ABSTRACT
This chapter examines rule of law, an area in which development actors and the international community have become heavily involved in post-conflict contexts and one which effectively links elements of security, justice and governance. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the liberal view of universal human rights that is enshrined within the United Nation. These rights seek to protect the individual from justice that is the sole preserve of the state. A second main set of mechanisms for pursuing transitional justice are prosecutions and tribunals. Transitional reform effectively relates to the prevention of future human rights violations and violence through tackling the structural conditions that led to conflict in the first place. In reality, justice is usually 'multi-layered', it exists in different ways and at different levels. For this reason, legal pluralism approaches argue for the recognition of the empirical experience of real people rather than beginning with the predefined models of what state justice should look like.
