Traversing The Rocky Road of Law Reform in Conflict and Post Conflict States: Model Codes for Post Conflict Criminal Justice as a Tool of Assistance

2017 ◽  
pp. 163-188
Author(s):  
Vivienne O’connor*
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Post Conflict

Global Norms and Local Action

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peace A. Medie
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Local Action ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Global Norms ◽  
The United Nations

When and why do states implement international women’s rights norms? Global Norms and Local Action is an examination of states’ responses to violence against women (VAW) in Africa and their implementation of the international women’s justice norm. Despite the presence of laws on various forms of VAW in most African countries, most victims face barriers to accessing justice through the criminal justice system. This problem is particularly acute in post-conflict countries. International organizations such as the United Nations and women’s rights advocates have, therefore, promoted the international women’s justice norm, which emphasizes the establishment of specialized mechanisms within the criminal justice sector to address VAW. With a focus on the response of the police to rape and intimate partner violence in post-conflict Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, this book theorizes the United Nations’ and women’s movements’ influence on the implementation of the international women’s justice norm. It draws on over 300 interviews in both countries to demonstrate that high international and domestic pressures, combined with favorable political and institutional conditions, are key to the rapid establishment of specialized mechanisms within the police force and to how police officers respond to rape and intimate partner violence cases. It argues that despite significant weaknesses, specialized mechanisms have improved women’s access to justice. The book concludes with a discussion of why a holistic approach to addressing VAW is needed.

scholarly journals ‘The Very Foundations of Any System of Criminal Justice’: Criminal Responsibility in the Australian Model Criminal Code

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlie Loughnan
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Core ◽  
Reform Project

The Model Criminal Code (MCC) was intended to be a Code for all Australian jurisdictions. It represents a high point of faith in the value and possibility of systematising, rationalising and modernising criminal law. The core of the MCC is Chapter 2, the ‘general principles of criminal responsibility’, which outlines the ‘physical’ and ‘fault’ elements of criminal offences, and defines concepts such as recklessness. This paper assesses the MCC as a criminal law reform project and explores questions of how the MCC came into being, and why it took shape in certain ways at a particular point in time. The paper tackles these questions from two different perspectives—‘external’ and ‘internal’ (looking at the MCC from the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’). I make two main arguments. First, I argue that, driven by a ‘top down’ law reform process, the MCC came into being at a time when changes in crime and criminal justice were occurring, and that it may be understood as an attempt to achieve stability in a time of change. Second, I argue that the significance of the principles of criminal responsibility, which formed the central pivot of the MCC, lies on the conceptual level—in relation to the language through which the criminal law is thought about, organised and reformed.

The Response to Violence against Women in Liberia

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Peace A. Medie
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Women's Organizations ◽  
International Pressure ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Government ◽  
Women’S Organizations

Chapter 4 covers how the government and women’s organizations in Liberia responded to violence against women. It explains that prior to the conflict, violence against women was largely absent from the agenda of governments and women’s organizations, despite their involvement in international advocacy around this issue. Both domestic and international pressure on governments was low during this period and specialized mechanisms to address VAW were non-existent in the criminal justice sector. The chapter describes how the 14-year conflict changed this and generated strong international and domestic pressures on post-conflict governments to strengthen the criminal justice sector response to violence against women, particularly sexual violence, and to establish specialized criminal justice sector mechanisms.

scholarly journals Attitudes, Rape and Law Reform in South Africa

2009 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
pp. 414-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charnelle van der Bijl ◽  
Philip N. S. Rumney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
Rape Law ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
The Impact

In the last decade South Africa has undergone an extensive process of sexual offence law reform. This process has attempted, amongst other things, to address deficiencies in the criminal justice response to rape and has also recognised some of the limits to the impact of legal reform. These limits are partly defined by rape supportive attitudes and myths that appear to influence decision-making at all points in the criminal justice process. In South Africa, and many other jurisdictions, evidence suggests that police, prosecutorial and judicial decision-making is influenced, in part, by a range of social attitudes that misconstrue sexual violence, as well as serve to undermine the credibility of complainants. This article examines the impact of myths, social definitions of rape on rape law reform in South Africa and the points at which these reforms are likely to be undermined by social attitudes and what potentially might be done to address this problem.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document