Established in 2019, the Law Societies’ Compact and Forum for SDG 16 brings together law societies, bar associations and similar professional societies of lawyers worldwide. The DAV is a member of the Compact and Forum since 2022.
Its purpose is to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 „Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions“. The Compact and Forum was created to help achieve two of the UN’s key priorities among the SDG 16: strengthening the rule of law and increasing access to justice.
One of the key activities of the Compact and Forum is the connection of law societies to draw attention to failures in the rule of law. Furthermore, the Compact and Forum acts as a medium for disseminating knowledge and setting standards to help the law societies in their mission to improve the access to justice. In addition, the Compact and Forum acts as a centralised coordination platform for the implementation of initiatives in the field of rule of law and access to justice through its Working Groups.
The DAV has joined two of the four existing Working Groups of the Compact and Forum so far: The Lawyer’s Cookbook on Access to Law and Justice Working Group and the Right to Asylum Working Group. The Cookbook’s goal is to compile best practices (“recipes”) on access to law and justice that can be used as a reference by law societies all around the world to implement similar schemes, design new ones, or improve their own. The Right to Asylum Working Group, on the other hand, aims to promote access to justice for asylum seekers and migrants, thereby laying a particular focus on migration routes from South and Central America to North America.