Legal & judicial reform
Review of experience in engaging with non-state justice systems in East Africa
Non-state justice systems in East Africa region
Authors:
C. Nyamu-Musembi
Publisher:
Department for International Development, UK, 2003
This report focuses on non-formal justice systems in the East Africa region, and is based on a review of relevant experience in three East African countries: Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It aims to help a better understanding of the range of non-formal justice systems in the region.
The author says there has been official acknowledgement of the central role played by non-formal justice systems in the administration of justice in the region. However, with few exceptions, government engagement with non-formal justice systems has been sporadic. The author identifies the following challenges that reforms in the region’s non-formal justice systems are likely to face:
- assessing and building legitimacy and accountability: the less formal and visible a forum is, the more difficult it will be to assess the level of accountability to the people it serves.
- weak linkages to the judiciary and other relevant formal institutions
- lack of inclusiveness, particularly on the basis of gender
- conflict with human rights principles
The report makes the following recommendations:
- care should be taken that involvement in the non-formal justice sector is not perceived as concern with ‘neo-traditional’ institutions, but as a broad concern about justice at the local level whether formal or informal.
- engagement with the non-formal justice sector has to be tailored so as to be specific to different types of systems
- Decision on which institutions to prioritize should be informed by practice on the ground
- reforms should be aimed at strengthening institutional linkages with the judiciary so as to open up avenues for the application of human rights principles to the operation of non-formal justice systems
- an empowerment approach that equips the people who are served by these systems with knowledge that enables them to demand accountability needs to be adopted.
