Legal Pluralism and Acess to Justice in Mozambique.

The concept of legal pluralism might be used to characterize every society. Notwithstanding, legal pluralism can assume many different forms. In Mozambique we find a large number of instances solving local disputes according their own legal orders. These instances interact with each other and even with the judicial courts raising complex networks of litigation. This paper aim is to discuss the contribution of these networks of conflict resolution to the acess to justice.If the way these instances work might be more apropriated to some kind of contexts and cultures and serve as a reference to the criation of democratic models of justice around the world, they are not free of criticisms. If they can be seen as ways of resistance to the neoliberal globalization, they are on the other hand accused of reproducing patriarchal models and the subalternity of women. African customary law and legal pluralism are also seen by some authors as a ficction invented and imposed by the colonial indirect rule.In this paper I analyze and discuss these questions on the light of an empirical research conducted in three Mozambican provinces (Maputo, Manica and Nampula) between 2003 and 2005. This field work was part of a research project on the admnistration of justice in Mozambique in which I participated as parte of a team composed by researchers of the Centre for Juridical and Judiciary Training (Mozambique) and the Centre of Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]