Justice in Guinea remains elusive for many despite several recent landmark developments. Most prominently, in July of this year, less than two years into the trial of a former president and his top staff in the 2009 stadium massacre that left more than 150 Guineans dead and dozens more raped and beaten, the former leader was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Broadcast to the country, the conviction was viewed by many as a major step toward judicial independence and accountability at the highest level of Guinea’s political class.
Beyond progress in the courtroom, the country is also poised to make progress toward more stable democratic governance that could underpin progress toward making justice more accessible and responsive to justice seekers. Nearly three years since Guinea’s latest coup, President Mamadi Doumbouya has promised to hold elections for a new, permanent government and also a popular referendum on a new constitution. While the dates for these elections have yet to be set, the National Transition Council—the country’s temporary stand-in for Parliament—has released the draft constitution’s content to the public.
Yet despite this progress, the majority of Guineans do not believe the justice system is working for them.
We asked them why.
DT Global collaborated with partners at the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) to field a survey to better understand the needs and overall satisfaction of the justice system in Guinea. We constructed the survey to uncover a more thorough understanding of why justice seekers in Guinea express dissatisfaction with and distrust in their justice system. The survey was fielded online between April 16 – May 2, 2024 with 1,420 respondents.
The DT Global-HiiL-IFES team found that a significant portion of the population (74%) have had at least one legal problem—typically corruption, money, or land-related—in the last two years. For the women in Guinea, the top legal problems tend to be family related. Of this large percentage of the population facing legal challenges, only 24% classify their problems have been fully resolved. While resolutions tend to be viewed as satisfactory, they come too rarely or too slowly. This frustration with slow, insufficient resolution from the formal legal system has prompted Guineans to pursue resolution through alternative means.
While a significant majority (84%) of Guineans seek restitution for their legal problems, they tend to seek justice through traditional, informal mechanisms. Only four percent of the population seeks solutions to their justice needs through the courts. Corruption and limited capacity are the primary reasons why the formal justice system is failing to meet the needs and expectations of the population, which in turn drives Guineans to pursue justice with family members (24%) or friends and neighbors (19%). While justice seekers primarily identified cost (18%) and information barriers as reasons they avoided the formal justice system, they also highlighted fear of social repercussions (12%) in pursuing justice through the courts. This fear coupled with a generic belief that “courts are not fair” (8%) drive distrust in the safety and impartiality of Guinean courts. Taken together, the attitudes and behavior of justice seekers underscore significant dissatisfaction with Guinea’s formal legal system due to high costs, inaccessibility, and distrust.
Yet, despite their dissatisfaction with the formal system, Guineans’ propensity to still seek justice—albeit through informal, typically unregulated means—indicates the population is eager for meaningful, even new pathways to justice. Set against the backdrop of potential systemic change through elections and a new constitution, the country is at an inflection point that could reset the framework and ultimately, the perception of justice in Guinea.
In this moment, it is critical to ensure substantive support for rectifying institutional shortcomings (capacity and corruption) while also strengthening and expanding access to informal mechanisms in a way that balances increased access without undermining the legitimacy of these mechanisms through overly formalizing or coopting them.
Yet regardless of the specific modalities of support, our survey highlights how vitally important it is to center the Guinean people’s diverse conceptions of justice into the process of strengthening the country’s justice system. As pathways to justice are developed and refined to address the myriad needs and preferences among the country’s diverse population, justice services must be reoriented to the justice seeker, ensuring all have the means, understanding, and trust in their respective pursuits of restitution. By properly understanding and subsequently elevating justice seekers’ preferences and expectations into the array of legal mechanisms in Guinea, support for expanding access to justice will also help build citizen trust in the government as it—hopefully—seizes the moment and leads the transition to a more democratic, and people-centered system.
