On November 23

On this day in ...
... 1984, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 39/17, discussing the "Importance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination and of the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples for the effective guarantee and observance of human rights." Occasioning the restatement of the self-determination right were a laundry list of events: continuing apartheid in South Africa, occupation of Namibia and part of Angola by South Africa, and recent invasion of Lebanon by Israel.

(Prior November 23 posts are here, here, and here.)

Justice Administration in Meheba Refugee Settlement: Refugee Perceptions, Preferences, and Strategic Decisions

(Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post!)

Though access to justice is enshrined in international refugee and human rights law instruments, including Article 16 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, many refugees do not have access to, or do not choose to utilize, the host state justice system. Camps and settlements are often characterized by a plurality of legal institutions, operated by the host state, the United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nongovernmental organizations, and refugee actors. Many of these institutions do not comply with international or host state laws, thus leaving refugees without adequate legal protection.
The UNHCR has long recognized that the lack of functioning law and order systems in refugee camps and settlements has serious consequences for violence and human rights. Yet as a senior official recently told me in an interview, UNHCR is still “a little bit at a loss about what is really needed in the field.” This is in part because the existing body of academic and practitioner literature on justice administration in refugee camps and settlements is very small and focused on procedural and legalistic questions. (As one example, see this report.) Almost no attention has been paid to the perceptions, preferences, and strategic decisions and behavior of refugees themselves with regard to justice administration.
The aim of my research was to go beyond rules-based analysis, toward a socio-legal study that engaged with justice systems as dynamic social institutions heavily influenced by popular perceptions and actions. To this end, from July to September of 2008 I conducted fieldwork among three communities in Meheba Refugee Settlement in Zambia, which hosts 14,181 refugees primarily from Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. Through focus groups, individual interviews, and participant observation, I sought to understand the types of crimes and conflicts that refugees thought to be most common and of greatest concern in their communities; their opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of the various justice institutions available; how they decide whether to take a case to a justice institution and, if so, how they decide which one to go to first; and what they believe the objective(s) of pursuing justice are. Working in three different administrative areas of the settlement, I found significant variation in the way groups of refugees perceived and used various justice institutions.
I argue that four factors help to explain these variations:

• Population composition and heterogeneity, in terms of gender, age, and country of origin
• Physical location in the settlement and proximity to authorities (e.g. UNHCR, Zambian Ministries, police) and social services (e.g. schools, clinics, Mobile Court)
• Socio-cultural characteristics, namely witchcraft beliefs, employment backgrounds, and attitudes towards the rule of law
• Long-term durable solution (i.e. resettlement, repatriation, or local integration) preferences.

More generally, what emerged is that, to the refugees in Meheba, justice is often about more than simply seeking a resolution to a single crime or conflict. Personal reputation, community image, monetary costs, pride, fear, shame, manipulation, and the pursuit of a particular durable solution or long-term goal all affect refugees’ strategic decision-making processes about whether and where to pursue justice. With such variation in the perceptions of and preferences for different justice institutions among refugees in the same settlement, it is clear that one-size-fits-all policies and programs to improve access to justice will be ineffective.

(This post is based on my dissertation for the Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. It is available in full here.)

On May 31

On this day in ...
... 1991, at the Portuguese Foreign Ministry in Lisbon, an accord ending 16 years of civil war in Angola was signed by the country's President, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and Jonas Savimbi, leader of the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known by its acronym UNITA. The New York Times reported that the signing "fits in with ... efforts to resolve regional rivalries" of the Soviet Union, which had supported Angola's government, and the United States, 1 of 2 countries from which "rebels took their aid and their cue." The other, according to The Times, was South Africa.
... 1971, Sandra Ellen Oxner, who'd received LL.B and LL.M degrees from Dalhousie Law School in Halifax, was appointed a judge of the Nova Scotia Magistrate's Court. Then 29 years of age, she became the 1st woman to be appointed to the judiciary in that Canadian Province. She's the founding Chair of a nongovernmental organization located at Dalhousie, the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, which provides educational programs for members of courts and tribunals. She's also a consultant on judicial education and reform in places as varied as Ukraine, Russia, Yemen, West Bank Gaza, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Trinidad, and Bangladesh.

(Prior May 31 posts are here and here.)

On December 22

On this day in ...
... 1998 (20 years ago today), South Africa signed a pact agreeing to withdraw from southwest territories -- thus paving the way for Namibian independence -- in exchange for "an end to Soviet and Cuban involvement in the long civil war in neighboring Angola." The agreement was known as the New York Accords because it was signed at U.N. headquarters (left) in that city.
... 1967, Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau announced a sweeping reform of Canada's criminal laws. His Omnibus Bill proposed inter alia to increase restrictions on guns drunk driving, and to relax them on matters such as abortion, divorce, and homosexuality. With regard to the last of those 3, Trudeau (right), who would go on to serve as Prime Minister uttered, as may be seen in this Canadian television clip, "unforgettable words":

There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

On January 15, ...

... 1953, following a course set in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia the year before, authorities in East Germany launched a "purge of senior officials accused of plotting against the state and spying for 'imperialistic' powers." Eventually the arrests and detentions would extend "to all political parties, trade unions, youth organisations, women's and pensioners' groups."
... 1997, British politicians reacted angrily to Princess Diana's call for an international landmine ban during her visit to Angola. One Conservative leader said:

We all know landmines and other weapons are vicious and nasty. The question is how best to negotiate so they are not used in future.
The government's policy on this has been an extremely careful one and the statements made by the Princess of Wales have not been in line with that policy.

Diana (above) died in a car crash in Paris in August. Within a year Britain ratified the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer or Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, the treaty, adopted in 1997 in Ottawa, Canada, that bans landmines. Today that Convention, which entered into force in 1999, has 156 states parties; among those not party to the treaty are the United States, Russia and China.

On June 22, ....

... 1933, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.) (right) was born in San Francisco, where she also served as mayor from 1978 to 1988.
... 1940, Nazi Germany compelled France to sign an armistice 8 days after overrunning Paris. On the same day 1 year later, Germany further expanded World War II when it invaded the Soviet Union.
... 1989, in Gbadolite, Zaire, União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, the rebel group known by its acroynym, UNITA, agreed to a ceasefire in its 14-year-old conflict against Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, Angola's Soviet-backed government.