Abstract
Since the 1990s, there has been a well-documented proliferation of international legal institutions as well as Rule-of-Law projects established in a variety of post-conflict settings. Advocates of this development argue that aside from assisting to build economically and politically stable and secure regimes, these interventions hold an emancipatory potential for marginalized populations across the globe. Meanwhile, critics point to the elitism and inefficacy of international institutions and law. They highlight the potential for these interventions to reproduce processes of cultural, political and economic domination.
In this chapter, I explore the ways in which international legal interventions engage with the subaltern subject. Focusing on the work of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, I will show how international legal discourses continue to marginalize the subaltern through either failing to include her perspective or, where attempts are made, by only being able to hear what we expect to hear. However, I also seek to show that this is not the entire picture. Indeed to focus only on this, as I myself and many other critical scholars have, is in fact reproducing a particular power dynamic. Instead, I conclude by suggesting that a shift towards analyzing the strategic ways in which subaltern subjects engage (and disengage) with the Enlightenment ideas embodied in international law opens up an important and productive site of resistance.
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Notes
- 1.
While admittedly this ‘mission to civilise’ was often invoked cynically to sanitise more ruthless aims of economic and military exploitation—a criticism that has similarly been made of US interventionism in recent times—at least within French imperialism, historians have argued that the ‘civilising mission’ cannot be excluded from one of the core justifications for colonization (Conklin 1997).
- 2.
- 3.
RUF stands for the Revolutionary United Front, the rebel group led by Foday Sankoh. Of five initial indictees, three alleged ‘leaders’ were prosecuted from this group: Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao.
- 4.
AFRC stands for the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, a group of military personnel who staged a coup in 1997 and, after being ousted, fled to the countryside where they sporadically fought against and with the RUF. Three individuals were indicted from this group: Alex Tamba Brima, Ibrahim Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu.
- 5.
Interviews were conducted with human rights and women’s rights organisations in Sierra Leone in 2006 and 2011.
- 6.
AFRC Trial Chamber Judgment, Partly Dissenting Opinion of Justice Doherty on Count 7 (Sexual Slavery) and Count 8 (Forced Marriage) at para. 49.
- 7.
Separate and Concurring Opinion of Justice Doherty on Prosecution Request for Leave to Call an Additional Witness Pursuant to Rule 73bis (E) and Joint Defence Application to Exclude this Expert Evidence of Zainab Hawa Bangura or Alternatively to Cross-Examine Her Pursuant to Rule 94bis, 21 October 2005, Case No.SCSL-04-16-PT, at para. 5.
- 8.
Decision on Prosecution Request for Leave to call an Additional Witness (Zainab Hawa Bangura) pursuant to Rule 73 bis (E), and on Joint Defence Notice to inform the Trial Chamber of its position vis-à-vis the proposed Expert Witness (Mrs. Bangura) pursuant to Rule 94 bis.
- 9.
AFRC transcript of hearing, 3 October 2005, p85, lines 20–22. http://www.rscsl.org/Documents/Transcripts/AFRC/AFRC-100305.pdf. Accessed 2 Nov 2015.
- 10.
Ibid., 97, lines 15–17.
- 11.
Ibid. 86, lines 10–14.
- 12.
Ibid., 5–20.
- 13.
Ibid., 52.
- 14.
Ibid., 20, lines 1–2; see also 53, lines 17–27.
- 15.
Ibid., 51–52.
- 16.
Ibid., 53, lines 13–15.
- 17.
And indeed, the ethnographic studies of ‘bush wives’ suggest a much more complex and ambiguous experience with some achieving significant power within the rebel force, perpetrating serious acts of violence themselves and in some cases falling in love with their husbands and remaining with them after the war: see for example Coulter’s (2009) fascinating study.
- 18.
In 2007 the Sierra Leonean parliament passed the Domestic Violence Act, The Devolution of Estates Act and The Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act: 3 of a suite of legislation drafted and lobbied for by a wide range of local and international civil society actors.
- 19.
It was finally passed in 2012: UN Women (2012).
- 20.
For interesting discussion of the much more complex, fluid and contingent process of norm internalization, see Acharya (2004).
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Grewal, K. (2016). Can the Subaltern Speak within International Law? Women’s Rights Activism, International Legal Institutions and the Power of ‘Strategic Misunderstanding’. In: Dhawan, N., Fink, E., Leinius, J., Mageza-Barthel, R. (eds) Negotiating Normativity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30984-2_2
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