The skills, expertise and resources within the UK legal and judicial sector represent an important opportunity for supporting effective and accountable rule of law policies and practices in developing countries.

This briefing has been commissioned by the Rule of Law Expertise (ROLE) UK Programme as part of its ongoing learning and monitoring efforts. It reflects on the ROLE UK approach in light of evidence emerging from a range of reviews of justice and security programming.These include, but are not limited to, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s 2015 review of UK security and justice programming, a 2015 DFID evidence synthesis on the relationship between security sector reform (including justice reform) and capacity building, a 2016 OECD report on improving security and justice programmes in fragile situations, and ongoing work bringing justice and security researchers, policymakers and practitioners together at ODI.

These reflections were prepared based on a review of ROLE UK programme documentation, as well as a phone interview conducted with ROLE’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Adviser. They are intended to prompt ROLE UK to reflect on its overall approach, as well as the elements that constitute it, in light of wider evidence of what works (and what does not) in justice reforms. They also propose some potential changes that may be made to programming in order to better reflect what is known about effective capacity support.