Women's Rights, State-Centric Rule of Law, and Legal Pluralism in Somaliland

Abstract

The article poses the question and offers some indications of how best to support the enhancement of women's rights in the context of the plural legal environment in Somaliland today. Following a review of some externally-supported efforts to engage traditional justice concepts and actors and to enhance the ‘modern’ justice sector, the question is posed whether the meager results are the product of embedded ‘development’ assumptions. Where relevant parts of society are not willing to embrace women's rights, neither traditional nor formal justice institutions will deliver. If international development assistance and governments are to take the plunge into the world of the often complex local power structures and political economy they would detect that social norms are only marginally affected by formal legal institutions. Somaliland shows local societies and concepts overriding and conditioning the application of formal laws with no firm evidence that the prevailing state and judicial centric approach to Rule of Law development programming can actually translate, in the short and medium term at least, into more justice for women and positive socio-cultural changes as a whole. Attention is then called to the importance of women's own organizations and agency in charting a more effective way forward and to the need for more encompassing approaches to social change rather than narrow justice sector interventions.