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32 results

Page 1 of 2

  • Policing Insecurity

  • MILLI LAKE
  • Journal:
    American Political Science Review / Volume 116 / Issue 3 / August 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 February 2022, pp. 858-874
    Print publication:
    August 2022
    • Article
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  • In environments of seemingly intractable conflict, how should we understand the role of state capacity building and security-sector reform in transitions to peace? Prevailing wisdom suggests that a strong state security apparatus mitigates cyclical violence and aids in transitions to predictable, rule-governed behavior. Yet growing attention to police brutality in institutionalized democracies calls this assumption into question. Drawing on a multiyear study of war making and state making in eastern DR Congo, this article interrogates logics of police capacity building, analyzing how and why reform efforts intended to bolster the state’s monopoly on violence frequently fail to curb the unrest they seek to disrupt. I argue that enhancing the coercive capacity of the police can entrench a wartime political order that makes peace more elusive; when police deploy the image of the state toward destabilizing ends they reinforce the institutions of everyday war, undermining the stability a monopoly on violence is intended to build.

  • 6 - Hard-Fought Victories

  • from Part II
  • Milli Lake, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Strong NGOs and Weak States
    Published online:
    04 May 2018
    Print publication:
    31 May 2018, pp 197-214

  • Summary

    Chapter 6 draws from interviews with a number of Congolese women, in order to understand some of the immediate repercussions of gender justice interventions for those most intended to benefit. Interviews revealed that, in spite of dramatically different motivations for seeking legal remedy, NGO outreach and support has allowed many victims to exert new forms of agency after violence. New entry points into the legal system have allowed victims of violence to access social, ideological, and sometimes material benefits that were not previously accessible. Many have adopted the language of legal remedy and punitive justice to reject customary practices that they found to be abusive, disempowering, or dehumanizing. Legal outreach has provided a new vocabulary for demanding formal recognition that a violation or wrong occurred. Others have instrumentally adopted the language of the law to access social or material benefits, such as antiretroviral treatment or prenatal care. Rather than being “socialized” into new frames of legal consciousness as legal outreach NGOs intended, legal aid has served as a vehicle to other avenues of support for some women.

  • 5 - Ordinary Women in Court

  • from Part I
  • Milli Lake, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Strong NGOs and Weak States
    Published online:
    04 May 2018
    Print publication:
    31 May 2018, pp 152-192

  • Summary

    This chapter, therefore, explores the motivations and barriers to justice facing victims of violence in South Africa’s Western Cape and eastern DR Congo. Primarily, it explores how and why women and girls in eastern DR Congo have begun to turn to the law in the aftermath of violence in increasing numbers, and why they might select formal legal mechanisms to resolve gender-based grievances that have historically been stigmatized. The chapter shows that NGOs in DR Congo have transformed the landscape of dispute resolution for many victims of violence, providing individuals new entry points and opportunities to access the formal justice system, as well as a number of material incentives to do so. The chapter compares outreach and advocacy work in eastern DR Congo with similar programs in South Africa. Although many victims of violence in eastern DR Congo continue to find themselves unable to access legal aid, either because they are out of geographical reach, or remain uninformed or otherwise unable to access NGO support, very few comparable incentives or opportunities to participate in legal processes exist for any victims of gender violence in South Africa’s Western Cape.

  • 1 - Law in Unforeseen Places

  • from Part I
  • Milli Lake, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Strong NGOs and Weak States
    Published online:
    04 May 2018
    Print publication:
    31 May 2018, pp 3-32

  • Summary

    This chapter introduces the book's central puzzle: why have courts in DR Congo's eastern provinces responded forcefully to widespread sexual and gender-based violence, prioritizing sexual assault cases and foregrounding the rights of victims, when courts in South Africa have failed in the same endeavor? Existing literature would lead us to expect that state strength and capacity, combined with a robust and transnationally networked domestic human rights movement in South Africa would increase the likelihood of effective human rights norm diffusion and implementation in domestic courts. The book shows; however, that state fragility in DR Congo's east has instead created opportunities for non-state actors such as NGOs to exert influence over legal processes normally reserved for the sovereign government. External actors working in DR Congo have thus succeeded in directing judicial attention towards gender-based crimes, whereas similarly situated organizations working in South Africa have been onstructed in their efforts. The chapter summarizes the research approach adopted by the book, and discusses key literatures.

  • 3 - Explaining State-Level Policy and Practice

  • from Part I
  • Milli Lake, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Strong NGOs and Weak States
    Published online:
    04 May 2018
    Print publication:
    31 May 2018, pp 66-99

  • Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of national and international responses to sexual and gender-based violence in DR Congo and South Africa, as well as details of relevant legal instruments and national policy frameworks. It explores how and why legislative and executive elites in both countries have adopted such similar legislation and policy platforms , and why these have resulted in such different local outcomes. The chapter traces the ways in which the Congo wars and South Africa’s transition to democracy in the mid-1990s created openings that allowed domestic and transnational human rights actors in each country to promote gender-inclusive policy. Activists who later came to comprise South Africa’s governing elite meant that domestic gender experts were uniquely positioned to influence law and policy in the aftermath of apartheid, making South Africa’s legal framework for prosecuting rape among the strongest in the world. In DR Congo, gender activists and international experts played similarly crucial roles in shaping new domestic laws, because of international stakeholders’ interventions in the state’s governance activities in the country's transition to democracy.

  • 8 - Conclusion

  • from Part II
  • Milli Lake, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Strong NGOs and Weak States
    Published online:
    04 May 2018
    Print publication:
    31 May 2018, pp 242-257

  • Summary

    In addition to identifying the openings created by weak empirical statehood, the research also revealed the precarity of human rights gains that circumvent the state. Using opportunities presented by state fragility to advance a singular human rights agenda, means successes are accompanied by new challenges. Weak rule of law undermines the durability of newly introduced gender protections. Ongoing corruption and unchecked patronage limit the extent to which intended beneficiaries of legal aid can take advantage of legal protections . NGOs substituting for the state in the areas it is perceived to be failing may serve to retrench state capacity over the long term. back to the central government by whom they were poorly paid. And NGOs, constrained in their ability to act outside of the strict funding priorities established by donors, prove unable to advocate for more broad-based legal reform. Such strategies were considered deeply problematic by South African activists, who emphasized the paramount importance of state involvement even in the face of hostility and resistance.

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