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FYI Research: |
When he's there he usually gets sick. It's unbearably hot. And he gets around by catching rides on bush taxis -- overloaded pickup trucks that race over the rutted dirt roads. So why is Tom Kelley so anxious to get back to Fandou Berri? Summer 2001, when he last visited this small village in Niger, Africa, officials had begun proposing national legal reforms that would impose Western-style standardized laws on even the smallest villages. Kelley, associate clinical professor of law, isn't sure the reforms are such a good idea. But to learn more, he must return. In Fandou Berri, talking to people and listening is the only way to gather information. Their local language, Zarma, exists only in spoken form. "A lot of what I learned about legal reform in Niger was just from asking people, interviewing people," Kelley said. Officials say the law reforms will prepare the country to compete in the global economy. But Fandou Berri is about as far out of the global economy as a place can get. The villagers grow mostly millet, often just enough to feed themselves. Demand for Niger's main export, uranium, has slipped since the 1980s. So, Kelley is asking, how much will standardized laws help the country, especially people in poor, rural villages? These people's customary laws, which rely on cooperation, public consensus and even spirit guides, help hold the community together, he said. For example, under Western law, dispensing justice for a robbery is simple. A police officer conducts an independent investigation and identifies the thief, who is sent away to jail. But under Fandou Berri's customary law, villagers attend a ceremony in which they use a spirit (most villagers practice a combination of Islam and indigenous spirit worship) to help identify the guilty. The thief -- or his family -- reimburses the victim. Then the thief is publicly accepted back into the community. When Kelley asked villagers, "What about punishment for the thief?" most just shook their heads. To these people, sending a villager away to jail would hurt the community. Instead, customary law heals the village and brings the thief back into the fold. "You realize how complicated and how elegant these traditional ways of dealing with things are," Kelley said. Law reforms would also drastically alter land ownership, making it more fixed. Regional officials would settle a dispute by looking up a name on a deed. But traditionally, villagers settle disputes in public by drawing upon their memories of borders and farming rights. And exclusive possession of land is rare. Families and communities often share land; a young man may farm his father's or uncle's field, but each year he asks permission to do so. Kelley wants to return to Niger to learn more about how these law reforms may benefit or hurt the country. "It's not realistic that in my lifetime Niger will be able to profit from the global economy," he said. On the other hand, the more standardized laws may improve human rights. For example, women and lower castes, who under customary law have few rights, would in theory gain equal rights. "That's something that shouldn't be discounted," Kelley said. "But what I'm looking at are the costs [of standardized laws]." Maybe the good will outweigh the bad. But Kelley said that officials don't seem to be even considering the possible negative effects of imposing Western-like law on Niger's people. And that's what he wants to change. It's definite that Kelley will return to Fandou Berri this summer, using a Junior Faculty Development Award from the office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. If he wins one of the Fulbright awards that he's competing for, he plans to go for an academic year. He will sell his car, pack up his wife and children and live for a while in Fandou Berri -- heat, bush taxis and all. |