Durable Resolutions

Abstract

Studies that examine the administration of justice in refugee camps highlight the legal plurality that commonly characterizes such sites, and the normative friction it creates between government and humanitarian institutions and community structures. Drawing upon research among South Sudanese refugees in Uganda and Ethiopia, this article foregrounds the place of transnational networks and temporal experiences in shaping processes of dispute resolution among refugees. South Sudanese refugees regularly turn to community structures to arbitrate disputes, even when these disputes relate to crimes that, under the laws of host states, must be reported to the authorities. As opposed to the individualized formal justice systems of host states, which are limited by borders, community justice links refugees across countries, draws on understandings of past communal events and relationships, prioritizes communal harmony and order, and thus produces a sense of continuity under conditions of dispersal and extreme precarity.