to address their unique justice needs.

Another special feature of LEF is that grantmaking recommendations are put forward by practitioners in the grassroots justice field. People with deep experience and understanding of the context of grassroots nonprofits are the ones reviewing grant applications. It fits the ethos of the fund. The people most impacted are participating in the process and addressing the issues that need to be addressed. It is flexible, participatory and responsive grantmaking at its best.

Our hope at Mott is that other funders will value LEF’s unique approach — and recognize that 2025 is an important year to commit to supporting people-centered justice, as authoritarianism and injustices are on the rise around the world.

A number of partners already have stepped up to support LEF since it was founded. The Irene M. Staehelin Foundation has committed €2 million, the Dutch Postcode Lottery €1 million, the Clooney Foundation for Justice $1 million and Porticus nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

The number of people who don’t have access to justice is alarming and hard to fathom. And philanthropic support alone will not be enough to close the justice gap. We need people and governments around the world to make this a priority. And that will take multilateral institutions, bilateral aid agencies and governments stepping up to provide sustainable financing for people-centered justice.

The work can’t wait. Help us close the global justice gap through legal empowerment.

Learn more about LEF’s work at legalempowermentfund.org.

Legal empowerment

Closing the justice gap through legal empowerment.