NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

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International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 Research director: Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona. Start: Quarter 1, 2008. Paper commissioned: May-July 2008. Working title: Sexuality and Human Rights. In English. Draft report: July 2008. Redraft: September-October 2008. Consultation: August-September 2008. Publication: July 2009. Research team: Alice Miller. See also: Section C: Sexuality, health and human rights (project 134). When Legal Worlds Overlap: Human Rights, State and Non-State Law (135) Published October 2009 An initial draft of this report was prepared at the end of November 2008 and was completed during the first quarter of 2009. It was circulated for comment in the second quarter of 2009 and the report was published in October, accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains a large volume of documents on the issue, including all the non-copyright texts that provided the foundation for the Councils analysis. A Summary will be published in French, Spanish and English in 2010. A translation of the full report into Arabic is under discussion. The report examines human rights issues that arise when more than one legal norm or regime is recognised within a given jurisdiction – a common situation in a large number of countries. It has been very well received by experts and specialists in this complex and contested field, because it is one of the first detailed examinations of plural legal environments from a human rights perspective, and takes into account a particularly wide range of situations and contexts. During the first phase of research, the Council surveyed numerous examples of plural legal orders: personal law regimes in multi-ethnic and multi-religious states (Israel, Malaysia, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, the United Kingdom, Lebanon); indigenous (customary) law regimes in both multiethnic settler-colony nation-states such as Australia, the United States and Canada, and contexts in which the indigenous (customary) legal order has special status (many Latin American countries, Zambia, Kenya); societies in which customary/non-state legal mechanisms are being reformed or reconfigured by state or civil society organisations, especially with support from international development agencies (local council courts in Uganda, salishes in Bangladesh, Justices of the Peace in Peru); and contexts in which the state is weak or fragile following conflict or emergence from conflict (Nepal, Palestine/The Occupied Territories, Sierra Leone). In parallel, the Research Team produced an approach paper, updated as the research progressed, to provide an analytical framework, and commissioned three individual papers, submitted in September 2008, which respectively addressed indigenous jurisdiction in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States (by Kirsty Gover), personal law in Israel, Egypt and India (by Yüksel Sezgin), and a case study of the salish system in Bangladesh (by Sarah Hossain); in addition, Mathew John prepared a general background analysis on culture, human rights and legal pluralism. Three expert meetings were held, to focus and then review the research, and to consider findings and recommendations. These meetings were reported in last year’s narrative report. Follow-up activities will continue through 2010. Vijay Nagaraj, the Research Director responsible, presented the report to a large conference on rule of law, legal pluralism and conflict, co-sponsored 6
International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 by the World Bank, the US Institute of Peace, and George Washington University. This meeting adopted a rather different starting position from that of the Council for discussion of plural legal orders, and afterwards Vijay Nagaraj wrote to the co-organisers suggesting that an additional meeting to discuss certain aspects of the issue, in particular gender equality and rule of law, would be desirable. The letter has since been picked up by other organisations. UNIFEM asked to use the report as the basis of a paper exploring the human rights law dimensions in detail. This paper will be prepared by Cassandra Balchin, who co-wrote the Council’s report. The Commonwealth Secretariat is also using the report as the basis for a paper on this subject. Vijay Nagaraj has further invitations to speak at a Conference in Maputo, and to offer a workshop at the University of Namibia, as part of its academic programme. This report addresses a complex and contested subject. It provides a wide ranging and relatively dense analysis that experts have found highly relevant, but which many organisations will not find immediately easy to unpack. Designed to assist human rights organisations and public institutions (including donor agencies) to deal with the difficult and sensitive issues that arise in the context of plural legal orders, the report has already helped to reposition expert discussion. The project will meet its larger objective, however, if the Council and other relevant organisations can make its argument accessible to less specialised audiences, thereby enabling them to apply a more comprehensive and nuanced approach to both legal pluralism and human rights. The follow-up phase is likely at present to focus particularly on issues associated with gender. Research director: Vijay Kumar Nagaraj. Design: Quarter 1, 2008. Start: Quarter 2, 2008. Expert meetings: February 2008; October 2008. Draft report: April 2009. Consultation: April-May 2009. Publication: August 2009. Working title: When Legal Worlds Overlap: Human Rights, State and Non-State Law. In English. Summary in English, French and Spanish (tbc). Research team: Lead writer: Cassandra Balchin. Researcher: Mathew John. Research papers: Kirsty Gover (survey of indigenous jurisdiction in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand); Yüksel Sezgin (personal law in Israel, Egypt and India); Sarah Hossain (the salish system in Bangladesh); Matthew John (background analysis on culture, human rights and legal pluralism). Research Assistant: Anuj Bhuwania. Advisers: Anne Griffiths, Imrana Jalal, Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, Gita Sahgal, Franz von Benda-Beckmann. 7
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