Social accountability in war zones – confronting local realities of law and justice

This article examines how justice and social order are administered and experienced in poor, politically fragile and conflict-affected environments. Taking notions of legal pluralism and public authority as our starting point, we explore how moral and social worlds are understood in places where ‘the law’ is not necessarily a discrete institutionalised process. Drawing upon current debates in the field, as well as findings from the six articles in this special issue, we explore how legal pluralism and public authority operate in context; how we might evaluate whether ‘justice’ is being done’; and the stark dissonances between local realities and the normative assumptions that currently guide international development interventions, particularly around rule-of-law reform and access to justice initiatives.