Building the Rule of Law in Fragile States: The Role of External Actors in Shaping Institutional Responses to Mass Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa

In DR Congo and South Africa, men, women and children have suffered the consequences of an extraordinary increase in gender-based violence over the past two decades. In DR Congo, despite seemingly insurmountable logistical challenges, courts have produced groundbreaking jurisprudence on this issue. Ironically, in South Africa, a country with a far stronger judicial infrastructure and legislative framework than DR Congo, courts have remained notably hostile to a variety of gender-related issues. This project examined variation in domestic judicial responses to sexual and gender-based violence in the Congolese and South African experiences, despite similar levels of domestic and international advocacy and media attention in both cases.;The project asked: under what conditions are domestic and international laws invoked by local courts to protect victims of gender violence? And to what extent can increased criminal accountability strengthen national legal systems and mitigate violence? I argue that, contrary to expectations, state fragility in DR Congo has facilitated rather than obstructed the production of frequent and high quality human rights rulings in this area. I find that state fragility has created openings for domestic and transnational actors to exert direct influence over judicial processes at multiple levels of governance, resulting in the surprisingly sensitive treatment of the issue by the country's courts. In stark contrast, a relatively strong central state and well-resourced judiciary in South Africa has meant that activists have struggled to overcome deeply institutionalized political resistance and conservative attitudes towards gender violence that pervade the justice system.;The project concludes with a discussion of some of the limitations of legal advocacy that has occurred at the very peripheries of broader state-building projects. Observations from DR Congo suggest that legal development projects pioneered by external actors, without sufficient participation from the central state, may ultimately serve to compromise and undermine the stated objectives of programs intended to build the rule of law.