International Journal For Court Administration

IJCA is an electronic journal published on the IACA website (www.iaca.ws). As its name suggests, IJCA focuses on contemporary court administration and management. Its scope is international, and the Editors welcome submissions from court officials, judges, justice ministry officials, academics and others whose professional work and interests lie in the practical aspects of the effective administration of justice.

From the Executive Editor

By Markus Zimmer

Seven Billion Human Beings

On 31 October 2011, the United Nations estimated that the earth’s population

reached seven billion souls. Of that number, one quarter or nearly two billion human beings live in the 60 states that have failed or are on the brink of failure according to the 2011 Failed States Index.1 Ours is the world of the fragile state – a grim reality for an alarming percentage of the earth’s population.

These states are characterized largely by their negative aspects – poverty, insecurity, a disregard for human dignity and rights, and the inability or refusal to focus resources on improving the lives of those who suffer. As families struggle to survive, political regimes purporting to serve citizens divert public revenue to invest in armed forces and weapons systems deployed to sustain their influence and control.

The judicial power in such states often adjudicates a perverted justice, one that reflects less the rule of law and more the privilege of regime. Freedom of expression morphs into criminalization of dissent as those who refuse to indulge figment and chimera are rounded up, imprisoned and beaten.

Common to the most vulnerable in human political enterprise is the partnering of poverty and marginalization to the end that justice is retracted from a right to an indulgence grounded in influence. The disenfranchised persist as victims, as refugees, as expendables in these failed states.

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