The Governance and Justice Group (GJG) is a non-profit organization bringing together individual practitioners who take an innovative and community-focused approach to the promotion of international human rights standards, practice and principles of good governance.

What we deliver includes:

• Advice and assistance on access to justice and issues of good governance
• Political and security analysis including risk assessments and specific sectoral analyses
• Tailor-made capacity- and institution-building
• Research and data collection

These services are designed to assist in assessing current trends, and support policy formulation and advocacy. The aim is to develop and disseminate good practices and local knowledge and to apply these to address the real and practical challenges facing justice, security and governance institutions and the people who use them.

We take a down-to-earth, pragmatic and solution-oriented approach in order to address these challenges and support institutions and others involved in reforming the areas of justice, security and governance. We place strong emphasis on ensuring that people have a voice and are able to access judicial and other institutions.

We are a multi-disciplinary group of highly experienced practitioners. Our work is grounded in reality and offers relevant and pertinent recommendations for reform and change. The GJG places emphasis on open communication, effective co-ordination and co-operation with and through others.

The Group’s ‘added value’ lies in:

o Our ability to bring together a cross-section of experienced practitioners
o Our capacity to directly reach decision and policy makers in countries where we work, through our network of associates and fellows
o Our competence in developing innovative approaches to problems, grounded in the national socio-economic context and acceptable to all stakeholders
o Our skill in designing quick impact measures that achieve concrete results and catalyze broader reform processes
o Our experience in building coalitions of interest among various actors through the active promotion of public and private partnerships and harnessing good practices from a wide range of experiences
o Our commitment to collating, producing, and disseminating useful information on this website.

How the GJG operates

The GJG actively links up with individuals, institutions and organizations who share the same goals. We have close relations with universities in North America, Europe and Asia. We also maintain professional links with the Bar and Law Societies of a number of countries; and institutional links with a range of development agencies, international and national NGOs, and inter-governmental organisations. The GJG is registered in Portugal.

The GJG comprises a number of associates, fellows and affiliates around the world. It is co-ordinated by a board of directors who comprise:

Nicola Dahrendorf
Nicola Dahrendorf was trained as a Social Anthropologist and Lawyer. She has extensive experience both within the UN (UNHCR, UNICEF and DPKO), primarily in humanitarian emergencies and five peacekeeping operations (Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor and DRC), and in academia, as a Senior Research Fellow with King’s College, London, working on conflict, security sector reform and humanitarian issues. Most recently she worked as UN Senior Adviser/Coordinator on Sexual Violence in DR Congo. She worked as Regional Conflict Adviser for West Africa for UK DFID and for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). She has held senior management positions with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In a policy / academic capacity she was the Director of the Conflict, Security and Development Group at King’s College, London University, where she coordinated and authored several studies including leading a major multi-donor review of peace operations (A Review of Peace Operations - A Case for Change 2002/3). Geographically, she has a strong political grasp of South East Asia, the Balkans and of East and Central Africa, especially the Great Lakes region and West Africa. She works in German, English and French.


Kathryn English
Kathryn English is a governance and justice adviser with over 15 years experience in the field (in Asia and Africa). Before that she was a practising criminal lawyer in London. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Law at the Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University, Chicago and is based in Portugal. She worked as senior governance adviser to USAID in Malawi between 1995-2004 before joining UNDP as senior governance adviser specifically to lead and co-ordinate the UN’s development assistance framework. She has worked as an independent adviser to the European Commission and DFID. She has worked closely with NGOs in Asia as well as with governments in Africa. In 1995, she co-wrote the ‘Human Rights Handbook: A practical guide to monitoring human rights’ described as the ‘first of its kind’ which was reissued in South Africa and translated into Croatian, Burmese and Tetum. She works in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Marguerite Garling
Marguerite Garling is a protection and rule of law adviser based in France. She has occupied advisory positions with the International Rescue Committee, UNDP/UNIFEM and UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She was the Ford Foundation’s Rights and Social Justice programme officer for East & Southern Africa and, as Paris Research Attaché for Amnesty International, responsible for monitoring human rights and undertaking research in 25 francophone countries in Africa and the Maghreb. She has written policy papers for UNHCR on the treatment of internally displaced persons; on the rule of law and civil protection for UNDP and NGOs in Somalia; and on human rights policy towards Kenya for the European Commission. She has conducted numerous country missions for Amnesty International and published extensively on a range of human rights issues. She works in English and French.

Adam Stapleton
Adam Stapleton is a lawyer and justice adviser with emphasis on penal reform and criminal justice. Currently he is Adjunct Professor of Law, Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law (USA) and Fellow of the Human Rights Centre at Essex University (UK). He served as a human rights officer with UN missions in Cambodia, South Africa and Rwanda. From a base in Malawi he worked as an independent adviser to Penal Reform International for 12 years - as well as consulted for DFID on the design of their Access to Justice programmes in Malawi, Nigeria, Lesotho, Ghana. He has acted for various international development agencies in justice and penal reform in 16 countries in Africa (including Liberia, the Sudan, DR Congo), in the Balkans and South Asia. He has published widely on justice and penal reform issues and co-wrote the Human Rights Handbook with Kathryn English. He lives in Portugal and works in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Hans H. Wahl
Hans H. Wahl is an educator and trainer, based in Paris. He is currently executive director of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Programme in Fontainebleau, an innovative effort to bring the expertise of a top-tier business school to community-based efforts worldwide. Mr. Wahl recently designed and led a programme of training and capacity building for Paralegals working in post-conflict settings in Africa and established UNESCO's Poverty and Human Rights Programme. Prior to UNESCO, he directed an international penal and criminal justice reform training programme for Penal Reform International, also from Paris. Previously, Mr. Wahl held senior staff positions at Amnesty International and regional community development organizations. He has worked as a consultant on strategic planning and organisational change with clients ranging from Siemens, AT&T, Corning, to numerous small and mid-sized organisations in the US and internationally. He has studied, written and worked on issues of civil society development, human rights, and capacity building in over 50 countries worldwide.