IDLO
Pursue gender-sensitive reforms of customary and informal justice systems Improving women’s access to justice means enhancing the capacity of CIJ systems to respond to women’s justice needs. This may be by strengthening gender-sensitive approaches, increasing women’s representation and participation in decision making, improving accountability and oversight or by challenging harmful practices. These reforms can be delicate, as they are fundamentally about changing the way that justice is understood and delivered. This type of change cannot be achieved through external top-down reforms, but must be approached sensitively, working through local advocates of change and incremental improvements over time, rather than immediate wholesale reform.
Improve gender sensitivity and responsiveness of CIJ actors
sensitive information incrementally and in combination with less controversial materials. For instance, gender awareness might be built into a wider training curriculum focused on skills development, which might be more valued by CIJ leaders themselves. This can help to build greater interest in training or capacity-building material and respond to a perceived need on the part of CIJ leaders. Where the formal justice system provides gender-sensitive protections and procedural standards such as in camera sessions and confidentiality guarantees that CIJ mechanisms do not, there can be a benefit to demonstrating the experience of gender-sensitive formal courts for the CIJ system. Where openness to
such exchange exists, there can be informal visits, exchanges of personnel, a memorandum of understanding to facilitate crosssystem learning or even oversight and accountability of CIJ forums by the formal justice system. Bringing well-respected or connected women’s rights champions, such as women community leaders, women government officials from within the women’s ministry or state gender operations, or even female magistrates and judges from the formal justice system, to meet or advise CIJ leaders can help advance women’s rights. However, these types of reforms should only be pursued where locally appropriate and unlikely to trigger backlash against women.
Building gender awareness and sensitivity of CIJ actors enables them not only to understand women’s justice needs better, but also to address these needs and related challenges more effectively. Providing capacity-building activities including peer learning, coaching and mentoring on good practices can provide committed CIJ actors with concrete steps to protect women’s rights. Furthermore, when CIJ actors are gender-sensitive, they are better able to apply or contribute to good practice or prevent practices that undermine women’s rights. However, gender sensitivity activities for CIJ leaders may trigger resistance. Programs need to plan for how this will be dealt with, including introducing
Image: ©Flickr_Elisa Finocchiaro
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