Justice without judiciary in East Timor

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Abstract
Typical for international state-building interventions, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor relied on a fundamentally western model in its attempt to establish a rule of law. At independence, an official judiciary was trans ferred to Timorese control as part of the new government. However, this institution has proved to be one of the weakest minted during the transitional period, in part because it was placed on top of an entirely different, indigenous system of justice at the grassroots level. The concept of a crime, and means of redress, or a conflict and process of resolution, accepted as legitimate by the local population contradicted the type of judiciary being imported. UNTAET failed to appreciate the resilience of local structures, and therefore did not reconcile the two contrasting systems of justice. International approaches to post-conflict (re)construction of a rule of law have to be re-thought, taking account of indigenous notions of justice in the architecture of a formal judiciary.

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