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Promoting the rule of law through education,
innovation and entrepreneurship
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What are the Justice Accelerators?
The Justice Accelerators is a 3.5-month programme that equips upper secondary students (16+) with the skills to become social tech entrepreneurs while solving issues related to the rule of law and sustainable development.
The programme aims at stimulating youth to develop technology solutions to rule of law issues while incorporating an innovative, entrepreneurial and development-oriented mindset.
Aft er receiving training from local and United Nations experts during a one-week Justice Sprint on technical skills (coding, robotics, AI), problem solving and social entrepreneurship, as well as on rule of law challenges, students will further develop their technology solutions during a three-month Justice Marathon. The best teams will be awarded a small seed fund and participate in a three-day Justice Globalizer, a global forum to learn from each other and discuss solutions addressing rule of law issues using technology on a global scale.
The Justice Accelerators are organized in collaboration with American Councils.
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The Justice Sprint is a one-week training gathering experts, partners and students. The objective is to teach rule of law and sustainable development fundamentals to students as well as to provide them with basic skills on problem solving and social entrepreneurship. Students will also have the opportunity to brainstorm ideas and kickstart the development of their projects.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sprints in 2020 will be conducted online.
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The Justice Marathon is a three-month period during which students develop the projects they initiated during the Justice Sprint week, test them with local communities and propose a go-to-market strategy. Regular support is provided to them, e.g. in the form of weekly meetings, online sessions or ad hoc briefings. Their work on the projects should take place in the institutional environment they belong to (schools, vocational training centres, non-formal education providers).
Students will be asked to document the social impact of their solutions. The traction they get will be one of the measurements for success. The best teams will be awarded small seed funding provided by UNODC.
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The winning team of each country will participate in the Law, Justice and Development Week scheduled to take place in November 2020 at the World Bank in Washington DC *. The aim is to allow students to discuss technology solutions to rule of law problems at an international level and to brainstorm ideas on the internationalization of their solutions.
* To be confirmed depending on the COVID-19 pandemic evolution.
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Why Justice Accelerators?
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While there are many actors providing training on technical skills, entrepreneurship and innovation, they hardly do so through a development and impact-oriented approach focusing on the rule of law, to solve the world's most pressing issues and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
UNODC’s Education for Justice (E4J) initiative has developed more than 180 interactive pedagogical tools as well as activities to promote the rule of law and engage youth on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among those is a series of coding hackathons in different locations throughout the world, with the objective of further involving youth. The Justice Accelerators programme builds on these past initiatives to bridge technology innovation with justice related ma nners, aiming at promoting the rule of law through education, innovation and entrepreneurship.
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Who can join?
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For organizations
Schools, vocational training institutions and non-formal education providers (including NGOs) who also impart education on soft ware development or robotics, working with 16+ secondary level students are welcome to join and be part of the Justice Accelerators programme in the country where they are operating. Please contact us at: unodc-e4j-ja@un.org
For students
The programme in 2020 starts in July and the eligible countries for this first edition are Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. If you are a student enrolled in a secondary school in one of the eligible countries, and you are of age 16 or higher, please submit your application here: https://ais.americancouncils.org/JusticeAccelerator
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Additional information
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Implementing partners
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