On reviewing
As is the case for each year’s first issue, this one also opens with an acknowledgement to the reviewers who reviewed manuscripts for the journal in 2022. Finding reviewers with the right expertise, time and commitment to this key contribution to scientific publishing has always been a challenge. Reviewing is a time-consuming activity that usually needs to be squeezed into an agenda already filled with teaching, publishing and research. Since the COVID pandemic, however, finding reviewers has become even more difficult than before. Having to invite many potential reviewers to find two who accept the invitation is no exception, while reviewers who accept often need more time to submit their reviews. Often this extends the reviewing process and the time between submission of a manuscript and a decision. If re-reviews of revised papers are necessary, even more time passes between submission and final decision. There is no simple solution to this problem, but it has our full attention.
Contributions to this issue
In the first article of this issue, Jessika Eicher and Fanny Verónica Mora Navarro discuss the role of customs and cosmovisions of indigenous peoples in environmental rights. Basing their work on jurisprudence and experiences in the legally plural context of Latin America, and taking a procedural perspective, the authors explore the possible ways in which indigenous environmental rights can be articulated in law. In doing so, the authors pay specific attention to collective and intergenerational rights, in articulation with the legal procedural principles of information, participation and access to justice.
Next, Marieke Hopman and Tajra Smajic take the reader to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, where refugees navigate the often contradictory norms originating from various normative orders pertaining to children´s right to be protected against violence. On the basis of field research by a team of researchers, the authors conclude that refugees can do so by redefining core concepts related to the various sets of norms and normative orders involved, at the risk of subconsciously lying to themselves, individually and collectively.
In the post-conflict context of South Sudan, Bruno Braak discusses local government attempts at formalizing urban land and related property in a legally plural context. Using field research data from courts, local offices and plot level, the author identifies five major competing and often incompatible normative repertoires in processes of land claiming and disputing, which he labels as legal, economic, identity, spiritual and wartime military desert. The author argues that post-conflict land formalization policies can only operate without the risk of only causing more conflicts if these competing normative repertoires are well understood and taken into account politically.
In an article on manual scavenging by Dalits in India, Alena Kahle and Sagar Kumbhare explore the experiences of Dalit-led NGOs engaging with the judiciary in their struggles for eradicating manual scavenging practices. The authors conclude that, even though the legal road of litigation is not a perfect solution, Dalit-led NGOs base their decision on careful consideration of the options for Dalits to bring about changes in these practices, in a context of limited Dalit political participation and lack of government responsibility. The authors also argue that Dalits engage with the judiciary in multiple ways, importantly shaped by Dalit normativity.
Baha Ul Haq and co-authors explore the structure and functioning of the customary court institution of Dareemat among the Zhob Pashtun in Balochistan, Pakistan. As the authors show, next to the better known jirgah, the dareemat still plays an important role in dispute and conflict resolution processes among the Zhob Pashtun population. Dareemat is a state-recognized institution that functions parallel with, and as a locally available and more accessible alternative to, the state courts, which are known to be expensive and time-consuming. A major problem of Dareemat procedures and practices, however, is that they are strongly male-dominated and marginalize women.
A book review by Dik Roth concludes this issue.