RJ4All Impact Report 2025

This year, we invested heavily in connecting those who believe restorative justice is a genuine pathway to peace. In June 2025, we convened 20 world peace leaders from 9 countries at our 4th International Symposium in Cyprus to explore restorative frameworks for reconciliation. We have now strengthened over 45 strategic partnerships across 13 countries because the need is urgent. From addressing gender-based violence to international discrimination, everything we do serves as evidence that restorative justice works. These results inform how legislation is designed in the UK and provide a model that can be replicated globally. None of this has been straightforward, and 2025 was a difficult year. Funding pressures and an increasingly challenging political environment made our mission more demanding than ever. Yet the people you will read about in this report, Maria, Brian, the community members in SE16, London, and the young people finding their political voices through the FRED Youth-led Campaign, did their best. And together, that best has been considerable. I want to close with a direct invitation, as RJ4All cannot do this alone. Our International Restorative Justice Pledge has now brought together 300 people worldwide committed to restorative justice values of fairness, respect, equality, and dignity. If you share those values, I invite you to sign the pledge, support our vision, and challenge these systems alongside us. The question is not whether restorative justice works, it does. The question is whether those with power are willing to share it. I believe they can be, and your support is what keeps us going. As I write this, wars are being fought across Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Israel and Iran are in direct confrontation. Global conflicts and geopolitical pressures continue to shape lives that ordinary people never choose. In the face of such violence, I find myself asking: what if we responded to harm not with punishment but with kindness and tolerance? Gandhi showed us the way to non-violent methods of resistance and peacebuilding. Here at RJ4All, we have learned that restorative justice offers a living, breathing alternative to systems that silence the many to empower the few. This is why RJ4All exists. Whether in international conflict or at our Community Centre in SE16, those who bear the cost of violence are rarely the ones who choose it. They want to be heard and to shape the decisions that affect their lives, but citizen voice cannot truly flourish while power remains so deeply unbalanced. Our work is not just about programmes; it is about the redistribution of power.