Customary Justice: from Program Design to Impact Evaluation
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Customary Justice: From Program Design to Impact Evaluation Erica Harper Customary Justice: From Program Design to Impact Evaluation Erica Harper Senior Rule of Law Advisor Customary Justice: From Program Design to Impact Evaluation Copyright © International Development Law Organization 2011 International Development Law Organization (IDLO) IDLO is an intergovernmental organization that promotes legal, regulatory and institutional reform to advance economic and social development in transitional and developing countries. Founded in 1983 and one of the leaders in rule of law assistance, IDLO's comprehensive approach achieves enduring results by mobilizing stakeholders at all levels of society to drive institutional change. Because IDLO wields no political agenda and has deep expertise in different legal systems and emerging global issues, people and interest groups of diverse backgrounds trust IDLO. It has direct access to government leaders, institutions and multilateral organizations in developing countries, including lawyers, jurists, policymakers, advocates, academics and civil society representatives. Among its activities, IDLO conducts timely, focused and comprehensive research in areas related to sustainable development in the legal, regulatory, and justice sectors. Through such research, IDLO seeks to contribute to existing Practice and scholarship on priority legal issues, and to serve as a conduit for the global exchange of ideas, best practices and lessons learned. IDLO produces a variety of professional legal tools covering interdisciplinary thematic and regional issues; these include book series, country studies, research reports, policy papers, training handbooks, glossaries and benchbooks. Research for these publications is conducted independently with the support of its country offices and in cooperation with international and national partner organizations. Disclaimer IDLO is an inter-governmental organization and its publications are intended to expand legal knowledge, disseminate diverse viewpoints and spark discussion on issues related to law and development. The views expressed in this Publication are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IDLO or its Member States. IDLO does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of its use. IDLO welcomes any feedback or comments regarding the information contained in the Publication. All rights reserved. This material is copyrighted but may be reproduced by any method without fee for any educational purposes, provided that the source is acknowledged. Formal permission is required for all such uses. For copying in other circumstances or for reproduction in other publications, prior written permission must be granted from the copyright owner and a fee may be charged. Requests for commercial reproduction should be directed to the International Development Law Organization. Published by: International Development Law Organization Viale Vaticano, 106 00165 Rome, Italy Tel: +39 06 4040 3200 Fax: +39 06 4040 3232 www.idlo.int [email protected] Printed by: Quitily Grafica srl Viale Enrico Ortolani 155 00125 Rome, Italy Graphic Design: grafica internazionale Via Rubicone 18 00198 Rome, Italy Cover photo: © Sheila McKinnon ISBN 978-88-96155-04-2 Acknowledgments In developing this book, the author benefited from research conducted and case studies developed by several organizations engaged in the field of customary justice, principally the United States Institute for Peace, the World Bank Justice for the Poor Program and the United Nations Development Programme; she also drew upon IDLO’s Legal Empowerment and Customary Law Research Grants program — seven empirically grounded and evidence-based research programs designed to evaluate the impact of an empowerment-based initiative involving customary justice; and lessons from previous interventions undertaken by IDLO in countries such as Indonesia, southern Sudan and Afghanistan. The author would like to extend particular thanks to the insights and recommendations provided by Thomas F McInerney (Director, Research, Policy & Strategic Initiatives, IDLO), Christopher Morris (Project Officer, World Bank Justice for the Poor Program), Deborah Isser (Senior Legal Counsel, World Bank Justice for the Poor Program), and Ilaria Bottigliero (Senior Researcher, IDLO). The author would also like to acknowledge the work undertaken and contributions made by IDLO’s Legal Empowerment and Customary Law Research Grants recipients: Naomi Johnstone (Waitangi Tribunal and Maori Land Court, New Zealand), Maria Vargas Simojoki (Danish Demining Group, Somalia), Amrita Kapur (Judicial System Monitoring Programme, Timor-Leste), Bilal Siddiqi (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Justin Sandefur (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Marco Lankhorst (RCN Justice & Démocratie, Rwanda), Muriel Veldman (RCN Justice & Démocratie, Rwanda) and Maggi Carfield (George Washington University, United States); as well as other scholars and practitioners in this field who allowed their work to be reproduced or highlighted in this book, particularly: Janine Ubink (Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Development), Helene Maria Kyed (Danish Institute for International Studies), Peter Alexander Albrecht (Danish Institute for International Studies), Vijay Kumar Nagaraj (International Council on Human Rights Policy), Ewa Wojkowska (Kopernik), Johanna Cunningham (United Nations Development Programme), Tanja Chopra (United Nations Development Programme) and Matthew Stephens (World Bank Justice for the Poor Program). This book forms part of a wider project on legal empowerment and customary justice, and is situated within a portfolio of legal empowerment research focusing on gender, community land titling, traditional knowledge and microfinance. 3 This publication is based on research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Foreword by Deborah Isser, World Bank Justice for the Poor Program The question of customary justice and its role in promoting the rule of law has emerged as the most promising — and thorny — development in the field of justice reform. The international community — that constellation of governments, donors, agencies, and policy-makers engaged with the rule of law, justice and development — has a patchy track record at best, in engaging with customary systems. Too often dominated by the analytical troika of simplification, essentialization and dichotomization, we risk misunderstanding the dynamics of access to justice and undermining the resilience of the poor and vulnerable. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that this is an important, even essential, area for a range of endeavors in the fields of justice and rule of law, from promoting state-building and broadening state-society compacts, to providing the basis for the delivery of essential services and economic development. This eminently practical manual on customary justice is a successful attempt to overcome our past mistakes. In it, Erica Harper places the emphasis on highly empirical, evidence-based analysis. The book shows how contextual research can be synthesized to bring out the inherent complexities of working in legally plural contexts. By avoiding a determinist viewpoint that an institution or system is in need of reform in a particular way, the manual gives us tools to understand justice problems at hand, sensitizes us to contextual complexities, and thus helps us to develop practical solutions to improve access to justice in a particular justice landscape. The book provides a basis for positive change when engaging with customary systems. It avoids generalizations and eschews ‘one size fits all’ approaches. It also recognizes the possibilities of these systems as providers of justice by understanding them as a series of political, social and economic institutions embedded in local contexts that are called into question, reformulated and remade. By giving us the tools to understand their complexities, this manual is an invaluable addition to the knowledge base of any policy-maker or advocate for reform in the fields of justice and the rule of law. 5 Deborah H. Isser Message from the Director of Research, Policy & Strategic Initiatives While engagement with customary justice systems is certainly not a new endeavor, the past decade has witnessed a seachange in the approaches of international organizations with respect to their level of involvement with the non-state legal sector. Without understating the challenges to be overcome, there is a growing case for development agencies to prioritize such engagement when implementing programs of justice sector reform. In most respects, this more holistic approach to rule of law programming is to be welcomed; however, it also raises new questions. A principal concern is that the proliferation of customary justice programming is somewhat out of step with the knowledge base upon which such interventions are grafted, particularly with respect to the role that customary justice might play in post-conflict environments. Author, Erica Harper, draws attention to the fact that there have been few comprehensive or empirically driven efforts that evaluate the impact of past programming efforts. Moreover, without a clear consensus on the objectives of customary