Reconstructing the Rule of Law in Plural Madagascar

Lwabukuna, Olivia

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.

Citation

Lwabukuna, O. (2022). Reconstructing the Rule of Law in Plural Madagascar. In O. M. Akinlabi (Ed.), Policing and the Rule of Law in Sub-Saharan Africa (157-182). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003148395-13

• Publication Date: Oct 18, 2022
• Deposit Date: Sep 5, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 18, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 157-182
• Series Title: Routledge Contemporary Africa
• Book Title: Policing and the Rule of Law in Sub-Saharan Africa
• ISBN: 9780367693855
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003148395-13