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Jordanian Civil Code3/18/2021
She also serves as a Middle East Fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.Part of HuffPost News.Verizon Media. All rights reserved.
To this day honor killings, revenge killings, and forced displacements occur frequently and often without official legal proceedings. In order to ensure internationally recognized human rights and uphold the constitution, the justice system requires structural reform. Jordan should work towards institutionalizing these informal practices by codifying customary tribal law into a legally pluralistic system that aims to respect, and regulate, long-standing principles of tribal justice and traditions of arbitration. Tribal law, though rampantly in use, remains informal since its abolishment in 1976. Customary tribal or Bedouin law is predominantly organized around clear reactions to disturbances of social order and family honor. It runs parallel - and at times in direct opposition to - Jordanian civil code. It would therefore appear that the active presence of such self-governing practices undermines the state. Yet, legal pluralism - formal or otherwise - is not necessarily symptomatic of a weak state. The challenge comes in integrating and applying pluralism in a way that recognizes long-standing alternative notions of justice and yet creates and upholds a fair system for all. As a result, there is strong precedent and significant pre-existing discourse on reconciling multiple legal systems - the Australian Human Rights Commission for example, continues to consult with top international legal scholars to address the unique challenges of legal pluralism and indigenous law. Frequently police act to contain conflict, and then hand the issue over to the involved tribes to resolve the crime or move toward reconciliation. In January of this year, for example, the gendarmerie was called into the northern Governorate of Irbid to control riots that had broken out as a result of a 14-year-old boy being fatally shot by his neighbor. Gen. Ali Hamlan stated no one was injured in the riot fires because the families of the suspect were evicted to a remote location based on tribal laws jalwa. This is just one example of the common, unofficial collaboration between state and tribes. Jalwas are usually reached through third party arbitration of a ceasefire, atwa, and negotiations by a perceived neutral authority, such as another tribes sheikh. In January 2016, for example, there was a direct state-sponsored atwa, resulting in a large jalwa. The atwa delegation was led by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Mohammad Thneibat, and guaranteed the victims familys conditions, including, as the Jordan Times reported, sentencing the killer to death, dropping the right of the suspect to hire a defense lawyer, evacuating the suspects tribe (all those related to the suspect through the fifth paternal ancestor) and giving the victims clan the right to kill the perpetrators father, children, grandchildren, uncles, and their children if they pass by Mutah town at any time. The government has made small efforts to limit jalwas, such as to only apply them to the immediate family for example, but these efforts have been met with only varied success. Ironically, much of the progress in limiting jalwas that has been achieved has relied on tribal code, such as the honor pact in Salt. The idea that tribal power opens flexibility in the legal system, where court rulings go from firm decision to negotiation, is an undeniable degradation of the rule of law - and perhaps even state sovereignty. But, if codified correctly, the presence of these two systems of justice does not have to be a weakness. Extensive outreach and consultation with local communities would also be necessary. While the government has worked to improve the existing justice system, it has thus far failed to make the necessary structural reforms. ![]()
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