World Bank

‘The rule of law’ draws extraordinarily diverse supporters. Theorists from the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson to the conservative economist Friedrich Hayek have embraced it; in September 2005 the entire membership of the United Nations committed themselves to it. Such widespread endorsement is possible only because of relative vagueness as to what the term might actually mean.
This poses particular problems in states where rule of any sort is uncertain. The facilitation or imposition of the rule of law in fragile or conflict-affected countries has been something of a growth area since the rediscovery of the rule of law — long discredited after the failed ‘law and development’ efforts of the 1960s and 1970s — in the post-Cold War era.
Yet the enthusiasm and resources devoted to programming in this area have not been matched by much success. Rule of law is invoked as a kind of mantra, but efforts to support or promote it tend to be technical quick-fixes or rhetorical abstractions. In part this is due to the absence of agreement on a definition.
The author’s presentation (from which these brief notes are drawn) will examine the fall and rise of the rule of law, some of the lingering definitional questions, and the use and abuse of the term ‘ownership’ in particular.

While there has been a growing interest in customary justice systems among rule of law practitioners, it has remained very much at the margins of justice reform strategies. This session will challenge us to view customary justice and other forms of legal pluralism not as a side issue, but as a fundamental part of the justice landscapes in which we work. It will take a critical stance in reviewing the current range of overall policy approaches to legal pluralism and the preconceptions and assumptions that underlie those approaches. It will seek to identify and critically review how different approaches (rights-based, developmental, expanding access to justice, peace-building, state-building etc.,) tend to “frame the problem” when it comes to engagement with legal pluralism and will reflect specifically on how these approaches affect a range of key post conflict objectives. Finally it will consider the building blocks needed to define strategic objectives for engagement with legal pluralism.

This handbook is a practical guide, primarily intended for World Bank staff involved in justice sector assessments. It also may be of interest to the wider justice reform and
development community. Assessment methodologies for other sectors and justice sector assessment methodologies from other institutions have informed the handbook. As far as we could ascertain, this is the first time that practices in justice sector assessments as they have evolved have actually been described. This handbook is not the last word in assessments; rather, it is a basis for further development.

This paper will proceed in four parts. The first part will examine the basic theoretical relationship between legal systems and market-oriented poverty reduction. The second part will examine various elements of legal and judicial reform and current activities. The third part will describe a strategy framework and methodology for designing and preparing legal and judicial activities. Lastly, the fourth part will examine the role of the World Bank and the organizational mechanisms available to the Bank to ensure that its
theoretical and policy approaches are constantly refined for new circumstances and in light of new interdisciplinary research.

Legal and judicial reform is a long-term process, and for the process to be sustainable, it requires a corresponding long-term commitment from the countries. For this reason, it is critical that any effort in this area is grounded in a long-term sector strategy that includes reforms targeted at the legal and judicial system as whole and all the relevant stakeholders. Law and justice sector activities must be approached strategically, bringing together all the elements that promote the rule of law through holistic and comprehensive sector reform programs. This approach entails the following sequence:
* Legal and Judicial Sector Assessments
* Development of a comprehensive plan
* Identification of priorities and sequencing based on available capacity and in coordination with other active donors
* Dialogue with the stakeholders throughout each stage

For over a decade, the international community has been helping developing nations reform their judiciaries. The World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank have extended over $800 million in loans for judicial reform. At the same time, the United Nations Development Program, the European Union and its member states, and the American, Australian, Canadian, and Japanese governments have provided significant grant aid to help developing nations improve the operation of the judicial branch of government. Why are international donors supporting reform? What kinds of projects are included within a reform program? How can a successful reform be achieved?

This paper aims to provide a tour d’horizon of common operational initiatives and policy approaches adopted by agencies and institutions involved in the area of rule of law reform in fragile or post-conflict countries, and identify key lessons highlighted in the policy literature.

The paper reviews some of the key lessons to have emerged from the last two decades of rule of law experience, typically undertaken in fragile or post-conflict countries (and more generally in developing countries) by a multiplicity of uncoordinated actors and projects. There is a striking lack of systematic results-based evaluations of the programs, especially independent rigorous cross country evaluations, or comprehensive case studies of all the programs in a country. The rule of law expertise that exists is not centralized or institutionalized, and resides in individuals who have often learnt through trial and error. The field lacks a common foundation or basic agreement on the goals of rule of law reform, on how different aspects should be sequenced to avoid them working against each other, and fundamentally what sortsof strategies are effective. The paper highlights 11 important lessons: lack of coherent strategy and expertise; insufficient knowledge of how to bring about change; a general trend to focus on form over function; emphasis on the formal legal system over informal and traditional systems; short-term reforms in contrast to longer term strategies; wholesale vs. incremental and context-determined change; the need for local change agents; how to engender local ownership; rushed and compromised constitution making; poorly designed training and legal education programs; and the need to sequence and prioritize change.

This annex can only provide a brief overview of transitional justice measures (§ I), and summarize an argument that clarifies the aims that these measures arguably are designed to seek (§ II). This is important, in turn, in order to clarify the contributions that transitional justice can make to security and development, particularly in the context of fragility. Contrary to misconceptions, particularly on the part of non-experts, transitional justice is neither past-oriented, nor of concern to victims alone; rather, to the extent that it achieves any of its goals, it does so in virtue of its potential to affirm general but basic norms—therein its potential contributions to both security and development. The argument thus is also meant to counter the perception that transitional justice measures hamper development and reconstruction, or that transitional justice is not urgent in the aftermath of the cessation of conflict (§ III). The next section clarifies the ‘mechanisms’ through which transitional justice can be thought to make their contributions to development, emphasizing their norm affirming function, and their (related) potential to disarticulate and articulate networks (§IV). Finally, I close by showing the relevance of the foregoing analysis to the WDR and offer four cautionary notes about the approach it adopts (§V).

This speech, delivered by Amartya Sen at the first World Bank conference on Comprehensive Legal and Judicial Development, discusses the importance of legal reform within a comprehensive development framework. Legal reform advances freedom-a crucial and constitutive quality of comprehensive development. Legal reform is thus important on its own; its cause need not be indirectly established through its contribution to economic development. Legal reform is, however, also causally interconnected with other constitutive elements of comprehensive development. By acting as a platform where the poor have equal voice and by creating the backbone of the capitalist system, a sound legal system is necessary to advance political and economic development.

This Note approaches the interplay of formal and informal justice systems and their respective merits by focussing on the justice needs of people. Needs, as expressed through the demand for justice services, has been neglected by the donor community as a factor in informing approaches and attitudes towards plural legal systems. Instead much of the current debate, both in academia and in the communities of law and development practitioners, has run along quasi-ideological lines, with positions often rooted in beliefs and anecdotes but not in evidence.

More than 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by violent conflict.
The World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development examines the changing nature of violence in the 21st century, and underlines the negative impact of repeated cycles of violence on a country or region’s development prospects. Preventing violence and building peaceful states that respond to the aspirations of their citizens requires strong leadership and concerted national and international efforts. The Report is based on new research, case studies and extensive consultations with leaders and development practitioners throughout the world.

World Bank copyright Holder: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank: World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development (2011)

This paper reports on a consultative dialogue between the World Bank and Australia’s whole-of-government spectrum of institutions, with a focus on development actors ‘hearing’ the security perspective. In this, we join a growing process of dialogue between ‘accidental partners’ – development and security actors, unfamiliar with each other but faced with the same challenge of being engaged in fragile and conflict-affected environments. It presents the results of this consultative dialogue: (1) describing models of engagement from Australia’s operational experience integrating security and development, extracted from the experience in Solomon Islands and Bougainville (2) raising issues about knowing each other and working together, and (3) identifying emerging themes at the junction of security and development, and offering practical ideas to take further.

Security is not only a central issue for Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development, it has critical implications for the country’s management of its public finances. This paper by Peter Middlebrook, Nicole Ball, William Byrd and Christopher Ward, reviews Afghanistan’s security sector from the perspective of public finance management (PFM) and development. The Afghan security sector must be integrated into all aspects of the country’s PFM system and subject to all budgetary and fiduciary processes.

Security impacts the gamut of development issues faced by Afghanistan, ranging from state building and capacity development to revenue collection, security delivery and encouraging private sector-led growth. Both the Afghanistan government and external partners highlight security as a key enabling factor for the country’s growth and development. There is a critical need for reliable security to allow the Afghan people to conduct their daily lives in relative safety.

The Afghan security sector accounted for 40% of the country’s national budget as well as external assistance during the years under review, and raises major public finance management issues. In view of these issues, the Government of Afghanistan requested that the World Bank (WB) include the security sector in its PFM Review. This paper is one of five volumes comprising the WB Review titled “Afghanistan: Managing Public Finances for Development”.

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The objective is to strengthen policy and operational dialogue on security sector issues by providing national and international stakeholders with the information needed to engage in dialogue on security expenditure policy. The Sourcebook will help inform this dialogue by providing public finance practitioners with a framework for the analysis of financial management, financial oversight and expenditure policy issues in the security sector. The primary audience for the Sourcebook is the staff of international organizations working on public expenditure management and security sector issues and high level government officials. The Sourcebook is expected to reach a broader audience through the process of policy dialogue and training. The audience includes World Bank staff asked to assist in expenditure analysis related to the security sector and the staff of international organizations and development agencies directly involved in security sector reform. However, taking into account World Bank policy the Sourcebook will clearly define the role of World Bank staff in the expenditure review process.

The Sourcebook will be jointly developed by the World Bank, the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI) within the United Nations Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with each partner relying on their respective mandates, competencies and experience.

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Provision of security is both a core function of the state and a necessary condition for the delivery of other essential services and investments for poverty reduction. Improving the effectiveness and accountability of security provision is therefore becoming an increasingly important element of Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) in countries emerging from conflict.

This note aims to clarify the challenges for integrating security sector priorities into PRSs by drawing on existing and emerging knowledge and practice in conflict-affected countries. Introduced in the late 1990s, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are standard tools for developing countries to articulate medium-term macroeconomic and social policies for growth and poverty reduction. Countries take the lead in setting a development plan, while the World Bank and other donors align their assistance programs with those national strategies.
This note focuses specifically on the World Bank’s role in supporting governments during the preparation of PRSs and discusses entry points for engagement in the security sector drawing from experience in a mix of conflictaffected countries. It is intended to serve as a resource for World Bank country teams and their national counterparts when designing PRS processes in countries where improved security has emerged as a national priority.

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