Best Approaches for Working with Informal Justice Mechanism
Taken as a whole, USIP's research on informal justice, on programming efforts by other actors, and on its own pilot projects has led to numerous lessons learned and identified several potential challenges in working with the informal justice sector. his section makes broader recommendations about engaging the informal sector in Afghanistan based on USIP's experiences with the informal sector. hese recommendations are not meant to serve as a step-by-step guide, but they are meant to raise key concerns and offer guidance that need to be considered by anyone choosing to engage the informal justice sector in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Success is difficult to measure precisely, but in evaluating these programs, "success" refers to projects that met USIP's broadly defined goals of improving dispute resolution and access to justice at a reasonable cost and in a manner that encouraged compliance with Afghan law and international human rights standards. his means not simply expanding understandings of the law and human rights but also generating actual improvements in how justice is being accessed.
Success Depends on Dealing with Local Context
Perhaps the greatest factor of success is the ability to deal with the local context and adapt to challenges as they present themselves. As discussed in section two, informal justice mechanisms can vary greatly based upon the political, social, and economic landscape of an area. he traditions of an area and the personalities of local leaders, along with an array of political and economic variables, all shape how disputes are being resolved in any given community. he more that programs can first research and then adapt their plans to these contexts, the more successful they tend to be.
For example, both the DRC and the CCM worked well because they focused on areas where tribal structures are largely intact. hese structures create a certain amount of social cohesion and political authority among informal leaders, making resolutions by informal mechanisms more likely to be adhered to by both sides of the dispute. In areas where tribal structures are not as intact, dispute resolution may be more difficult or may require a great number of shuras and other informal bodies, making direct attempts to implement an identical council less likely to succeed. On the other hand, in more heterogeneous districts in the north, CPAU's approach of a greater number of councils in each district made more sense based upon the extent to which districts were often divided along ethnic lines. At the same time, CPAU's rather divided approach and TLO's linkage program did not involve enough key provincial-level actors to resolve larger disputes the way that TLO's CCMs and USIP's DRCs were able to because of their scale and the involvement of provincial level leaders.
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