Negotiating law in the peripheries of Southern Ethiopia

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The project will focus on how the recent enforcement of state law in Southern Ethiopia is negotiated between a previously rather remote community and the local government officials many of whom are native to the area.Ethiopia was never colonized and introduced its modern codified law only in the 1960s, assimilating customary laws of the then dominant highland groups as much as possible. At that time, the study area in the southern lowlands has only marginally been included into the nation state and until today conflicts are still almost exclusively resolved locally. Recently the government began to put pressure for a stricter implementation of state law in all territories. Yet, as the new Ethiopian constitution of 1995 grants equal treatment for all ethnic groups and cultures and allows to some extent the application of customary law, room is left for negotiation and a creative handling of conflicts, both on the side of service seekers and also service providers.The research will specifically focus on1) decision making processes in the local community in which legal forum (locally or in court) to choose2) differences in the choices men and women might make and the benefits they attain3) areas of negotiation with government authorities who navigate between two contradicting value systems (state law and customary law)4) direct and indirect presence of international law (especially human rights) in the study area and its influence on the decision making processes of both, legal service seekers and service providers.Data will be collected doing ethnographic fieldwork, using mostly qualitative methods (observation, structured and unstructured interviews, group discussions, extended case studies) addressing multiple actors' perspectives. Legal documents will be reviewed at different levels of the Ethiopian federal state.The study will contribute to the growing literature on the creative handling of legally plural situations; to (re-)formation or hybridization of normative orders the perspective of different stakeholders, it will also contribute to a more gendered view on African legal pluralism.