: : CLEEN FOUNDATION. Justice Sector Reform

April 5, 2004, marked the launch of a unique alliance at The Hague, Netherlands. Under the name Altus, six organizations spanning five continents joined together to help national and local governments around the world bring greater safety and justice to ordinary people.

“There is a growing trade in ideas about how to improve justice in practice – from policing neighborhoods to running prisons – but that trade is imbalanced, with knowledge and advice coming mainly from North American and European governments,” says Christopher Stone, chair of the Altus Board of Directors. “Altus is poised to help expand and diversify the trade and make justice reform a truly global commodity that no government, culture, or legal tradition controls and that benefits everyone.”

The Mayor of The Hague, the Honourable W.J. Deetman, welcomed Altus to this international city of peace and justice during an event for journalists and others at City Hall. Innocent Chukwuma, the Executive Director of the CLEEN Foundation and Treasurer of Altus, discussed the need for a multicultural approach to justice sector reform and how Altus provides comparative perspectives to the police transformation work of the CLEEN Foundation in Nigeria and similar organizations around the world. Christopher Stone described how partnerships between NGOs and police agencies in Russia, India, and Brazil to redesign station houses are repairing police-community relations and reducing opportunities for corruption – findings reported in “Opening the Station House,” Altus’s first publication. Finally, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), described Altus as part of realizing the ICC’s broadest mission, by helping leaders of domestic justice systems make those systems stronger.

About Altus:

Altus unites six well-established organizations spanning five continents into a uniquely powerful alliance for justice. With more than 200 professionals working in different languages, cultures, and legal traditions, Altus offers a truly multicultural perspective on issues of safety and justice. But Altus is much more than six organizations in six countries. Each member is a hub for the many NGOs and academic centers throughout that region that could play a larger role in forming rights-based solutions to injustice.

Altus is different from a typical network. While networks may have a wide reach, they rarely have the structure and capacity to make the most effective use of their many members. With a small secretariat in The Hague, regional representatives deployed around the world, and a multilingual web site, the Altus members and affiliates are more likely to learn from one another and work together. And with a base in The Hague, Altus hopes connect the growing field of international criminal law with efforts to strengthen domestic justice systems in troubled states. This alliance also benefits researchers and journalists who need accurate information about local justice issues and also to understand local developments in a global context.

Altus member organizations are distinguished by their close work with government. As an alliance, they can help public officials anywhere in the world identify or develop empirically tested practices that fit local needs – and that change the experience of justice for ordinary people. Today, the work of the members ranges from improving conditions in Rio's prisons to reforming police stations in Punjab and tracking complaints of police misconduct in Nigeria; from helping incarcerated adolescents in Russia make a life for themselves after release to reducing domestic violence against African-American women across the United States. These projects already benefit from the close ties among the member organizations, and through the alliance they could inform, inspire, and help countless people around the world.

Twenty years ago, practical reform of justice systems rarely crossed geographic and political boundaries, and solutions could not transcend differences between civil and common law traditions. Today those boundaries are evaporating. These six organizations from Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, India, Chile and USA jointly created Altus because commonalities in the delivery of justice in countries around the world today are already more important than the differences, and because greater justice anywhere can spur change around the world.

The work of Altus is supported the Ford Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, Open Society Institute and by the City of The Hague.

Founding Altus Members:

Nigeria : CLEEN Foundation, Lagos
Brazil : Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania, Rio de Janeiro
Russia : INDEM Foundation, Moscow
India : Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh
Chile : Centro de Estudios en Seguridad Ciudadana, Santiago
USA : Vera Institute of Justice, New York