July 29, 2025

Human Rights in Contemporary Societies

Sílvia Roque e Georg Klute

This thesis analyses justice development cooperation in Guinea-Bissau, with particular emphasis on the engagement with non-state justice practices and access to justice. I explore justice development cooperation projects from 2007 to 2021, studying their discourses and practices to disclose how they are designed, negotiated and implemented, and the ways they interact with state and non-state justice practices. I also investigate the dynamics of dispute processing occurring within a Centre of Access to Justice - an international model introduced in Guinea-Bissau through donor supported projects.Part I sets the context of the research, including a historical perspective on the role of justice within state politics from late colonial times to the present, in Guinea-Bissau. Part II presents a panorama of justice development initiatives, looking at two of the main models implemented during the last decade: engagement with non-state justice practices and actors and Centres of Access to Justice. I explore the making of projects, narratives about change, the negotiation of ownership, participation and validation, and the role of intermediaries. I study the challenges of engaging with the non-state realm and translating local practices into western concepts, as well as the dynamics of reception, refusal, and appropriation that are inherent in the transfer of development models. Part III presents an ethnography of dispute processing that illustrates how development cooperation projects translate into local practices.I build on the intersections between different fields of knowledge focusing on daily practices of justice development cooperation, their relationship to a post-colonial state and to the justice sector and its practices. The need to incorporate contributions from different sources and various disciplines places this research in an interdisciplinary arena. I adopt a mixed-methods approach resorting to discourse analysis, ethnography and to the extended case method.The thesis contributes to the study of justice development, with an innovative approach that integrates justice development cooperation and state and non-state dispute processing practices. Therefore, the present study contributes to the existing literature by advancing the knowledge of justice development cooperation, legal pluralism, and dispute processing. It endeavours to establish a basis for understanding whether and how justice development cooperation enhances access to justice.

Keywords: Dispute processing; Guinea-Bissau; Justice Development; Legal Pluralism; Non-state actors