Volume: Volume 25 (2021) Special Issue

Article type: Refereed article

Author/s: Lea Mwambene, Adam Dubin, David Lawson

Building on the book ‘Gender, poverty and access to justice: policy implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa’ (Lawson, Dubin and Mwambene (eds) (2020), this special volume of essays is the result of the Conference in Cape Town (October 2019), whose main objective was to investigate the intersection of gendered access to justice, poverty and disempowerment across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and provide field-based research and discussions on what does and does not work to improve justice for women and girls in the region. Authors’ contributions are designed to be practice and action oriented, drawing on lessons and experiences from programmes and policies that work, and show real potential for their sustainable scalability. In this regard, the essays in this volume reflect a broad spectrum of multi-disciplinary contributions, including from policy makers and development practitioners, as well as representatives from local and international civil society organizations, the private sector, academe and the general public. These contributions are structured around the following five key areas: Integrating Justice Programming into the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs); Informal Institutions, Rights and Laws in Sub- Saharan Africa; Women, Children and Access to Justice for Sustainable Development; Policies and Practices for Engendering Justice and Empowerment for Poverty Reduction; and Gender, and Poverty and Justice Policies in SSA: Lessons from the Field? The central objective of all the contributions, however, is to profile recent developments and experiences in furthering gendered access to justice in the SSA context, and to distil from them future trends for SSA’s access to justice, and the specific role stakeholders can play therein.

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