The Rule of Law and the UN Peacebuilding Commission: a social development approach

Abstract

There is a danger that the Rule of Law Assistance Unit of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission will employ the same dominant but problematic paradigm that the international development community has pursued across the globe. This top-down, state-centred paradigm, sometimes known as ‘rule of law orthodoxy’, stands in contrast to an alternative set of strategies: legal empowerment. Legal empowerment involves the use of legal services, legal capacity-building and legal reform by and for disadvantaged populations, often in combination with other development activities, to increase their freedom, improve governance and alleviate poverty. It is typically carried out by domestic and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but also by governments and official aid agencies. This alternative approach focuses directly on the disadvantaged and integration with other development activities, which means it often operates under the de facto rubric of social development. Legal empowerment strategies vary among countries and NGOs. But their impact includes reforming gender-biased, non-state justice systems in Bangladesh; ameliorating the legal system's corruption in post-conflict Sierra Leone; keeping the human rights flame burning in post-conflict Cambodia; advancing natural resources protection and indigenous peoples' rights in Ecuador; and strengthening agrarian reform in the Philippines. Addressing such priorities can help alleviate poverty, ameliorate conflict and prevent chaos or repression from dominating the disadvantaged, particularly in conflict or post-conflict societies.

Notes

¹ Portions of this paper were adapted from Stephen Golub (2003). That paper details some of the ideas and documentation addressed here. Research for both papers was supported by an Individual Project Fellowship from the Open Society Institute.

² For a more in-depth discussion and critique of rule of law orthodoxy, see, for example, Golub (2003).

³ See, for example, Linn Hammergren (1998) and Madelein Crohn and William E Davis (1996).

⁴ See, for example, DFID (2006).

⁵ See  < http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance>. Democracy and governance programmes' link to Rule of Law is reflected in the fact that the name of the USAID unit that originally promoted the rule of law in the 1980s was the Office of Administration of Justice and Democratic Development. However, while USAID's DG goals are not inherently business oriented, one assumption is that good governance creates the proper environment for business to flourish.

⁶ See, for example, DFID (2003).

⁷ See Daniel Kaufmann (2001).

⁸ See, for example, Patrick McAuslan (1997), Amanda Perry (1999) and John Hewko (2002).

⁹ This work is described in two similarly titled but somewhat different papers by Vivek Maru. See Maru (2006) and Open Society Institute (2006).

¹⁰ For discussion of some of these activities, see Brad Adams (1998), Licadho Adhoc and Human Rights Watch (1999, 2–11), International Human Rights Law Group (1993, 1–7) and International Human Rights Law Group (1995).

¹¹ For a general discussion of these Philippine NGOs and similar ones working in other sectors, see Golub (2000b; 1998).

¹² For a discussion of relevant experience and strategies, see Golub (2004).