Policy Report: Shifting Discourses in Rule of Law Cooperation

Development actors have been trying to address this issue by shifting towards people-centred justice approaches, which put communities and people’s justice needs at the centre of legal and judicial reforms. There are underlying assumptions that push forward or hinder the sector’s ability to translate these discursive shifts into concrete policies and to implement new practices. This policy report addresses some of the key assumptions found in rule of law and development cooperation discourses, and is addressed primarily to intermediary organisations and donor audiences, aiming to provide them with tools and suggestions to inform their work, particularly for designing reform in Rule of Law cooperation. In our research conducted for this policy report, we have examined common assumptions that are held by some actors in the field, including donors and INGOs. We found out that there is significant friction between wanting to “do localisation right” and change being hindered by the underlying assumptions about the desirability of rule of law and development cooperation, its role within the local contexts, the capacity of local actors and appropriate tools to use. Without addressing these assumptions and implementing changes on all levels — from the individual practitioner, to the organisational and system-wide levels — locally-led development risks becoming yet another “trend”, void of real meaning and replaced for new trends in a few years. The aim is to carve concrete paths towards meaningful localisation and propose suitable programmatic tools.