Strong NGOs and Weak States: Pursuing Gender Justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa
2018. Cambridge University Press
Strong NGOs and Weak States examines responses to gender-based crimes by domestic courts in South Africa's Western Cape and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). I argue that state fragility in eastern DR Congo has created opportunity structures for non-state actors to exert considerable influence over legal processes in ways that have not been possible in South Africa. In eastern DR Congo, interventions by NGOs and other non-state actors have led to a number of striking developments in the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence. However, while external interventions in DR Congo provide important opportunities for victims of gendered crimes to seek remedy, redress, and recognition through the legal system, targeted attention to gender violence by the legal system has also created a number of unintended consequences.
See also: "Women’s Rights in Weak States: The Promises and Pitfalls of Gender Advocacy in Transition” Africa At LSE. 2018.
Other work
Related projects examine the manipulation of internationally supported human rights prosecutions in eastern DR Congo by elites and armed actors involved in the conflict; the repercussions of gender violence prosecutions for victims of violent crime; the impacts of criminal prosecutions and gender outreach in changing local behavior and attitudes vis-à-vis gender issues and attitudes towards state and customary institutions for dispute resolution; and research ethics in fieldwork in fragile or post-conflict states. Works in progress include a project on men and masculinity in eastern DR Congo; and a project on policing and local dispute resolution.
Walking the Line: Navigating Humanitarian Identity in Conflict Research
Civil Wars Vol. 21: 2.
With Alfred Banga, Ghislain Cimanuka, Jean De Dieu Hategekimana, Chloé Lewis, Rachael Pierotti
Increasingly, academic research in conflict-affected contexts relies on support from humanitarian organizations. Humanitarian organizations constitute sites of study in and of themselves; they partner with academics to roll out surveys or randomized program interventions; and they frequently facilitate security, logistics and transportation for independent researchers. These relationships often manifest as partnerships between academics based in the global north and their local research brokers. We use a research partnership between IRC, the World Bank, and academic researchers and research brokers in eastern DR Congo, to explore the effects of humanitarian affiliation on conflict field research. While foreign passports afford international researchers an exit strategy should conflict violence threaten their field sites, international and humanitarian affiliations afford local brokers protections often denied to their research subjects. In investigating when, how and under what conditions international / humanitarian identities are adopted by research brokers (and how these affiliations shape research dynamics) we identify three paradoxes inherent within these partnerships. First, we explore the ways in which the security and protection international affiliations afford local research brokers in volatile research sites can undermine their “insider” status in the minds of their research participants. Second, visibly porting humanitarian identities to facilitate research logistics and access, while establishing neutrality and impartiality as independent researchers, can pose methodological challenges. Finally, working through humanitarian organizations allows local and international researchers to benefit from the protections and privileges afforded to humanitarian employees while denying the services those organizations are known to offer. In this article we map out the calculations made by local and international researchers about when to adopt and discard humanitarian identities, and the fraught ethical and methodological consequences of these decisions.
"Ethics Abroad: Research and Field Methods in Areas of Limited Statehood"
2018. Political Science and Politics (51: 3)
With Kate Cronin-Furman
The diversity of political spaces, availability of cheap labor for research assistance, ease of access to powerful figures, and the safety net of a foreign passport attract researchers to the developing world. However, environments of extreme state weakness and/or ongoing conflict permit research practices that would not be acceptable back home. This piece explores and critically assesses approaches adopted by foreign academics in carrying out research in environments of weak regulatory authority, suggesting that such contexts provide unique opportunities to researchers that would not be available in states with greater reach or capacity. For example, qualitative researchers may find that no one objects to their request to interview vulnerable child victims of sexual assault. Experimenters may be able to coerce poorly-funded local NGOs to pursue interventions at odds with their organizational mandates. We argue that, while studying politics in such settings reveals core aspects of political life not easily observed elsewhere, environments of state fragility and weakness frequently constitute permissive environments where researchers can engage in conduct that would be considered deeply problematic at home. The article highlights some of the common challenges and dilemmas faced by academic researchers in the field, and identifies a number of questions that researchers, readers, reviewers, and editors should ask themselves when faced with evaluating such work.
See also: "The Ethics of Fieldwork Preparedness" With Sarah Parkinson (2017; Political Violence at a Glance)
"Equality on His Terms: Doing and Undoing Gender Through Men's Discussion Groups"
2018. Gender & Society (32: 4)
With Rachael Pierotti and Chloé Lewis
Efforts to promote gender equality often encourage changes to interpersonal interactions as a way of undermining gender hierarchy. Such programs are premised on the idea that the gender system can be “undone” when individuals behave in ways that challenge prevailing gender norms. However, scholars know little about whether and under what conditions real changes to the gender system can result from changed behaviors (Deutsch 2007; Risman 2009). We use the context of a gender sensitization program in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to examine prospects for transformative change at the interactional level of the gender system. Over nine months, we observed significant changes in men’s quotidian practices. Further, we identified a new commitment among many men to a more equal division of household labor. However, participants consistently undermined the transformative potential of these behavioral changes through their dedication to maintaining control over the objective, process, and meaning of change, resisting conceptions of equality that challenged the gender system. Because quotidian changes left gender hierarchy intact, they appear unlikely to destabilize the logics that legitimate women’s subordination.
"Deploying Justice: Strategic Accountability for Wartime Rape”
2018. International Studies Quarterly (Vol 64: 1)
With Meredith Loken and Kate Cronin Furman
The use of rape as a weapon of war was infrequent in Sri Lanka’s civil war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) famously refrained from sexual violence in combat and, while government soldiers perpetrated acts of rape, these were periodically met with condemnation. Prior work has shown that organizational control within military command structures is crucial in preventing unwanted acts of opportunistic sexual violence. Yet we know little about why elites choose to prohibit sexual violence in their ranks, and why government forces publicly condemned sexual violence when it occurred in Sri Lanka. We argue that the symbolic stance against rape in conflict in Sri Lanka served as a mechanism to garner domestic political legitimacy. Government decision-makers in particular utilized symbolic accountability for high-profile acts of sexual violence to mobilize support for a heavily gendered nationalism at a time when support for the government was waning. Through our analysis of the response to sexual violence within the Sri Lankan army, we call attention to the ways in which wartime sexual violence can be instrumentalized to serve a variety of military ends, demonstrating that women’s bodies can be used as tools of conflict in more ways than one.
"Gender Politics After War: Mobilizing Opportunity in Post-Conflict Africa"
2017. Politics & Gender. Volume 13. Issue 2.
With Marie Berry
See also: "Women and Power After War" @ Political Violence at a Glance
In recent decades, the devastating and disproportionate toll that armed conflict wreaks on the lives of women has garnered considerable and much-needed attention. Less studied, however, are the openings and opportunities brought about through war, which have the potential to disrupt and fundamentally reorder gender relations in the aftermath of conflict. These processes, neglected until recently in scholarship on post-conflict transition, can – and have – resulted in surprisingly positive outcomes for women’s rights and political representation. While the research of the past two decades has directed necessary attention to the fact that women’s bodies often constitute the battlefields on which wars of national aggression are fought, this earlier literature typically maintained an almost exclusive focus on female harm and victimhood. In doing so, it risked obscuring female agency, disregarding the many and varied roles women have occupied during and after conflict, and overlooking opportunities for empowerment – in addition to marginalization – that can be born out of the devastation of war.
"Building the Rule of War: Postconflict Institutions and the Micro-Dynamics of Conflict in Eastern DR Congo"
2017. International Organization (17: 2)
Why have peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts so frequently failed to create durable institutions that can deter or withstand resurgent violence in volatile sites of cyclical conflict? Extant theory predicts that new institutions can help overcome violence and mitigate commitment problems in post-conflict contexts by reducing uncertainty in inherently uncertain environments. On the contrary, this article argues that post-conflict institutions often prove limited in their abilities to contribute to durable peace because they offer wartime elites new venues in which to pursue conflict-era agendas. Through a micro-analysis of efforts to build the rule of law in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the article demonstrates that wartime elites capture and instrumentalize new legal institutions in order to maximize their intra- and interorganizational survival, pursue economic, military and political agendas behind the scenes and, in some cases, to prepare for an imminent return to war.
Institutional Legitimacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
With Sarah Dreier. 2019. Democratization
How do positive and negative experiences with courts and police across sub-Saharan Africa shape confidence in public institutions? In order to build stable political systems and a robust rule of law, ordinary citizens must espouse faith in the institutions of the state (McClymont and Golub 2000; North 1990; Rothstein and Stolle 2008; Seligson 2002). Yet we know little about what shapes and sustains this confidence and at what point it breaks down. We use Afrobarometer 6 to explore the effects of long delays, unequal treatment, exorbitant fees, and limited access, on public trust in legal institutions across 28 countries. While negative first-hand experiences erode trust in specific institutions, the reported legitimacy of the state typically remains unchanged. Our research thus reveals a crucial distinction between trust and legitimacy, demonstrating that western legal institutions are stable, embedded and ubiquitous in the minds of citizens across Africa.
"Gendering Justice? Opportunity and (dis)Empowerment through Legal Development Aid in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo". 2016. Law & Society Review. Volume 50, Issue 3 (Lead Article)
With Ilot Muthaka (Congo Men's Network) and Gabriella Walker (National Health Service).
Why have women in eastern DR Congo increasingly turned to domestic courts in the aftermath of sexual violence, despite the fact that the state has consistently failed to provide basic goods and services to its citizens? Moreover, how do victims of violence interpret their first encounters with state law in an environment characterized by institutional fragility and humanitarian governance? This article analyzes the experiences and reflections of 50 self-reported victims of sexual violence in eastern DR Congo. We find that human rights NGOs have served as critical mediators in persuading victims of violence to pursue legal remedy for sexual crimes. However, rather than being socialized to prioritize formal accountability mechanisms in precisely the ways that the architects of legal outreach programs intended, we find that victims of violence have turned to the law for a combination of material and ideational factors. Some appear to have internalized emerging norms of punitive criminal justice, while others have adopted the language of law instrumentally, in order to access crucial socio-material benefits. We identify a paradox of opportunity and disempowerment, therefore, that characterizes our interviewees' experiences with the law.
"Organizing Hypocrisy: Providing Legal Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Areas of Limited Statehood". 2014. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 58, Issue 3, Pages 515–526
In recent years, courts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) have produced some of the most progressive judicial decisions against perpetrators of gender violence of anywhere in the world. Yet, DR Congo is often described as the archetypal collapsed state. This article uses a case study of domestic courts in Eastern DR Congo to analyze how and why complex functions of domestic governance—such as the production of frequent and high-quality judicial decisions by domestic courts—are able to persist, even flourish, in an area where the state is characterized by extreme fragility and weakness. I argue that, rather than a decoupling of law and practice as previous approaches might predict, state fragility in DR Congo has created openings for domestic and transnational actors to exert direct influence over judicial processes at multiple levels of governance. The involvement of external actors in the domestic authority structures of states has resulted in surprisingly progressive human rights outcomes in certain issue areas. However, the article also documents some of the unintended consequences of human rights developments that occur at the very peripheries of broader state-building projects.
"Ending Impunity for Gender-Based Crimes: A Case Study of the International Criminal Court and Complementarity in the Democratic Republic of Congo". 2014. African Conflict and Peace-building Review (Vol 4:1).
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 2002 to combat impunity for the most serious crimes of international concern. It seeks to do so in two ways: through a series of high-profile cases in The Hague, intended to deter future war criminals; and through its complementarity mechanism, which equips national legal systems to prosecute ICC crimes domestically. Through a case study of the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this article examines efforts by various stakeholders to realize the legal complementarity principle embedded in the Rome Statute. The article argues that the domestic prosecution of ICC crimes requires developments in four distinct areas: legislative reform, institutional reform, education and training, and the building of public trust and participation. The research also reveals that where developments in these areas have occurred, they have been propelled by a variety of domestic and international stakeholders. However, the ICC itself has failed to contribute significantly to the realization of complementarity that is central to achieving its mandate.
Labor rights and the politics of global supply chains
Another related area of inquiry focuses on the protection and promotion of labor rights. Together with Anne Greenleaf and Margaret Levi, I developed a public archive documenting successful negotiations between global brands and unions representing subcontracted employees subject to labor violations. The Brand Responsibility Project, concerned with issues of corporate social responsibility and the behavior of global brands in the apparel industry, sought to identify the strategies and tactics used to successfully pressure corporations to assume responsibility over labor violations committed against workers in their supply chain. Together with a team of researchers, we have investigated the relationship between state capacity and protections for workers, and the conditions under which governments and corporations actively promote higher labor standards. Read our background report for the 2013 World Development Report here, an examination of the influence of left-leaning political representation on the protection of labor rights here, and our review of scholarly literature on working conditions and rights here.
Research interests:
2018. Cambridge University Press
Strong NGOs and Weak States examines responses to gender-based crimes by domestic courts in South Africa's Western Cape and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). I argue that state fragility in eastern DR Congo has created opportunity structures for non-state actors to exert considerable influence over legal processes in ways that have not been possible in South Africa. In eastern DR Congo, interventions by NGOs and other non-state actors have led to a number of striking developments in the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence. However, while external interventions in DR Congo provide important opportunities for victims of gendered crimes to seek remedy, redress, and recognition through the legal system, targeted attention to gender violence by the legal system has also created a number of unintended consequences.
See also: "Women’s Rights in Weak States: The Promises and Pitfalls of Gender Advocacy in Transition” Africa At LSE. 2018.
Other work
Related projects examine the manipulation of internationally supported human rights prosecutions in eastern DR Congo by elites and armed actors involved in the conflict; the repercussions of gender violence prosecutions for victims of violent crime; the impacts of criminal prosecutions and gender outreach in changing local behavior and attitudes vis-à-vis gender issues and attitudes towards state and customary institutions for dispute resolution; and research ethics in fieldwork in fragile or post-conflict states. Works in progress include a project on men and masculinity in eastern DR Congo; and a project on policing and local dispute resolution.
Walking the Line: Navigating Humanitarian Identity in Conflict Research
Civil Wars Vol. 21: 2.
With Alfred Banga, Ghislain Cimanuka, Jean De Dieu Hategekimana, Chloé Lewis, Rachael Pierotti
Increasingly, academic research in conflict-affected contexts relies on support from humanitarian organizations. Humanitarian organizations constitute sites of study in and of themselves; they partner with academics to roll out surveys or randomized program interventions; and they frequently facilitate security, logistics and transportation for independent researchers. These relationships often manifest as partnerships between academics based in the global north and their local research brokers. We use a research partnership between IRC, the World Bank, and academic researchers and research brokers in eastern DR Congo, to explore the effects of humanitarian affiliation on conflict field research. While foreign passports afford international researchers an exit strategy should conflict violence threaten their field sites, international and humanitarian affiliations afford local brokers protections often denied to their research subjects. In investigating when, how and under what conditions international / humanitarian identities are adopted by research brokers (and how these affiliations shape research dynamics) we identify three paradoxes inherent within these partnerships. First, we explore the ways in which the security and protection international affiliations afford local research brokers in volatile research sites can undermine their “insider” status in the minds of their research participants. Second, visibly porting humanitarian identities to facilitate research logistics and access, while establishing neutrality and impartiality as independent researchers, can pose methodological challenges. Finally, working through humanitarian organizations allows local and international researchers to benefit from the protections and privileges afforded to humanitarian employees while denying the services those organizations are known to offer. In this article we map out the calculations made by local and international researchers about when to adopt and discard humanitarian identities, and the fraught ethical and methodological consequences of these decisions.
"Ethics Abroad: Research and Field Methods in Areas of Limited Statehood"
2018. Political Science and Politics (51: 3)
With Kate Cronin-Furman
The diversity of political spaces, availability of cheap labor for research assistance, ease of access to powerful figures, and the safety net of a foreign passport attract researchers to the developing world. However, environments of extreme state weakness and/or ongoing conflict permit research practices that would not be acceptable back home. This piece explores and critically assesses approaches adopted by foreign academics in carrying out research in environments of weak regulatory authority, suggesting that such contexts provide unique opportunities to researchers that would not be available in states with greater reach or capacity. For example, qualitative researchers may find that no one objects to their request to interview vulnerable child victims of sexual assault. Experimenters may be able to coerce poorly-funded local NGOs to pursue interventions at odds with their organizational mandates. We argue that, while studying politics in such settings reveals core aspects of political life not easily observed elsewhere, environments of state fragility and weakness frequently constitute permissive environments where researchers can engage in conduct that would be considered deeply problematic at home. The article highlights some of the common challenges and dilemmas faced by academic researchers in the field, and identifies a number of questions that researchers, readers, reviewers, and editors should ask themselves when faced with evaluating such work.
See also: "The Ethics of Fieldwork Preparedness" With Sarah Parkinson (2017; Political Violence at a Glance)
"Equality on His Terms: Doing and Undoing Gender Through Men's Discussion Groups"
2018. Gender & Society (32: 4)
With Rachael Pierotti and Chloé Lewis
Efforts to promote gender equality often encourage changes to interpersonal interactions as a way of undermining gender hierarchy. Such programs are premised on the idea that the gender system can be “undone” when individuals behave in ways that challenge prevailing gender norms. However, scholars know little about whether and under what conditions real changes to the gender system can result from changed behaviors (Deutsch 2007; Risman 2009). We use the context of a gender sensitization program in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to examine prospects for transformative change at the interactional level of the gender system. Over nine months, we observed significant changes in men’s quotidian practices. Further, we identified a new commitment among many men to a more equal division of household labor. However, participants consistently undermined the transformative potential of these behavioral changes through their dedication to maintaining control over the objective, process, and meaning of change, resisting conceptions of equality that challenged the gender system. Because quotidian changes left gender hierarchy intact, they appear unlikely to destabilize the logics that legitimate women’s subordination.
"Deploying Justice: Strategic Accountability for Wartime Rape”
2018. International Studies Quarterly (Vol 64: 1)
With Meredith Loken and Kate Cronin Furman
The use of rape as a weapon of war was infrequent in Sri Lanka’s civil war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) famously refrained from sexual violence in combat and, while government soldiers perpetrated acts of rape, these were periodically met with condemnation. Prior work has shown that organizational control within military command structures is crucial in preventing unwanted acts of opportunistic sexual violence. Yet we know little about why elites choose to prohibit sexual violence in their ranks, and why government forces publicly condemned sexual violence when it occurred in Sri Lanka. We argue that the symbolic stance against rape in conflict in Sri Lanka served as a mechanism to garner domestic political legitimacy. Government decision-makers in particular utilized symbolic accountability for high-profile acts of sexual violence to mobilize support for a heavily gendered nationalism at a time when support for the government was waning. Through our analysis of the response to sexual violence within the Sri Lankan army, we call attention to the ways in which wartime sexual violence can be instrumentalized to serve a variety of military ends, demonstrating that women’s bodies can be used as tools of conflict in more ways than one.
"Gender Politics After War: Mobilizing Opportunity in Post-Conflict Africa"
2017. Politics & Gender. Volume 13. Issue 2.
With Marie Berry
See also: "Women and Power After War" @ Political Violence at a Glance
In recent decades, the devastating and disproportionate toll that armed conflict wreaks on the lives of women has garnered considerable and much-needed attention. Less studied, however, are the openings and opportunities brought about through war, which have the potential to disrupt and fundamentally reorder gender relations in the aftermath of conflict. These processes, neglected until recently in scholarship on post-conflict transition, can – and have – resulted in surprisingly positive outcomes for women’s rights and political representation. While the research of the past two decades has directed necessary attention to the fact that women’s bodies often constitute the battlefields on which wars of national aggression are fought, this earlier literature typically maintained an almost exclusive focus on female harm and victimhood. In doing so, it risked obscuring female agency, disregarding the many and varied roles women have occupied during and after conflict, and overlooking opportunities for empowerment – in addition to marginalization – that can be born out of the devastation of war.
"Building the Rule of War: Postconflict Institutions and the Micro-Dynamics of Conflict in Eastern DR Congo"
2017. International Organization (17: 2)
Why have peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts so frequently failed to create durable institutions that can deter or withstand resurgent violence in volatile sites of cyclical conflict? Extant theory predicts that new institutions can help overcome violence and mitigate commitment problems in post-conflict contexts by reducing uncertainty in inherently uncertain environments. On the contrary, this article argues that post-conflict institutions often prove limited in their abilities to contribute to durable peace because they offer wartime elites new venues in which to pursue conflict-era agendas. Through a micro-analysis of efforts to build the rule of law in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the article demonstrates that wartime elites capture and instrumentalize new legal institutions in order to maximize their intra- and interorganizational survival, pursue economic, military and political agendas behind the scenes and, in some cases, to prepare for an imminent return to war.
Institutional Legitimacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
With Sarah Dreier. 2019. Democratization
How do positive and negative experiences with courts and police across sub-Saharan Africa shape confidence in public institutions? In order to build stable political systems and a robust rule of law, ordinary citizens must espouse faith in the institutions of the state (McClymont and Golub 2000; North 1990; Rothstein and Stolle 2008; Seligson 2002). Yet we know little about what shapes and sustains this confidence and at what point it breaks down. We use Afrobarometer 6 to explore the effects of long delays, unequal treatment, exorbitant fees, and limited access, on public trust in legal institutions across 28 countries. While negative first-hand experiences erode trust in specific institutions, the reported legitimacy of the state typically remains unchanged. Our research thus reveals a crucial distinction between trust and legitimacy, demonstrating that western legal institutions are stable, embedded and ubiquitous in the minds of citizens across Africa.
"Gendering Justice? Opportunity and (dis)Empowerment through Legal Development Aid in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo". 2016. Law & Society Review. Volume 50, Issue 3 (Lead Article)
With Ilot Muthaka (Congo Men's Network) and Gabriella Walker (National Health Service).
Why have women in eastern DR Congo increasingly turned to domestic courts in the aftermath of sexual violence, despite the fact that the state has consistently failed to provide basic goods and services to its citizens? Moreover, how do victims of violence interpret their first encounters with state law in an environment characterized by institutional fragility and humanitarian governance? This article analyzes the experiences and reflections of 50 self-reported victims of sexual violence in eastern DR Congo. We find that human rights NGOs have served as critical mediators in persuading victims of violence to pursue legal remedy for sexual crimes. However, rather than being socialized to prioritize formal accountability mechanisms in precisely the ways that the architects of legal outreach programs intended, we find that victims of violence have turned to the law for a combination of material and ideational factors. Some appear to have internalized emerging norms of punitive criminal justice, while others have adopted the language of law instrumentally, in order to access crucial socio-material benefits. We identify a paradox of opportunity and disempowerment, therefore, that characterizes our interviewees' experiences with the law.
"Organizing Hypocrisy: Providing Legal Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Areas of Limited Statehood". 2014. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 58, Issue 3, Pages 515–526
In recent years, courts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) have produced some of the most progressive judicial decisions against perpetrators of gender violence of anywhere in the world. Yet, DR Congo is often described as the archetypal collapsed state. This article uses a case study of domestic courts in Eastern DR Congo to analyze how and why complex functions of domestic governance—such as the production of frequent and high-quality judicial decisions by domestic courts—are able to persist, even flourish, in an area where the state is characterized by extreme fragility and weakness. I argue that, rather than a decoupling of law and practice as previous approaches might predict, state fragility in DR Congo has created openings for domestic and transnational actors to exert direct influence over judicial processes at multiple levels of governance. The involvement of external actors in the domestic authority structures of states has resulted in surprisingly progressive human rights outcomes in certain issue areas. However, the article also documents some of the unintended consequences of human rights developments that occur at the very peripheries of broader state-building projects.
"Ending Impunity for Gender-Based Crimes: A Case Study of the International Criminal Court and Complementarity in the Democratic Republic of Congo". 2014. African Conflict and Peace-building Review (Vol 4:1).
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 2002 to combat impunity for the most serious crimes of international concern. It seeks to do so in two ways: through a series of high-profile cases in The Hague, intended to deter future war criminals; and through its complementarity mechanism, which equips national legal systems to prosecute ICC crimes domestically. Through a case study of the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this article examines efforts by various stakeholders to realize the legal complementarity principle embedded in the Rome Statute. The article argues that the domestic prosecution of ICC crimes requires developments in four distinct areas: legislative reform, institutional reform, education and training, and the building of public trust and participation. The research also reveals that where developments in these areas have occurred, they have been propelled by a variety of domestic and international stakeholders. However, the ICC itself has failed to contribute significantly to the realization of complementarity that is central to achieving its mandate.
Labor rights and the politics of global supply chains
Another related area of inquiry focuses on the protection and promotion of labor rights. Together with Anne Greenleaf and Margaret Levi, I developed a public archive documenting successful negotiations between global brands and unions representing subcontracted employees subject to labor violations. The Brand Responsibility Project, concerned with issues of corporate social responsibility and the behavior of global brands in the apparel industry, sought to identify the strategies and tactics used to successfully pressure corporations to assume responsibility over labor violations committed against workers in their supply chain. Together with a team of researchers, we have investigated the relationship between state capacity and protections for workers, and the conditions under which governments and corporations actively promote higher labor standards. Read our background report for the 2013 World Development Report here, an examination of the influence of left-leaning political representation on the protection of labor rights here, and our review of scholarly literature on working conditions and rights here.
Research interests:
- Institutions
- African politics
- State building
- Rule of law
- Gender
- Transitional justice
- Human rights
- Labor rights