(In)Security and Hybrid Justice Systems in Mindanao, Philippines

Abstract

<p>Hybridity is often conflated with the fragile state or the 'absence' of the state in a conflict environment.¹ The emergence of hybrid institutions is also explained primarily in terms of the lack of capacity and legitimacy of state organs and its personnel or in the condition of a power vacuum.² A sense of power disequilibrium or societal imbalance and disarray inheres from this presumption. Hybridity, however, serves a function that sustains conflict resilience and at the same time address immediate justice needs. Hybrids arise to provide a state of equilibrium and to provide order in an otherwise messy condition—while also contributing to the messiness. My study of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Philippines, points to how hybrid justice mechanisms have developed to cope with insecurity arising from actual and perceived injustices in the community.³</p>