Gift Chipo K. Muponisi

The study critically analyses the “Skimpy Justice Provision Inside the Stopgap-Justice-System and the Mobile Government Local Court accessed by Women and Girls in the Rural Settings”: A Case Study of the link between masculinities and the decision-making in the process of handling gender-based violence and other women related issues in Kala Refugee Camp.

It is a known, but debatable fact, with various reasons that most Stopgap-Justice-Systems and mobile government local courts, situated far away from the capital towns, especially localised in refugee rural settings, do not successfully provide for free and fair justice to women and girls. As a result, in our quest for successful women and girls’ justice systems, we need to analytically rethink these already existing justice systems for women and girls, especially refugees living in rural areas. Therefore, we need to profoundly examine whether these Stopgap-Justice-Systems and mobile local courts in rural areas function successfully. Thus, we need to go inside these justice systems and ascertain their benefits to women and girls. Whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and/or its implementing partners instituted provisional justice systems for women and girls facing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV); or whether the government supported these justice systems through mobile local court services; there is a crucial need to identify risky, but diverse ways in which masculinity manifest itself and interface with the decision-making process inside these justice systems. UNHCR, its partners and governments, might not be fully aware of the extent of backlash to these provisional women justice systems; and the extent to which these systems have perpetuated violence against women and girls: a counterfeit to the universal quest for the advancement of women and girls’ right. That is why; we need to rethink about the possibilities of the plausibly juxtaposed link among three meshed entities: masculinity, decision-making process and skimpy justice provision systems for women and girls. It is a known, but highly contested reality that when masculinity intertwine with decision making process, the end result include inter alia, the skimpy justice provision for women and girls, especially those placed in rural areas far away from capital towns.

I hope that this study would help scholars, organisations, governments, beneficiaries and other relevant authorities to deconstruct and where possible strengthen these provisional justice systems for women and girls, especially refugees in rural settings. Thus, the study would provided sufficient ground to fully comprehend masculinity at play with decision making and the impact on women and girl’s justice inside these provisional justice systems; to deeply rethink the decorative nature of the establishment of these provisional justice systems, which inadequately harmonise with the normal environment of women and girls as well as the government laws.