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Lwabukuna, Olivia (2022) 'Reconstructing the Rule of Law in Plural Madagascar.' In: Akinlabi, Oluwagbenga Michael, (ed.), Policing and the Rule of Law in Sub-Saharan Africa. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 157-182. (Routledge Contemporary Africa)

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Abstract

The chapter explores Madagascar’s insecurity, injustice, and rights violations in the countryside, employing a rule of law analysis. Keys to this discussion are struggling Malagasy institutions, a repressed political space, and a weak, understaffed, and underfunded legal system. The consequences are judicial and police corruption within vague overlapping mandates, inefficiency that has resulted in massive case backlogs, persistent pre-trial detentions, and failure of legal due process. This has led to mob justice and overreliance on informal justice (Dina) in a countryside overrun by armed bandits (Dahalos). This chapter demonstrates that the above complexity has negative implications for rule of law building from a social justice perspective but can also be an opportunity if rule of law building from below (contextual law building) is embraced.

Item Type: Book Chapters
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Law
ISBN: 9780367693855
Copyright Statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Akinlabi, Oluwagbenga Michael, (ed.), Policing and the Rule of Law in Sub-Saharan Africa. Abingdon: Routledge (2022). Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003148395-13
Date Deposited: 05 Sep 2022 16:50
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/37940

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