WUNRN
ZAMBIA - PROJECT TO INCREASE JUSTICE
FOR WOMEN IN TRADITIONAL COURTS
UN –
One goal is to bolster the justice that women receive in traditional tribunals for complaints of sexual violence, divorce, custody and inheritance.
The
paralegals come from the same rural areas to which they are assigned. They
offer free legal advice and counseling on human rights, targeting women in
their advocacy outreach.
They are
also training local leaders to recognize cases beyond their jurisdiction--such
as child abduction or murder--for referral to state-run, local courts. Since
the pilot program launched about a year ago, more of these cases are being
referred to state-run courts, Dinda said.
"Right
now the environment is not very good in
In many parts of rural Zambia, a woman with a dispute she can't resolve on her own will be funneled into a traditional court, mandated by traditional leaders who are seldom formally trained in governance or human rights.
Male Run Courts
"In
most cases a woman at a traditional court will find that she is going to face
nine men against one woman, because the courts are predominately male
run," Dinda said in a phone interview from
Traditional
justice systems--also called informal or customary-- function outside the
sphere of official state laws and handle about 80 percent of disputes in most
developing countries, according to U.N. Women.
Driven by
cultural and religious traditions, they have long been studied by
anthropologists. Now they're attracting growing notice by human rights
activists and researchers interested in improving the legal treatment of women.
"We
are starting to provide a framework, so we can look at the strengths and
weaknesses of these systems and in five or 10 years we can get a better basis
for comparison," said Fergus
Kerrigan, lead author of a January 2013 report
on informal justice systems and human rights. A group of U.N. agencies
commissioned the report from the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
Rural women in much of the world cannot access official courts. "They are
too far away, too expensive," Kerrigan said. "We see more potential
in trying to reform informal justice systems in a positive way than say we are
going to abolish these and expect that everybody can go to a state court
because that is just unrealistic."
Gender Cases Referred
Traditional
rulers in some places will refer gender-specific cases to their nation's formal
courts. Male-dominated indigenous legal councils in
In some
cases, informal justice affords women a higher degree of legal protection than
state courts and laws.
In
While
women often face overwhelmingly male power structures, Juan Carlos Botero, executive
director of the Washington-based World Justice
Project, cautions against generalizing about the
up-or-down treatment of women in these informal systems.
"There
are traditions where male dominance has been part of the culture, and in
general the elders of the community are men, so that may create a bias,"
said Botero in a phone interview. "But in
In
Traditional
courts in
Yet Papa New
In Colombia,
the indigenous Kogi people mostly appoint male traditional justice heads, but
sometimes women serve the role, as well, and have the chance of a fair hearing,
said the World
Justice Project's Botero.